[jacko]

Here is some more:

I went on a short tour with S3L 4.1. The band I tour with, Acid Drinkers, is one of the most recognised heavy metal bands in Poland. The autumn-winter shows are in rather smaller venus ranging from 150 to 2000 people capacity. In smaller places where there is no room for a monitoring desk on stage, I do monitor mixes from the FOH console. Being familiar with other Venue mixers I immediately knew the basics and the first show went as smooth as I’d do it on a D-Show. After reading the manual I expected to be fairly quick but in reality it was even better than I thought. Its small form factor makes me faster than I’d be on a larger console. Top right hand side row of 8 encoders can operate VCAs, Matrixes, Groups and most importantly - Inserts. To my surprise I got used to it during the first show very quickly. I arranged my first layer of 16 faders to have the most important things that I need during the show, specifically guitars, vocals and FX returns. That allowed me to adjust all the levels and effects parameters as quickly as possible, without actually touching the trackball or even looking at the screen. I also stored some plugin settings in song-by-song snapshots, but that’s we all know and love about Venue software, so nothing unique to S3L here. The quality of buttons, knobs and faders is very good. AVB and Venue Link are fantastic. I used it with “unsupported” Macbook Air 11" 2GHz i7 2012. I recorded all shows, soundchecks, rehearsals and I used them to fine tune my mixes before shows. I’m hoping to try 4.5 soon, but that’s up to Avid - they have to upgrade the demo unit I tested.