Mixing boards: recording / live / broadcast?

[jjones1700]

With the influx of thread pertaining to mixing boards, I'm curious as to what sets them apart in terms of usage. Forgive my ignorance on this as I have only worked with two boards in my short amateur "interest". I've had a Mackie 1402-VlzPro and I currently have a Tascam M-2516. I've been reading these other threads (the great "unknown" mixer, for example) and have read responses about various types of boards. What makes thiem so different from each other? I figure all of them are going to have inputs, monitor outs, subs, some sort of effects loops, EQ, etc.

Just a curious question to add more information into my already overloaded mind.

[sweetbeats]

Forget ignorance, jjones...that's an awesome question.

Just humble opinion here as I am relatively green in terms of years working with this stuff, but I think one of the main features of a studio board is direct outs, and multiple inputs on each strip. The labeling nomenclature too...'control room' and 'studio' outs. The live board is going to have everything geared toward that stereo buss...the studio board will have a stereo buss too but there is more emphasis on multi-buss routing flexibility. It seems to me that there used to be more of a deliniation between a recording console and a foh console, but foh consoles started incorporating many recording console features...'dual-purpose', and nowadays I think a true recording console is a pretty rare thing.

Starter thoughts...I'm sure some more will come tumbling pel-mel out of my head.

[RRuskin]

Originally Posted by sweetbeats

Forget ignorance, jjones...that's an awesome question.

Just humble opinion here as I am relatively green in terms of years working with this stuff, but I think one of the main features of a studio board is direct outs, and multiple inputs on each strip. The labeling nomenclature too...'control room' and 'studio' outs. The live board is going to have everything geared toward that stereo buss...the studio board will have a stereo buss too but there is more emphasis on multi-buss routing flexibility. It seems to me that there used to be more of a deliniation between a recording console and a foh console, but foh consoles started incorporating many recording console features...'dual-purpose', and nowadays I think a true recording console is a pretty rare thing.

Starter thoughts...I'm sure some more will come tumbling pel-mel out of my head.

Some of the differences between a recording console and the other types:

The ability to discreetly monitor "machine" returns while recording other tracks without having to use any outboard mixing or monitoring devices. A comprehensive recording board will have at least as many inputs as there are recordable tracks on said machine, enough assign busses and direct outs to feed the recording device, and enough monitoring for separate control room and headphone/cue mixes. In addition there will often be aux sends and receives for signal processing.