A/V Matters Increases Inventory Of QSC TouchMix Compact Digital Mixers

AV Matters, a full-service audio-visual production company located in Orlando, Florida, recently added an additional 13 new QSC TouchMix-16 compact digital mixers to its rental equipment inventory.

The company’s services include pro audio, lighting, video, projection and staging rental for applications such as corporate conferences, sales meetings, business events, theater, social galas and charity benefits.

“For us, TouchMix-16 is a great, versatile little piece of gear, and we just ordered 13 additional units, so we have a couple dozen now,” reports Mike Evans, president of AV Matters. “I don’t know what we could use that would be more flexible. They go out on almost every event.”

AV Matters may be based in Orlando but its corporate audio-visual clients, including many Fortune 500 companies, produce events all over the country and even in the Caribbean. From its 45,000-square-foot warehouse the company also supports events at the nearby Orange County Convention Center—the second largest convention center in the United States—and at the region’s many hotels, including Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and Ritz-Carlton facilities, and other venues.

Sending QSC’s TouchMix-16 out on a production results in a tiny footprint for the system control equipment. The compact, touchscreen-driven digital mixer houses sophisticated DSP capabilities such as four-band parametric equalization, filters, compression and gates, plus four 32-bit floating point stereo effects engines, that make outboard processing unnecessary.

“With TouchMix, we don’t have to deal with outboard EQ,” says Evans. “In fact, we don’t have to take a lot of things. The rack of gear is gone. It’s handy and simple. That’s what it comes down to.”

AV Matters will often use TouchMix-16 in the breakout rooms at conferences and other corporate events where there are panels of speakers presenting.

“We use only two or three microphone systems. Most of our wireless is Shure, and we’re constantly using lavalier microphones. Whichever model it’s coming out of, the audio is more dependent on the transducer than anything. So if there is a panel using WL185 lavs, just having the ability to go in per channel on TouchMix, equalize it to where it sounds good, then copy it to every channel, is incredibly handy.”

Not only can settings be copied to multiple channels but they can also be saved into the TouchMix preset library, internally or to an external USB drive, enabling less experienced operators to quickly and easily apply the relevant settings at a later date. “Let’s say I’ve got an SM58 and four WL185 lavs. Just recall the setting for a handheld or lav mic, and you’re done,” he says.

The USB connectors on TouchMix also enable the inputs—16 mic preamps plus four lines—to be recorded separately, together with a stereo mix, 22 tracks in all, as 32-bit/44.1 kHz or 48 kHz .WAV files. “Our clients frequently want to record the sessions, for legal or for archival purposes. A lot of the recordings will get sent for transcription later on. So it’s a useful function,” says Evans.

The mixer’s Wi-Fi capabilities allow remote control of TouchMix from an iOS or Android device. “A lot of my guys float between rooms and will put it on their iPads, so that function is used a lot,” he adds.

“At this point, we’re selling most of our small analog consoles. I still keep some, for events with just two mics. But intend to just keep buying more TouchMix mixers.”

QSC

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *