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Midas M32 or Stagescape M20d?


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Your Midas M32 has significantly more inputs and outputs, motorised faders, digital connectivity, and a much higher price. The M20d is really only a 12 Mic + 4 Line input mixer with 4 aux outputs and is a significant step down; it is good for a small band that runs their own PA but once it gets complex you start running out of inputs or monitor channels quite quickly.

The L6 Link option does simplify cabling in that you can run all of yours speakers in a single chain but you can connect them together using L6 Link anyway - so assuming you are running 2 x L3t + L3s on each side as mains then you can connect L3t to L3t to L3s using L6 Link and only run cable to each side so the advantage of M20d in this situation is actually quite minimal. If you are running in mono then L6Link all the speakers together and just feed one speaker from the Midas.

If the Line 6 mixer family had been maintained or enhanced - such as a way to increase inputs and outputs it might be different, but I recommend that you keep the Midas.

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Just to offer a second opinion, I agree with Rewolf48. Unless you never use, or anticipate using, even half the capacity of your Midas M32 you will find the M20d quite limited in its inputs. They're designed for quite different scales.

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L6 Link is more about simplified wiring than quality - you can use a single cable feeding into a daisy chain joining Left Mains, Monitor A, B, C, D and Right Mains with all receiving an independent mix - without it you need to feed those speakers using separate cables which is a lot more cable. The downside is that the first break in the daisy chain takes out everything after it! 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I disagree. Using the M20d opens up way more ability to eq the entire system. Without it there are several features such as the 32 band eq you can't access for each speaker and the entire system.

I run a 5/6 pc band without issue. Each has a mic and each gets a channel for their instrument. If running stereo output, which is useful for smaller venues, you still have 4 more channels available without using the 1/8"stereo input (which I only ever use for iPod during breaks). The fact that on the fly I can reconfigure what comes out of each speaker without cable changes is fantastic. You have 4 aux sends and I rarely use them all. I have everyone going direct in to the mixer and and using 2 L3T's and 1 L3s everyone hears what the audience is hearing. It took a little time to get used to the change from on stage amps and lots of 'me', but now our band mix is far closer the mix we produce on the CD's.

 

The Midas is a great board. More features and such though don't always make for better sound or ease of live engineering. The Midas board is the same as the Behringer X32 only with Midas pre's and faders.

 

It is a lot of board unless using it in a studio so the when comparing the M20d is lighter, easier to use and has full digital out to the speakers. So many great 'live' features make getting a great sound quickly and consistently make the M20d a really great live use mixer. The M20d is for the band that self mixes on stage on the road, quick and simple. 

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i constantly run a 5/6 pc band as well.  I was running out of inputs any time i needed to mic anything more than kick/snare.   But my main issue was aux sends, with everyone running in-ears, we ran out of mixes VERY quick.  There are plenty of ways to get the same EQ mixing per speaker with matrix outs on the X32 board. The perks of the M20 are its size, and simplicity of tuning.  

 

The bottom line is that M20 does not let you grow; this is the only reason I swapped to the Yamaha TF mixers (i have the TF3 and TFRack). I loved working with the M20, but I needed more monitor sends, and there were a few gigs that i started using 30 input channels (needing to mic up a full drum kit and floor mics for dancers).

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