Allen & Heath budget digital mixer - coming soon!

[cedd]

The name GLD80 follows their ilive naming protocol. The T80 being the smaller desk and the T112 being the larger. Do we maybe suspect that there'll be a GLD112 along sometime? I hope so as 20 faders is just a little too few for my liking. I'd have to have radio mics across layers. As only a 44 channel system, I don't know quite if it'd be cost effective to manufacture one, but I can hope! Otherwise it does look very interesting! I await pricing with baited breath!

[csg]

ive heard around £5500 retail + vat for the basic system. Interesting stuff, I can see this coming into stock alongside or ilive kit.

[mervaka]

I bloody hope not. their popular GL2800-32 currently comes in at under the £3k mark including VAT. If that's any yardstick for "analogue prices" I'd be a little upset to be paying nearly double.

[chelgrian]

what sort of differences are you thinking? looking at the option card slot, it seems likely the DSP is in the surface.

 

If this is 5.5K + VAT RRP and the iLive T80 + iDR 32 bundle is about 12K + VAT RRP what can you do with the iLive which you can't do with the GLD-80 to justify the extra price assuming that both are taken as complete systems and you don't use the ability to put a bigger (and more expensive) surface on the iLive later.

[Simon Lewis]

If this is 5.5K + VAT RRP and the iLive T80 + iDR 32 bundle is about 12K + VAT RRP what can you do with the iLive which you can't do with the GLD-80 to justify the extra price assuming that both are taken as complete systems and you don't use the ability to put a bigger (and more expensive) surface on the iLive later.

 

This is the dilemma faced by every manufacturer - if you stick with the more expensive offering, your competitors come in with a product that does more for less money. If you produce a device that does more or costs less without sacrificing too much functionality, you torpedo sales of the higher product.

 

Once (before digital?) it was relatively simple - the better, more expensive desk in the line up had better, more fully featured eq, more auxes, VCAs and flashing lights. Now, most manufacturers' base digital products offer far more than their analogue counterparts ever did. Consider what the Midas Pro2 will do to sales of their larger consoles... although they will still sell (as there will be those who do need the extra features) there wil be a sizeable number of customers who wil be happy with the cheaper option.

 

In bringing the lower cost desks to market, each manufacturer wil be walking a careful line between attracting a new customer base who couldn't / wouldn't afford the more expensive option, and killing off the sales of higher end products.

 

The obvious thing is that the initially quoted prices are some way off what the Behringer X32 is supposed to come in at. That's to be expected, but I have more faith that the A&H will hit the shops at this RRP than the delayed X32 and its "free with cornflake tops" price.

 

Oh, the prices I;ve seen quoted (no idea if they're correct) are:

 

GLD-80 + GLD-AR2412 £5,652.91 ex VAT

 

GLD-80 + GLD-AR2412 + GLD-AR84 £6,267.35 ex VAT (Mixer + 24x12 I\o + 8x4 I\o)

 

Simon

 

 

[Bobbsy]

I bloody hope not. their popular GL2800-32 currently comes in at under the £3k mark including VAT. If that's any yardstick for "analogue prices" I'd be a little upset to be paying nearly double.

 

But to the price of the GL2800 you have to add all the stuff in the outboard racks...effects, compression, GEQ, etc. etc. If £5500 is accurate (and it's not uncommon to leak a high price to pleasantly surprise people with a cheaper one) it's probably not dis-similar to what you'd spend for an all-in system in the analogue world.

[mervaka]

Of course, and I respect that. However, if that is the case then I may as well still buy an iLive, sans surface.

 

EDIT: also just found the quote that further inflames the case I made before:

 

"Finally, a system that delivers all the benefits of digital mixing at the price of an analogue mixer—and that’s before you think about all the outboard gear it replaces."

[Biro]

I would be inclined to agree with Mervaka, I don't think there is room in the market for another small scale console at that price. I would have thought the aim here was to come in under the very well sold LS9 and try and provide a better option for the X32.

[Simon Lewis]

I'd like to see it cheaper too, but look at the price of an LS9-32 plus digital stagebox. Yamaha prices went up quiet dramatically during the financial troubles, and haven't come back down. They can't easily slash prices, and their long product cycle means they do not appear to have a new lower cost system ready for market.

 

Just as we'd expect a reasonable price differential between a MixWiz and a 16 channel Behringer, it's reasonable to expect that A&H aren't going to chase the headline grabbing target price of the X32. All the same though, £5.6k+VAT won't quite meet the needs of the typical HoW and lower end band market.

[Alec]

Can't quite make my mind up on this - along with all the other new digital desks that are appearing.

 

It certainly doesn't compete in the £2-3k arena that I keep hoping for, and which would genuinely make inroads into the analogue market.

 

And the basic price is up there with an LS9/32 or SI Compact 24. *However*, the digital snake is there included in the price, and not a spenny extra like with the others.

 

Hmmm....

[Matt Riley]

£5.6k+VAT won't quite meet the needs of the typical HoW and lower end band market.

 

If nothing else, this desk has certainly provoked some thoughts I've been having for a while about the entry barriers to digital.

 

I often find myself in discussions with churches, bar bands, schools etc who need a new desk, and for whom there's not really a cost effective digital replacement for a GL2400/ mixwizard and minimal outboard.

 

In some ways I think a lot of the pricing challenges currently in the digital market are because we lack any cogent market segmentation - back when pretty much everyone was still analogue you had different analogue desks, and you got different features depending on the price point - surely the lack of really game changing functionality differences between an Ilive-80 and a GLD series, or a SI series and a Vi series pushes up the price point of the lower one to not steal too much market share from the higher priced one?

 

Nowadays, we all expect the kind of functionality previously available only on the very largest desks (parametric EQs, variable HPFs, SPX2k level reverbs, drawmer quality comps etc) to be available on the 'budget' digital desks - perhaps a little bit more carefully chosen feature segmentation might make digital not only more cost effective, but also more intuitive?

 

I am aware that this has been tried in roughly two ways at the moment - 1) the yamaha method - e.g. the LS9, which seems to impact intuitiveness and things like preamp quality (and engineers don't seem to like it) and 2) the ilive/Si/midas/roland system which seems to be that you pay for faders instead of functionality.

 

What would it look like if manufacturers could keep some of the good bits from the advent of digital systems, like the mixrack concept, recallable head amps, user level access control etc but had a rethink on things like parametric eqs, effects and variable HPFs so that they produced a true GL series beater which could bring churches, schools, bar bands etc into the digital age, at a GL series pricepoint?

[Biro]

Just also heard about this for pricing:

 

 

GLD-80 + GLD-AR2412: £5,652.91 ex VAT

GLD-80 + GLD-AR2412 + GLD-AR84: £6,267.35 ex VAT

[dbuckley]

In some ways I think a lot of the pricing challenges currently in the digital market are because we lack any cogent market segmentation - back when pretty much everyone was still analogue you had different analogue desks, and you got different features depending on the price point... (parametric EQs, variable HPFs, SPX2k level reverbs, drawmer quality comps etc) to be available on the 'budget' digital desks

Indeed.

 

This is the argument I've been making from the other end.

 

A very low cost analoge desk has usually just two EQ knobs per channel, for bass and treble. Go up market a bit and you get three, then four (3 band swept mid), then by the GLs you're at six knobs. Each of those knobs you've added has required another knob, the pot underneath it, components, probably including actives (and thus needing more power), circuit board real estate, and panel real estate, panel drilling. And as the knob count goes up, so does the cost.

 

Thus dropping the GLs six knob EQ into (for example) a Behringer Xenix 802 where there is space for two knobs would be a major upsizing effort, and would significantly increase the manufacturing cost of the 802. So an 802 with GL eq wouldn't cost $50USD but probably nearer $200. I'm fairly sure there isn't a market for this mixer, of Uli would be filling the stores with them.

 

Now take a moderately priced digital mixer, say the Presonus 16-4-2 at $2000 USD, and convert it to be functionally similar to a mixwiz 16:2 at $1,000 USD, so strip away its the channel dynamics, and reduce the EQ to six knobs, delete all excess busses, and remove all the DSP effects. Could such a mixer be manufactured to compete price to price with the Mixwiz? My guess is that it couldn't, for the reason I've stated above: all the stuff you've taken out is software, and software is free. So by removing all that usefull stuff, you haven't saved a cent in manufacturing cost, except you may have been able to delete a couple of controls off the panel. Now you could fit lower powered DSPs in there, as we dont now need all that DSP grunt, but would that save a lot of money? Nope.

 

Nowadays, we all expect the kind of functionality previously available only on the very largest desks (parametric EQs, variable HPFs, SPX2k level reverbs, drawmer quality comps etc) to be available on the 'budget' digital desks - perhaps a little bit more carefully chosen feature segmentation might make digital not only more cost effective, but also more intuitive?

Yamaha are the experts at feature segmentation, the glaring example being no DCAs on the LS9. Yamaha could add that feature tomorrow at zero cost (albeit you wouldn't get dedicated faders for the function) but they choose not to. If DCAs are important to you, then an LS9 wont cut the mustard, and you need to... spend more money. Yamaha have marget segmentation through their ranges.

 

What would it look like if manufacturers could keep some of the good bits from the advent of digital systems, like the mixrack concept, recallable head amps, user level access control etc but had a rethink on things like parametric eqs, effects and variable HPFs so that they produced a true GL series beater which could bring churches, schools, bar bands etc into the digital age, at a GL series pricepoint?

The "parametric eqs, effects and variable HPFs" are free, so if they cant make a competitive product with those features, there no logic that says they can make the same product without them at a lower price point.

 

To my knowledge, there hasn't been a digital mixer (with XLR inputs!) since the days when the Roland VM-7xxx was current that doesn't have per channel dynamics, and I dont think that there ever will be again.

 

This new A&H is interesting, but it isn't a simple alternative to a 3800, let alone the 2400 series.

[mervaka]

To compare economies between analogue and digital hardware is very much like apples and oranges, but at the end of the day they're both fruit off a tree. I do think that premium DSP algorithms will be a decisive factor in segmentation. You're effectively buying the algorithm design rather than the circuit design, and both of them stem from similar mathematical formulae. IIR filters are functionally equivalent to analogue filters, after all.

[dbuckley]

I do think that premium DSP algorithms will be a decisive factor in segmentation. You're effectively buying the algorithm design rather than the circuit design, and both of them stem from similar mathematical formulae. IIR filters are functionally equivalent to analogue filters, after all.

Absoutely. Except that "premium" in analogue costs real money, and in the digital world, doesn't, or perhaps not like anything to the same degree. So although it will suit some manufacturers to continue to segment by quality, it will suit others to disrupt by the same means. This is uncharted territory.