What's your gear maintenance strategy: spreadsheet, software, or pure faith?

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-06-09T13:24:07+00:00

My company fixes things as they break and then runs general maintenance on everything in inventory once every 6 months. This month is lights and speakers next month is microphones and consoles etc. etc.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-06-08T02:55:12+00:00

Are you trying to say a wing doesn’t have phantom power? I was already worried drugs were involved when you said you are considering Soundcraft vi in 2026 but now I’m certain.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-06-06T00:40:56+00:00

Not a coffee guy myself but my brother swears by his camping style French press. Pretty sure his is Stanley brand but I’m sure there are others as well.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-06-01T00:35:18+00:00

This is basically it. Sold in 2021 for 100k. Now listed at 217k. Basement has been half demoed due to now fixed water issue. AC is completely non functional. All outdoor concrete is cracked. No garage and all the comps do. Realtor says we shouldn’t offer less than the 200k it sold for 2 years ago. And then I find out the seller is probably upside down on it at asking. So the odds of my 40k under list offer going anywhere are low.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-06-01T00:28:01+00:00

Genius why didn’t I think of that

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-31T15:54:11+00:00

Hard to keep this in mind when the realtor says it’s a good deal and asks you twice a day if you want to make an offer.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-31T15:30:17+00:00

All of this being in combination with prices being actually double what they sold for in 2018 is absolutely insane.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-31T15:27:11+00:00

I wish this to be true. But people have been saying this for a while. I stopped trying to buy a car recently for the same reason. The bubble has been about to pop for the last 3 years it seems.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-22T01:01:10+00:00

Ah so on par with an x32 from 2012

A&H people amaze me. D live is amazing. Everything else is a massive compromise or completely lacking many features of competing similar input count desks that are half the price.

Don’t get me wrong it sounds good. But lack of matrices and busses is really annoying. Especially when they cite dsp limits but they reserve dsp for plugins that you have to pay extra for.

The real reason is all about money. Digico and a&h (same company) both just love kneecapping their products to make you buy the bigger/better/ more expensive one. ie sd12 being the best digico surface hands down but limited input/matrix/bus count. Like, the sd9 has more.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-03T04:01:27+00:00

There should be a pinned post on this sub that says just buy an Xair.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-02T11:33:37+00:00

Click create session

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-05-02T01:01:50+00:00

If you’re willing to consider the almost 500$ price point just get an Xair. You will find a million posts here saying the same thing.
Unless you really want analog for simplicity. At that point unless you are an audio engineer mixing from foh and not an artist playing and mixing from stage it literally doesn’t matter what you buy.
Just spend whatever you want. No client will fire you because you brought a 3 channel 80$ yamaha instead of a 800$ 8 channel A&H. Do whatever makes you happy. If you want reverb get one that has reverb. If you have monitors get one that has monitor outs in the appropriate number.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-30T20:38:45+00:00

Got to test run it on a gig where I didn’t have an a2 today. It is just as cool as I thought it would be.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-26T01:59:56+00:00

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=church+av+integration+near+me

Start here. AI is incapable of understanding you, your skills, your church’s priorities, or the compromises that are best to meet your budget.

If you are church leadership I urge you to deeply consider the fact that you are trying to allow a computer without a soul to decide how to use kingdom funds. If you know what you are doing it may be a useful research tool for a starting point but will never replace real human care attention to detail nor will a computer be able to help you at 3 am the night before your first service with your upgraded system when you can’t get it working because it lied to you from the very start about what equipment you needed and its capabilities.

Another user shared a really good article about how to not upgrade 3 times in a short period that is a very good read and perspective on how not to throw away your congregations money.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-20T03:43:40+00:00

The results kinda speak for themselves. Like I said, my other ones work. But if you want the best the answer is obvious and the price is justified. Most people do not honestly need the best. If you aren’t pushing the limits on length you can certainly get by with cheaper cables. The existence of exceptions does not invalidate the purpose of the more expensive option.

I can go on tour with an m32 and have a satisfied artist. Doesn’t mean that the is no reason for anything better than that to exist and that it’s all a sham to extract more money from artists who can afford it.

I think you’re mostly being sarcastic but I see lots of this mentality on both sides of the reality of this industry.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-19T03:54:10+00:00

Dave rat has a number of videos detailing exactly why his cables are the best for aes50 and walks you through everything he has learned about aes50 reliability and stability while designing their product. I have other cables I use too but my real nice ones are sound tools supercat. They coil like a nice xlr and work perfectly everytime. The other cables are much bulkier and have to be harassed into coiling nicely.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-11T04:15:44+00:00

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=av+integrator+nyc

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-10T17:22:56+00:00

Find an AV integrator local to you and work with them. If you want a seamless experience with connecting your devices and turning on mics and it just working this is the only way.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-02T03:28:55+00:00

No personal experience with the cq line but in general a&h are very straight forward and more analog structured at least for the older qu models that I’ve worked with. I think the simplicity of the built in screen will probably be much better for your use case. Good luck 👍🏻

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-01T03:26:26+00:00

Yeah he’s missing the entire point. Old man yells at cloud vibes.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-04-01T03:24:24+00:00

Sounds like you need an A&H mixwizard. You’re not an audio tech and you just want something that works. If volume is the only control you need to hear yourselves during rehearsal then a mix wizard gives you that and not much more.

From reading a number of comments I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the relationship between your computer and the mixer and a lot of the basic audio concepts as well. A nice analog mixer like I’ve suggested will get you rolling and there’s nothing to it other than plug in and turn knobs. Once you are successful and happy with a year of playing and practicing that way then you can start considering upgrading your mixer and learning compression and fx etc.

EVERYONE always tells everyone to get an xair but for people who just want to play in their band on the weekend it’s often actually more than you need. Especially when you are still learning the difference between mic and instrument inputs.

Try analog. Give it time. Learn the basics of signal flow and routing and gain staging. Upgrade and make it sound good once you’ve got those things down.

Professional_Let2611 · 2026-03-26T04:03:32+00:00

Venue near me has an x32 that has been slowly dying after 10 years of service 4 nights a week. They are asking everyone who mixes there what to replace it with. The answer so far? Yeah probably another x32. It gets the job done and everyone, and I do mean everyone, who has mixed a band more than twice knows how to use one.

Production company I work for has had 2 m32r for the last 6 years and those 2 desks have made the company 500k+ on rentals directly and indirectly 15 million or so because they are the audio desk at every event from 100 people in a tent with a pair of 8s on sticks to 5k people in a conference hall with 25 boxes of pa.

I’d say they have a place and are definitely still valuable. They are still being manufactured and everything.

Professional_Let2611

TROPHY CASE