I tweeted Uli with the same question a couple of weeks ago. He was kind enough to reply but not with any more details. He said "Stay tuned"

Did anybody compare x-usb vs x-madi regarding latency? I think about buying a RME Madiface Pro and the x-madi to make the system more performant for plugin use.

Has anyone tried external clocking via the madi card (or other) to see if there any gains like on Yamaha desks?
I was thinking ---> AES out to an external converter clocked --> word clock thu the card ---> PA system.

Anyone?

Hello, I bought a Madi card for my Midas M32r to supplement my SSL Alphalink/MadiXtreme setup & it works perfectly, haven't compared latency with stock USB Card but I'm pretty sure it's better, MADI vs USB no contest I would say!
I clock it from a Big Ben master word clock!
I hope this helps
Dave

thanks, I now bought a x-madi card myself (and a RME madiface pro). I get about half the latency settings before crackles come in due to better RME drivers.

Hey mate, with all due respect ✊ if your getting crackles I would think the issue is not due to the RME having better drivers, if the drivers are 'better' (not sure what this actually means) wouldn't your system work better or correctly at least (take this light heartedly but also true!)

If You/I bought a new car

well I've got 20 Tracks with some plugins running at 128 samples perfectly with the RME madiface in a live context. With some lighter projects I even get 64 samples running. Using X-USB card I get it work with 256 only.

I think what he meant was that he can reduce the latency (in samples) using MADI compared to using USB. Crackles are the indication that you've gone too far.

Am I the only one here who DETESTS trying to mix 32 channels with 16 faders? Doing button-selected, one-at-a-time channel adjustments is one thing, but actually MIXING more than 16 channels with only 16 faders seems EXACTLY like operating with one hand tied behind your back!

Yeah, I can see it in a professional road-show where all the channels are pre-assigned and even pre-set for gain, EQ, effects, etc. And the show (or at least the songs) are the same all season and the operator is an professional with years of experience in daily operation.

But selling these things into churches, et.al. where you are dealing with semi-skilled volunteers and the program is changing in Real-Time just seems like driving on the edge of disaster. Not to mention extensive training to get operators up to speed. Especially when they may work only one weekend a month (or a quarter). And ongoing training when volunteers are replaced with new people.

I am working with a video production upgrade in a church where some guitar shop came in and bamboozled the amateur "audio" guys to scrap their perfectly good, high-end, 32-channel desk and replace it with a Behringer X32 "because it's DIGITAL!". NONE of the whizzy digital features will actually solve ANY of the problems they are currently having because they are operational and acoustical.

And they want us (video) to install a second X32 for video/recording mix because it is SOOO convenient to just couple them together with a Cat5 cable. Which is true enough. But the thought of switching banks back and forth and back and forth just seems like insanity to me. We may still install mic-level splitters and take our feeds at mic level. Maybe we can just use the perfectly good 32 channel desk they are discarding. That'll baffle them.

how many faders can you move with two hands? You really do get used to it, and a little thinking ahead minimizes the need to switch layers.

Try it with just 8 faders ! I'm talking about recording mixdown, not live, but the problems are similar....suddenly you're wrangling 3 or 4 or more banks of 8 (or 16) !

If you can create folders or subgroups of instruments/voices it can be suddenly rendered a lot easier...you can have, say vocals (back ground), guitars, keys, individual drum mics, all as single group faders...and able to unfold each group for individual tweaks as you go. So, for most of the show you're using just 4 or 5 faders of groups..plus perhaps another dedicated to the lead vocal(s)

My problem has been convincing the hardware to recognize just these groups..and not all of the underlying inputs....that seems to be the hard part. You'd want to be able to selectively direct the mixer to consider the underlying tracks when tweaking's required, but ignore them otherwise (and just leave you with those 4 or 5 or so groups).

So how would this work in a typical rock band scenario? Been a while since I've used a mixing console so bear with me..

I'd have 8 tracks for drums (HH, Snare, Kick, Tom 1,2,3, OH 1 (stereo), Room (stereo)) and 4 for vocals, 4 for guitars (R, Lead) and 2 for bass and a couple for synth. Then I'd have one stereo Aux / send / FX / bus (all in one) for each of the instruments bar vox which would hit it's own send.. So in total I'd need 18 mono and 6 stereo faders all with effects applied to them..

Whilst looking about I read the following "The Behringer X32 digital mixer sports an onboard virtual FX rack that gives you eight true-stereo (16 mono) multi-effects processors" This somehow doesn't seem to tally up??

So is there something I'm missing here?

TWICE as many as with one hand!

Like getting used to losing one hand in a freak chain-saw incident.

Yes, I agree, that is the theory. But it all goes out the window when the "talent" decides as they are coming on-stage: "Here Agatha, use this green microphone because it matches your dress." There goes all the pre-planning.

Many people today have never had the pleasure of mixing on a full size professional analogue console, and don't know what they're missing. And a rack full of outboard where everything is always visible and within reach, without having to press any buttons or scroll around. In fact, with a proper analogue set-up, everything is visible and handy at all times. You don't have to lose sight of one thing to see or adjust another thing. It's always all right there in front of you.
And, I use many fingers when mixing, sometimes all ten. That's what faders are for. But on a 16-fader digital console, I sometimes can only use one hand to mix, because the other hand is pushing buttons.

Na, from someone that cut my teeth on BIG.. Soundcraft, Calrec, Yamaha, MCI, Neve, SSL consoles used for broadcast and TV OB's. Give me a digital console any day.
The multi level layout of digital consoles take a different mind set than an analogue console but the internal routing, flexibility and digital multicore stage boxes are just awesome.......
DANTE, MADI, AES...... Love it.

I have done this and am not getting the two consoles to talk to each other. I am currently going out of the X32 AES50 B port into my X32 producer AES50 A port and am getting no signal at all. Please do not tell me that the X32 producer cannot talk to the X32 as this is why we purchased the X32 producer some number of years ago...

I'm considering upgrading my main X32 mixer for the Wing console... wondering what others think about this upgrade path.

My current setup is a X32 main mix console, with two X32 rack units that I have set up in my studio. (Three total X32 units) I've got the two racks hooked up via Ethercon Cat 5e / AES50.

The main reason I'm considering upgrading is to expand the amount of channels available for direct recording to my DAW. X32 has 32 inputs available via USB, and appears Wing can send 48 inputs via USB? (I currently have some sub-mixing / merging of instrument signals in the rack units, but would prefer to have the direct signals from each instrument)

What are people's thoughts from migrating from X32 to Wing? Any surprises? Any additional latency issues with having 48 tracks available, or is the latency pretty much the same as X32? Also, from what I've read, sounds like I can expect the X32 racks to work flawlessly with the Wing via AES50... But has anyone had any issues with this? Any other comments for going from X32 to Wing in terms of workflow, the control surface, etc?

things get way easier to manage when you use digital snakes, I use the Midas 32 with my X32's and its awesome, with that said ..if you need that many inputs then go for it, but you will still need the snakes - not sure how combining all your X32s with the wing are going to play as nice as you want them too

One alternative upgrade is the use X-MADI in two the X32 boxes. Connect Rack1-to-Rack2 with AES50, and put an X-MADI in Rack1. Put the other X-MADI in the 'Main' X32.

Then use an RME MADI or MOTU M64 (easier) to connect to your DAW computers. The MOTU is easier because it has multiple fiber and coax connections so you could have a 'star' topology home run from Rack1 and Main. The RME solution would require you to 'daisy-chain' fiber from RME-to-Main and then coax from Main-to-Rack1. In either case, you'd configure card-out 1-32 in Main and card-out 32-64 in Rack1.

I have the round-trip latency (RTL) numbers for my RME MADI ExpressCard to a Midas M32 with DN32-MADI, but never tried a second concurrent MADI console connection. I also had tested a MOTU M64 under Windows, but prematurely threw up my hands and returned it when macOS High Sierra wouldn't run the control console app. I have since learned it was probably a Mac Pro 5,1 firmware issue that kept it from working as expected, and also have since upgraded to Catalina.

I think I would have been happier with the MOTU M64 solution, as the routing seemed quite excellent. Sadly, I never did any RTL testing.

Sorry for reviving a dead thread. Didn't really see any other main thread for this one though.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but did others know that you can reroute the X32s busses and fx back through any of the 32 channels?

I've been using this to get 2 stages of compression (normal + sidechain compression) on my bass, and to get my fully bussed drums bus able to send to the shared fx (reverb + delay).

Reflecting on this, I can see you could use it to also get 2 stages of compression on a vocalist as well (de-ess + normal), which is pretty cool. I'm going to try that...

This board for me is amazing- I'm not the greatest engineer of course, but it feels like you really can put together a full mix on it- while playing live. I use the 1176 and the limiter to good effect for what I'm doing- (boom bap 90s style hip hop). I have tested the LA-2 and Passive EQ and they sound great though I don't use them in my current fx slots. Others elsewhere on here have said they are quite good.

I have the rack version of this in a 3u travel case and swear by it in any situation. I use a TP-Link AC750 Travel Router with the iPad and find it to be extremely consistent and responsive- router quality definitely matters.

any desk, analog or digital, which allows to route channels (to auxes/subgroups and on) to matrices can get used for applying multiple stages of dynamic (or other) processing - if not, parallel processing is an alternative...

...and then there are professional desks which have multiple stages of dynamic processing built-in by default so you don't need to 'waste' auxes/groups/matrices for this purpose and without the latency penalty that inevitably comes with bus to bus routing.

Yes of course there are bigger and more expensive boards with less latency issues- but what else does everything this can do in such a small package? Especially and specifically for live situations.

If you have suggestions I'll listen.