Large console DIY??

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the general opinion was... you'd have to be crazy.

I'm paraphrasing of course, but certainly the time input would be too much to keep anyone's input focussed.

...I think there are a lot of people who were quietly hoping that the subject had died...

Keith
 
Im crazy enough.... the rich enough ( and enough time aspect) are slowing me down.. ill try to post some progress soon...
 
Would be interesting , because i hope to build a 40 mono , 12 stereo , 16 aux , 16 groups , 2 channel master table . When it is ready i dont know , but the first plans are already made.

This table will be used for live as FOH and monitor.
 
How about a mid-size console DIY? :razz: (If I were foolhardy, I would say a Helios 16-4-2 config.)

Bear
 
I thought about making a large-format console too, but it is a tremendously big job. I have read (several times) Steve Dove's fantastic "Designing a Professional Mixing Console" which goes through practically everything.

I have canned that idea, and have since come across a gutted Neve 8016 (24x8) console. The plan is to rebuild that thing which would be easier that starting from scratch, it already has faders, meters, patchbay, metalwork, internal wiring etc. I think these things would be some of the most time consuming and challenging things to fabricate. you should see the internal wiring and buss bars on this thing... plus, with all the neve modules floating about there must be literally hundreds of empty neve consoles around.

Anyway it's easier because all the schematics for most of the modules already exist. i heard from somewhere that 301's 80 series neve was half built from scratch too...

http://www.301.com.au/301byron/data/recording.php

Cheers

Chris
 
i'm planing on building a a console. using midi to control logic.
planning to be my final project for college. gotta start soon. gonna get everything cut on the waterjet just to save time and money.

good site to check out is mididbox.org
a guy built a logic control. looks just like a pro control 24, really sick.



t
 
What I think would be interesting is a small mixer/monitoring controller. Kind of a Mackie Big Knob plus a few line channels with faders (some stereo, some mono) and perhaps one or two mic channels if needed. What I miss on most studio controller units (except the SPL one) is the ability to produce a headphone mix for the musician, i.e. mix his input signal with the playback and (preferably) produce a separate mix for the engineer. Additionally, a cool thing would be an EQ for the musician only that helps him to hear himself but that doesn't affect the recording output.
 
Hey Rossi

The problem for the musician is very simpel , just use 2 channels in stead of 1 channel and use direct out of channel 2 for the musician by using the insert point of channel 1 to input channel 2 on line input , this works great!
The main problem of a table is the mic-preamp and eq , have looked in many designs and still dont know what i want , have built a few but the are not what i want.

What kind of table do you want to make? ,
 
Hey Henk,

I know it's not hard to accomplish what I want using a normal mixer. In fact my MX8000 does the job perfectly. I just think that beast is too large for what I use it these days, which is monitoring only. As I said, a few line channels would be enough plus some output switching and a volume knob. A small desktop box could do all I need this big MX8000 for, right now. Would be handier and noisefree (unlike the MX8000 psu). I think my project could be done with the ESP project Smoke mentioned. Unfortunately I got other things to do for the next few months. Right now I'm just gathering information & schematics. So it's not exacly urgent. My mixer will do for another while. I used to have problems with strange noises in my MX8000, but ever since I opened it and inspected the pcbs, the noises dissappeared. Don't know why.

BTW. my MX8000 (a oldish grey one ca. 1995/96) is not SMD as I always thought, and the mic inputs don't look bad at all, similar to the Ultragain 2000. It also uses the 2SB737 transistors. But they must have used different ones on later versions. What I noticed only now is that the mic signals are phase reversed. Maybe that's why I never liked the sound much. Phase reverse makes a big difference when you audition via headphones, especially when you're the one singing or speaking into the microphone.
 
I've been thinking about doing one, what always gets me are the costs. I was calculating out stuff for a 48 channel (does that qualify as large?) line mixer (monitoring and mixdown) with fairly nice (but not inductor-based) EQ, 8 aux sends, balanced mix bus, 8-bus plus stereo, no automation, LED metering, TT patchbay. Parts price tag? Somewhere around $15,000 or $20,000... Time to build? Probably about a year or a year and a half of weekends to build, and quite a while to lay out the boards too. Faders alone are about $4000 (for the nice ones) or so. Printed circuit boards? Around $3000. Using reasonable op-amps? LM833? NE5532? Those are expensive enough when you need 500 or 1000 of them. Just the time aspect of the project seems daunting. More time than it took to build my vacuum thermal evaporator chamber.
 
It ought to be possible to build an 8 channel mixer designed in such a way that it could form part of a modular console to prove the point, and then build more of them and string them together. 8 channels wouldn't be be impossibly expensive and if you could put 3 or 4 of them together you'd still have a workable console for certain types of work.
 
You could build several passive mixers and feed them into a final passive mixer.
 
The thing that will get you with a large passive mixer is going to be noise in the make-up amplifier stage(s). You'll be needing somewhere around 35 or 50 dB of gain there (at least for 40 or 48 channels). You're also adding noise by attenuating the signals to get a 'zero' point (assuming you want the faders to go to +10 from nominal) and amplifying it.
 
Actually I was thinking of several 8 channel passive mixers each with thier own gain make up stages feeding a final passive mixer with gain make up stage. Question is wouldn't that improve noise characteristics vs. one massive passive mixer?
 

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