Do these consoles sound different?

We tested 13 popular audio consoles and two I/O devices to see if they sound different, and by how much. The results were surprising!

We want to give a special thank you to John Harrel, Robert Shriver, and Frank Hernandez for letting us borrow gear for this test.

[Xtreemdrummer]

If you can team up with @DaveRat for the next one, I think the two of you will blow every preconception everyone has about consoles.

[nobodynoone]

Great deep dive! Thanks for taking the time and effort to test and share this!

[TheHiddenStudio]

It's nice to hear someone, who knows infinitely more about the tools we use, shed light like this. What a massive effort! Fantastic job!

[MichaelCurtisAudio]

Killer job on this, man! I'm getting my hands on a DM7 this week and hope to do something similar and put it through its paces. Will be interesting to see if the processing is the same or similar to the DM3.

[magoostus]

so ProSoundTraining did a Digital Mixer Study, you can look at the Timing tests and see that the A/D converters in the x32, M32, and midas Pro2/DL251 all show mostly post-ringing of the impulse test, so i'm fairly certain the A/D converters are running "Minimum-phase" mode which has lower latency, but increases phase differences at high frequencies. Honestly I prefer the phase coloration it adds.

[AprilRoxStudios]

Please do a part 2 and possibly, include Yamaha DM7, Soundcraft, Behringer Wing, Presonus StudioLive. Great video & Thanks in advance!

[jameswalkerbassandkeyboard]

I appreciated the way you noted console eq/dynamics can react so differently given "the same" adjustments. Some consoles I mix on - even very expensive ones - have driven me a bit crazy but I thought because they are expensive, it must be my problem or lack of understanding.

[simccaffrey]

Re the first part of your test: you'll want to get the Eventide Precision Time Align for this kind of stuff...it allows you to do sub-sample time delay...I wouldn't be surprised if you could get them all to null to about -90dB once time-aligned with a few touches of EQ...(if time-aligned, EQ should correct those phase differences also...though you might need some all pass filters also to get them all bang on)...

...btw I tested a few of these sub-sample delay plugins and the eventide was the most accurate I found...Airwindows has a free one but it's not accurate, "airwindows one is -12dB at 20k when at 0.5 samples...whereas the eventide is only -1.5dB. (at 48k sample rate)." ...if you just put it on every channel at 48k they'll have that same LPF...the airwindows one varies the LPF as you vary sub-sample time, so won't work for this...

Another cool free plugin that should help is Signalizer (jthorborg)...it's an oscilloscope plugin, very accurate, you can run it in Logic...small bit of a learning curve, check the presets and the youtube video...you can zoom right in and see both channels you're comparing and the sample points...with that and the eventide you can get things very close...(he hasn't updated it in years but it still works OK on apple silicon, works better on intel macs with a decent GPU though)...

[dogfreak]

Woah, I've never seen such an elaborate test! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and perspective. I'd like to agree with you about the Digico compressor, it sounds pretty rough. Can't wait for part 2!

[collierb]

As you mentioned the compressors seem to be the most different in each console. I wonder how the "premium effects" or DEEP plugins sound compared to the stock EQ and Compression in each desk

[insanebiscuit]

This is fantastic stuff, more like this please

[porkrinds]

My friend, those 3 Yamaha consoles that when setting their compressors to "0" attack, they created distortion. Well, I applaud these units, as this is EXACTLY how they SHOULD behave when approaching attacks of 0.0000x seconds. My working knowledge of 26+yrs as a contract engineer specializing in multiband audio processing for the broadcast industry has afforded me the experience to say that Yamaha has done something truly unique with their onboard DSPs. When setting a compressor to that fast of a clamping action (attack), you've essentially created something more than a compressor. Next in line (amplitude control-wise) would be a limiter. After that, having the greatest amount of amplitude control would be a 'Clipper', which grabs the audio signal so quickly that no dynamic peaks can occur beyond its threshold point. The very well known downside to this accuracy of control is distortion. And TONS of it. Through this process harmonic noise is created in multitudes, odd/even and everything in between.

Notice how the overall initial impulse was reduced by what would appear to be maybe -¾ of the original impulse amplitude? Did anyone notice this??

This in itself shows that these three devices were the ONLY ONEs capable of doing the exact job which they are supposed to do! and, they did this with a stunning ability. This Unfortunately, does result in what is known as "distortion". Due to the fact that the amount of reduction of the impulse signal which was introduced, I would dare say these were fast enough to be considered a literal clipping type limiter. The fact that these resulted in distortion is exactly what they should have done. Especially when you consider the speed that they are released. A fast release, something along the line of less than 100 milliseconds will certainly result in a distorted signal. However, try this again with a release somewhere on the line of 250 maybe 500 milliseconds, or even one full second and the distortion will probably have been completely smoothed out considerably. But in my book, as well as my line of work should dictate, these were the only three devices able to make a reduction in overall amplitude upon that impulse signal. All the rest of the ones were just complete rubbish useless DSPs just meant to smoothly squish a sound. This is not accurate clipping or compression. However again, I applaud Yamaha. Absolutely amazing work for a onboard DSP!!!!

[NotTooLoud]

Minor quibble. Q is not "squelch". It's a standard named variable in filter math. Great work all around. I really enjoyed this video.

[michaellemus]

This Is awesome! my only comment Id make with the compression section is that for the Allen and heath compressor you used the RMS compressor not the PEAK compressor. On the other consoles you used the PEAK compressors. For the test that you performed you'd get better results using the PEAK over RMS.

[infinaneek]

Brilliant video and setup. Well done, and thank you.

[parkeranderson]

Haven’t even watched the full video yet - but I’d love to see something from the SSL lineup added in here!

[jthunderbass]

Seems like the high frequency content of each desk is what makes it different

[collierb]

Very Interesting, I've heard people say that different consoles sum/mix the channels differently too, I don't think I've seen sometime test this. Maybe run multitrack though each console and see what the master output sounds like on each for various styles of music?

[EqDior]

Such an in depth comparison. Awesome vid!!!

[AudioIdeas]

Great video! Would be nice to see how preamps react to relatively high impedance microphones in the part two.