Recording - February 2018 - 50

who aren't professional engineers,
whether you're talking about a small
café, a corporate meeting room, or a
house of worship. That makes simplicity
and trainability vital for the best results,
and QSC had this in mind when it added
the Wizards to its mixer line.
A Wizard is essentially a one-screen
interface that quickly and simply guides
the user through a process that's common,
vital, and easy to get wrong. The TouchMix-30 Pro includes three such processes,
accessed from the Wizard button.
The FX Wizard assigns the internal
FX engines where needed,
and helps the user choose
presets based on the type of
input being processed (e.g.
vocals, drums, or guitar).
The Gain Wizard guides
the user through setting trim
levels for each channel,
based on how often the
mixer sees clipping while
music's being played into it.
The Tuning Wizard uses a
measurement mic connected
to the Talkback input to hear
a test signal played back
through the PA and suggest
tweaks to the graphic EQ
to even out room response.
This latter feature is great for live shows,
but I'd caution against using it as a cureall for trying to "fix" a recording studio
that hasn't been acoustically treated.
If that's not enough, there's a dedicated
Info button that brings up a massive
menu of topic-specific tutorials and sections
of the User Manual, right on the screen.
Even after decades of work in this
industry, I still find myself wishing I had
a manual for this or that product at a
critical moment-problem solved!
This desire to make things easy is also
seen in the massive library of channel
presets and scenes that are recallable
and storable throughout the mixer's
architecture. QSC has put a lot of effort
into providing practical, musical setups
that will get you going quickly with only
a little tweaking to zero in on the sounds
you need, making the TouchMix-30 Pro
even more beginner-friendly. Almost
50

RECORDING February 2018

every tab of every type of channel can
be quickly copied, pasted, and stored,
so you can build up a library of best
practices for your needs.

Going wireless and more

The TouchMix-30 Pro can be operated
from a free app for iOS or Android. This
can provide everything from a full representation of the main display to a simple
"more me" Aux level control for a player.
Wireless communication can be set up by
attaching a Wi-Fi USB dongle to the mixer,
hooking up a wireless router via Ethernet,

or wiring the mixer into an existing LAN.
Having this kind of external control can be
very handy for tweaking monitor mixes,
checking sound around the room, or even
setting up the mixer in an out-of-the-way
spot so it doesn't take up desk space near
your DAW in a cramped control room.
I didn't get a chance to use every feature exhaustively on the TouchMix-30
Pro in my limited review period. Some
of the other treats worth mentioning
are user-assignable Sub Groups, Mute
Groups, and DCA Groups (eight of
each, for ganged control of user-selected
channels); a user-assignable Patch Matrix
for complex signal routing through the
console; direct multitrack recording and
playback from USB media; remote
control from USB MIDI devices; safety
lockouts to prevent unauthorized tweaking
of various parameters (remember that
"more me" guy?); and lots more.

That one little cable

Last but not least, we return to the rear
panel and that USB-B connector, which is
the key to really making the TouchMix-30
Pro shine in a studio environment. Previous models allowed for multitrack recording and playback to and from USB
storage media. Tracks could be directly
imported into a DAW, or the user could
take advantage of the free QSC DAW
Utility that streamlined the process (and
allowed DAW tracks to be collected for
USB export and playback on a TouchMix board). This was a relatively seamless process for capturing live
shows with minimal fuss and
editing them later, but it lacked
the immediacy of recording
audio and having it immediately available in a DAW.
That conundrum's now been
solved with one little cable.
The TouchMix-30 Pro can be
plugged into any audio computer (macOS computers are
already working seamlessly,
with a Windows driver coming out of beta and into general release by the time you read
this) and instantly recognized
as a 32 x 32 audio interface,
with 16-bit or 24-bit audio at
44.1 or 48 kHz on all channels. (Channels 31/32 are for DAW 2-track recording and playback, separate from the
standard I/O arrangement; see the QSC
website for a tutorial on how this works.)
Setup on my studio DAW literally took 90
seconds, and worked flawlessly right out
of the starting gate.
Thanks to the flexible routing choices
in the mixer's architecture, the studio
engineer can choose how much, if any,
of the console's built-in DSP functions to
make available to the DAW, whether
printing tracks with effects or sweetening
Aux buses. With comprehensive delay
compensation, mixdown through external
processors becomes straightforward
and seamless. Essentially, the TouchMix-30 Pro becomes a DAW interface
that can handle all the hardware in a
small to medium-sized studio without
the need for repatching or submixing,

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2018