Wulf's Webden

I don’t tend to go for New Year resolutions but the disruption and pause caused by UK habits around Christmas and New Year activities and holidays is a good point to take stock and sow some thoughts for the year ahead and that fits well for the concluding part of my series on what I’ve picked up from my first year of having a Soundcraft ui24R mixer at church. What do I want to do with it in the next twelve months?

I’ve mentioned how I’ve found the multitrack recording a real boon. I’d like to look at some ways to do more with that. For example, could I get some better quality recordings where I bring together people who’ve prepared as if they were heading to the studio rather than turning up for a Sunday morning? Could we build recording and listening into our rehearsal routines, perhaps listening back together to something we’ve just played and thinking about how to improve it or putting a rehearsal online to help people do more effective homework ready for the following Sunday?

I’d also like to dig more into the built in FX. One of the ways I do my audio production for the service videos is to apply a whole range of processing. Some is making up for what doesn’t get recorded on the raw input, like compression and EQ, and the settings in my DAW wouldn’t necessarily be ideal for the live environment. However, I think there is scope to do more with things like reverb and delay to enhance lead vocals and make backing parts sound fuller without swamping the lead ones.

Thirdly, I’d like to do some more on improving foldback for the band. At the moment, we have one channel of foldback that goes through a powerful 15″ wedge on stage. My analysis is that it puts too much volume on stage and there are times when you could pretty much turn the mains off and nobody would notice the difference. We’ve got ample auxiliary channels spare if I can work out how to route them back to the stage and what I’d like (since too many people are resistant to in-ear solutions) is to try several smaller speakers so those near to them can hear what they need without affecting those on the other side of the stage let alone the rest of the room.

I could keep going. With a box like this, there is so much to explore! Three ideas will do for now though. There are a whole bunch of other things to work on too which even a much fancier mixing solution would do nothing to help. Overall through, I’m very pleased with the Soundcraft ui24R and, thus far, would have no qualms about recommending others include it in their considerations.

Rarely do you find a piece of complicated equipment which doesn’t have one or two drawbacks or weaknesses. What haven’t I liked about the ui24R?

One is a result of the physical design. A headless system that mounts into a rack case is great in many ways but there are some sockets and switches that become very hard to access once it is installed. I think Soundcraft did a reasonably good job on the design and almost everything you need on a regular basis is accessed on the front panel but there is one omission, namely the power switch. I can see there might be an argument for putting it out of reach of an accidental press but, although you can’t so easily turn it off by accident, that also poses a problem for turning it on. My solution was to get a switched extension cable, so I now have a switch I can use to power the device on and off. Of course, that puts it back in the open so I don’t think that design feature quite works.

We have also had a few issues with the system locking up. It is rare enough that we can live with it but it would be helpful if we could have some kind of diagnostics. For example, it could be an overheating issue but it is so intermittent that we can’t be sure. Our experience has been that everything keeps working while it is frozen but you can’t make adjustments and you have to find a point when you can run a manual power cycle. Hurrah for saved settings which mean you can pretty quickly get back to where you were but I’d rather it didn’t crash at all.

Speaking of saving settings, that is a brilliant feature but I’d love it if we could create a library of channel settings. I’d love the sound engineer to be able to pull up “Wulf’s six string bass” or “John’s blue bass” and drop that in with all the levels, EQ and other settings that work well. A given person on a given instrument (or through a particular mic) tends to be fairly consistent but the granularity of what can be saved doesn’t go quite that far. It would be particularly handy in a setting like our church where the band each week is likely to be a different mix of people but drawn from a relatively small and consistent pool. Maybe a feature for a future firmware update?

So a few niggles but overall I’m still very happy with our choice. In the final part of this series, I’ll ponder on what other things we might try with the system as we enter our second year of flying it.

Not everything about the ui24R is perfect (tomorrow’s post!) but there are plenty of things to celebrate about it and here are a few of its capabilities that I particularly appreciate.

One is the sheer range of information that it presents to help the sound engineer and the ease with which you can switch between different views. As you learn to interpret the screens, you can see the input level of muted channels and the output level of open channels clearly indicated per channel rather than having to switch the mode of one or two sets of lights. You can customise which channels you view and in which order they appear and there is also a master view that puts everything on one screen so you can spot a hidden channel that might have been left unmuted or other potential causes of trouble. If a noise gate is kicking in or compression is taming the edge of a signal, both of those are subtly but clearly indicated. Meanwhile, you can switch on a full ‘real time analyser’ with the per channel EQ, which (combined with listening and knowledge of where useful sound energy sits for a given source) helps making decisions about where to make adjustments. A traditional desk lets you see where the knobs are set but a digital one like this also helps indicate what effect those settings are having.

That is a lot of detail to master but fortunately you don’t have to set everything up from scratch each time. What we have done is establish master templates for the different types of services and other events we might use the desk for and then also save the details for a particular event as we are working on it. Combined with being able to clearly label each channel (much better than marker pen on sticky tape) it helps stay on top of the complexity.

Another feature I particularly value is multitrack recording and playback. I now record most of our services both on a video camera but also as a set of .wav files. When I get home and work on the editing, I can remix the output of the different channels and get a result which is much better for voices and half-way decent for the music. That also allows a bit of a post-mortem if something was particularly problematic and you can replay saved recordings allowing experiments with mixing without having to get a group of musicians to come in and play through things again and again. As a bonus, other tracks can easily be played back. For weddings and similar events, we now ask for special music to be provided on a memory stick rather than balancing a stack of CDs (and much reducing the risk of the wrong track being called up).

As I mentioned yesterday, you can use a mobile device to log into the mixer so you don’t just have to sit at the sound desk position to work it. Just as I’ve seen engineers do at other gigs, you can move around the room to check it sounds good everywhere and monitors can be adjusted while standing with the people who are listening to them. It doesn’t solve every problem (for example, if musicians want so much monitor volume it compromises the house sound) but it gives a lot more flexibility.

The final thing I want to note is the overall sound of the system. It is easy to lose sight of that, especially if you aren’t regularly using a range of different devices, but I remember how much clearer things sounded after we switched from the old system and even before we’d dug too far into the finer levels of control. It is probably unfair to expect the previous, well-used system to live up to a brand new one but I don’t want to forget that, alongside all the clever things on offer, this box can produce a good, clear sound and, if that isn’t what comes out, the issue may not be the mixer.

So the Soundcraft ui24R is a sound mixer. Unlike the kind of devices I’ve used in the past, it doesn’t take up a big patch of desk, only about three knobs instead of a hundred or more and no sliders at all. It sits neatly in a rack mount unit and includes its own WiFi network.

Our main interface to it is a touchscreen monitor and I can also log on via my iPad or phone, which has been useful a few times when I’ve ended up having to run sound as well as being on stage. It has 24 main inputs, which is more than we presently need (or have channels to run back to the desk).

Not having the physical mixing surface takes a bit of getting used to but going to a software orientated system has several advantages. In particular, we can configure the screen to show just the channels we need for a particular setup and each channel has multiple tools like compression and graphically represented parametric EQ that go well beyond any manual desk I’ve ever used. Sacrifice the hardware controls and you get the equivalent of a whole rack of studio grade equipment thrown in, which seems a good swap to me.

Tomorrow I’ll pick out some of the particular features I’ve loved using.