SAC vs M7CL-48

[gdougherty]

Okay, so right off the bat, I'll give the recallable headamps the nod on the M7CL. As much as I've learned to live without them, that's still a really nice to have, especially when you're doing the same stuff on a regular basis with some change-ups inbetween. I'm also still a little bit of a fan of physical knobs when interfacing with EQ and having the 4 band controls directly available on the console surface is admitedly kind of nice too. In practice though, I had to select a channel, then start twisting knobs and in SAC I'm there about as quickly too.

So, recallable headamps, dedicated physical knobs for a few things. IMO, that's about the only things the M7CL did better. The room was a large cube, hard surfaces everywhere, and super live. I found myself on a few channels wishing for the extra band of EQ I have available in SAC and I was especially missing the dynamics section plus plugins. Sibilance was an issue on several mics and I was really missing my Rea XComp plugins in addition to the gates and compressors. The M7CL has a De-Esser, but at the expense of one of the other dynamics processors. It was nice to work with an expander on the channel. That'd still be on my wish-list for SAC, to have a ratio control in the gate section so it can act as gate or expander. I've done okay with a gate and longer release times to keep it more transparent on a vocal channel.

And here's where I'm really spoiled and would be really spoiled in a setup with multiple netbooks for personal IEM mix stations. The Aviom system they had installed is nice enough and easy enough to use, but out of about 24 channels they had to pick the 16 that are "good enough" to include in the Aviom network. That was also additional setup time while we were sound checking the band. By comparison, I've gotten comments on how "studio quality" the IEM mixes I put together in SAC sound. The reverse gating on a room mic has really helped put the musicians "in the room" and with little netbooks musicians would have control over all channels, obviously. The drummer was on an IEM mix and limited my mixing of the kit at FOH because the Aviom tap points were post dynamics to help level things in the ears and I was afraid to mess with the gating to tighten things up a little and mess up his rythm in the ear mixes. Having multiple monitor mixes with full independent processing on every mix is huge. No separate monitor mix console needed, I can tweak to my hearts content at FOH and not disturb the IEM's at all.

I found myself liking the master section on the M7CL and it makes me very comfortable with the thought of mixing on just a BCF2000 plus the SAC onscreen controls. I may need to pickup one, especially given how cheap they are. Nice having the surface built-in, but man, it's nice to close the lid on the FOH laptop and drop it in a bag.

Routing-wise, if you're looking at just the FOH layer then it's about a wash. It's about as easy in both cases to assign inputs and routing. It's slightly easier to assign groups in SAC and its certainly easier to assign multiple channels to the same groups. Groups in the M7CL seem to be buried just a little. May just be the relatively small amount of time I've spent mixing on an M7CL. I have maybe 8 hours under my belt and many times that in SAC time. 8-DCA's in the M7CL are plenty for most setups. I've used 6 at a max, but being able to use both DCA's and traditional subgroups to do processing in SAC is quite nice. Did that recently to ringout just a pair of vocal mics for performers that wanted to get out in front of my stacks. Saved the processing power from a second plugin and used the Studio EQ on a subgroup. SAC also gets the nod with stereo channels instead of stereo pairs. There's really no reason the M7CL shouldn't be able to address stereo inputs on one fader though, that's just a design issue on Yamaha's part.

4 stereo returns vs 6 stereo returns in SAC gives SAC the nod for greater flexibility if you need it. It's also very simple to save and recall scenes in SAC and the memory management by comparison is pretty intuitive. With the F-Key views I use in SAC, programming the auxes and returns for various reverb types is especially easy. The M7CL isn't bad, and the default routing takes care of the assignments easily enough but you still have to dig a little to get the right stuff patched. I did like having a tap tempo button on the user definable keys, though I've gotten used to giving up a little screen realestate to the small delay plugin so I can always hit the tap there.
Price, of course, no comparison. Even with a turnkey SAC setup, you're still at a small fraction of the cost of a 32 channel M7CL and at that fractional price you can have a full 64-channel system.

I may get the chance to plug my SAC outputs into the house system sometime so I won't compare board to board in sound quality. I have no doubts the SAC system would have given me a mix just as good, and more likely better, given the few things on my wish list as I was mixing on the M7CL. I had one mic that got adjusted back and forth between vocal duty and use as a sax mic. In hindsight, if I'd had my mic box with me I would have used two mics, but it would have been nice to double it up onto two channels with their own processing. Easily doable on the M7CL as well, just not as up front and intuitive, so I didn't bother as I had so much else on my mind that evening.
Nice board, just not worth the cost IMO now that I've found SAC.

[RBIngraham]

The recallable headamps can be useful, especially in rep theatre or festivals, but if you ever do that equal comparison to your SAC rig, I think you'll find that the M7 preamps can leave a bit to be desired. I've never done a head to head comparison with SAC, but I have used both Presonus Preamps (DigiMax FS) and the ADA8000s in addition to the LS9 Preamps (which are the same preamps as the M7) and they both sound better than the M7/LS9 Preamps, in my opinion. (see my other diatribes about the M7 and it's preamps)

Most users of Avioms that I know either use a dedicated monitor console, or they feed it from Matrix Outputs on FOH consoles that have a lot more than 8 Matrix Outputs. This allows you to feed more than 16 channels into the Aviom Feeds, by submixing channels together. So the drums might just be a stereo mix. If they use a separate monitor mixer it really doesn't need to be that complex of a console. But if you want all the dynamics, it helps if it's one of the various digital consoles. I've known some folks that have a Yamaha digital on stage for the monitor mixes and Avioms and then they run it from FOH using Studio Manager.

I wouldn't want to try and do any of my shows running an M7 without having Studio Manager hooked up and available. It's close to what Bob has done with the SAC remotes, but you only get to use one remote at a time, so it's not nearly as flexible. There is a lot of things that are so much easier to do in Studio Manager than on the physical console. In some cases I think even easier than SAC. (for example patching the physical I/O to Inputs and Outputs, I love Studio Manager's method where you can see it all on a single screen, rather than having to go channel by channel) But then there are also a lot of things that are easier to do on the physical console itself.

On the shows I've done with the M7 I almost always struggle trying to make do with only 8 DCAs. I'm glad to have up to 16 in SAC, it makes it a hell of a lot easier.

I do like the buss structure of the M7 better than SAC, but that's just because it fits the needs of theatre a lot better. I like having variable levels from each input to each bus. I also miss having the output matrix. So far I've made do within SAC by using the Monitor Mixers essentially as very flexible Matrix Outputs. But some day I'd love to have a real Output Matrix within SAC. It just makes it a lot easier when setting up custom mixes for fills and underbalconies, subs, etc...

Just a note, but there is no reason you can not use the Mix buses on the M7 as traditional submasters. It's just that each of them has a variable send rather than a simple on/off.

Of course there is little argument in the subject of price. Even a full blown SAC rig with a lot of I/O, 32 fader control surface, and a couple of Netbooks/Laptops for remotes will be cheaper than the M7. Although the LS9 comes pretty close to competing in price when you realize it's a 64 input mixer, at least if you fully expand it to the max it is. Of course with the M7 you have a 48+ fader control surface. The fact that it has a fader for each input and doesn't depend on layers or bank switching is one of the things that has made the M7 more acceptable I think.

The main thing I love now that I've moved onto SAC when possible is the far more flexible scene memories in SAC. Try writing a cue that just affects one aux send level in a M7, it's a huge pain in the ass dealing with Recall Safes, and Selective Scene Memories rather than something simple, like in SAC where you just select which channels you want to control in the Scene and store your data. That has been such a refreshing experience for me, and frankly is the main reason I bought SAC, second only to the amount of bang for the buck, and how efficient and stable the code is.

The only thing I think I've really missed since going to SAC is the ability to set up very flexibly MIDI control of the console. Although the M7 and LS9 are far less flexible than the other offerings from Yamajunk. But with some of the other offerings from Yamaha they allowed you to create very flexible MIDI input control of the console. That's not really all that important of a feature outside theatre I guess which is why it's more limited on the M7/LS9 I suspect. But that feature can be very helpful in dealing with live show automation. It's cool to be able to adjust all kinds of parameters with external control. Although when Bob puts in the ability to trigger scenes via MIDI and/or Timecode that will get SAC really close to to this ability and probably fill any of my needs. Although largely I've used this functionality as a work around for the crappy scene automation built into the low to mid end Yamaha desks. So the very nice automation in SAC largely negates that need, but not totally.

[gdougherty]

The recallable headamps can be useful, especially in rep theatre or festivals, but if you ever do that equal comparison to your SAC rig, I think you'll find that the M7 preamps can leave a bit to be desired. I've never done a head to head comparison with SAC, but I have used both Presonus Preamps (DigiMax FS) and the ADA8000s in addition to the LS9 Preamps (which are the same preamps as the M7) and they both sound better than the M7/LS9 Preamps, in my opinion. (see my other diatribes about the M7 and it's preamps)

Most users of Avioms that I know either use a dedicated monitor console, or they feed it from Matrix Outputs on FOH consoles that have a lot more than 8 Matrix Outputs. This allows you to feed more than 16 channels into the Aviom Feeds, by submixing channels together. So the drums might just be a stereo mix. If they use a separate monitor mixer it really doesn't need to be that complex of a console. But if you want all the dynamics, it helps if it's one of the various digital consoles. I've known some folks that have a Yamaha digital on stage for the monitor mixes and Avioms and then they run it from FOH using Studio Manager.

I wouldn't want to try and do any of my shows running an M7 without having Studio Manager hooked up and available. It's close to what Bob has done with the SAC remotes, but you only get to use one remote at a time, so it's not nearly as flexible. There is a lot of things that are so much easier to do in Studio Manager than on the physical console. In some cases I think even easier than SAC. (for example patching the physical I/O to Inputs and Outputs, I love Studio Manager's method where you can see it all on a single screen, rather than having to go channel by channel) But then there are also a lot of things that are easier to do on the physical console itself.

On the shows I've done with the M7 I almost always struggle trying to make do with only 8 DCAs. I'm glad to have up to 16 in SAC, it makes it a hell of a lot easier.

I do like the buss structure of the M7 better than SAC, but that's just because it fits the needs of theatre a lot better. I like having variable levels from each input to each bus. I also miss having the output matrix. So far I've made do within SAC by using the Monitor Mixers essentially as very flexible Matrix Outputs. But some day I'd love to have a real Output Matrix within SAC. It just makes it a lot easier when setting up custom mixes for fills and underbalconies, subs, etc...

Just a note, but there is no reason you can not use the Mix buses on the M7 as traditional submasters. It's just that each of them has a variable send rather than a simple on/off.

Of course there is little argument in the subject of price. Even a full blown SAC rig with a lot of I/O, 32 fader control surface, and a couple of Netbooks/Laptops for remotes will be cheaper than the M7. Although the LS9 comes pretty close to competing in price when you realize it's a 64 input mixer, at least if you fully expand it to the max it is. Of course with the M7 you have a 48+ fader control surface. The fact that it has a fader for each input and doesn't depend on layers or bank switching is one of the things that has made the M7 more acceptable I think.

The main thing I love now that I've moved onto SAC when possible is the far more flexible scene memories in SAC. Try writing a cue that just affects one aux send level in a M7, it's a huge pain in the ass dealing with Recall Safes, and Selective Scene Memories rather than something simple, like in SAC where you just select which channels you want to control in the Scene and store your data. That has been such a refreshing experience for me, and frankly is the main reason I bought SAC, second only to the amount of bang for the buck, and how efficient and stable the code is.

The only thing I think I've really missed since going to SAC is the ability to set up very flexibly MIDI control of the console. Although the M7 and LS9 are far less flexible than the other offerings from Yamajunk. But with some of the other offerings from Yamaha they allowed you to create very flexible MIDI input control of the console. That's not really all that important of a feature outside theatre I guess which is why it's more limited on the M7/LS9 I suspect. But that feature can be very helpful in dealing with live show automation. It's cool to be able to adjust all kinds of parameters with external control. Although when Bob puts in the ability to trigger scenes via MIDI and/or Timecode that will get SAC really close to to this ability and probably fill any of my needs. Although largely I've used this functionality as a work around for the crappy scene automation built into the low to mid end Yamaha desks. So the very nice automation in SAC largely negates that need, but not totally.

I'd think in the theatre world, the surround mixing capability of SAC would be a really nice to have feature. Do you find that to be so?

Very true on the Aviom submixing. Drums were submixed which left just a handful of other channels onstage that needed routing into the Aviom inputs. It's certainly much easier to do that than make each musician build their own drum mix, but with SAC it'd be easy enough to duplicate the Drum mix from FOH. You then have the added flexibility of highlighting the snare and kick if that's all you really want.

I'd love to have an i/o matrix for assignments and routing as well. One of those 2D matrix charts would make it quick and easy to assign physical inputs to SAC channels. It could even have a channel disable control by clicking on the SAC channel label in the matrix.

The matrix mixer might be nice, but it seems a monitor mixer gives you far more flexibility and control. That'd be especially true if monitor subgroups could be sourced virtually from FOH or Mon1 like the inputs and returns can. Seems like it'd cut down on the CPU load necessary to do submixes on monitor boards.

With 16 auxes and every one available as sends on faders, it seems like it may only be a matter of time before nice digital consoles gain the same ability to run separate EQ and dynamics on each "mix" that SAC provides. Of course, then again, maybe they wouldn't to encourage purchase of a separate monitor console. Seems like that'd be a good chunk of lost revenue unless they started charging a lot more for the setup.

[ffarrell]

With 16 auxes and every one available as sends on faders, it seems like it may only be a matter of time before nice digital consoles gain the same ability to run separate EQ and dynamics on each "mix" that SAC provides. Of course, then again, maybe they wouldn't to encourage purchase of a separate monitor console. Seems like that'd be a good chunk of lost revenue unless they started charging a lot more for the setup.

They wish they could. All the big boys are about selling hardware.

If it was about them selling software you would see a lot more paid upgrades to their hardware.

The margins are tight as you get down to the wal-mart shopper price point.

thanks
fvf

[Ogmeister]

I own both the M7CL and PM5D and in my opinion SAC just sounds better than the M7 and competes nicely with the PM5D. If you are faced with buying the M7 or SAC it should be SAC hands down! Just no comparison in the sound quality.
Especially the built in EQ and dynamics processing. And if you need to there are plenty of plugins for SAC that can get you anything you could imagine.
Even if the cost were the same I prefer SAC because I don't have to lug around a big heavy console anymore.

I've got a lot of truck space left over.

[RBIngraham]

I'd think in the theatre world, the surround mixing capability of SAC would be a really nice to have feature. Do you find that to be so?

No not really. While it is not that uncommon to find a L-C-R set up in theatres and many have some type of surround speaker system and of course all but the poorest have some kind of Subs, it is very rare that theatre sound designers mix in what would be described as 5.1.

For example in that recent link of pictures I posted, that venue has L-C-R and subs. But I am not using that to move the image across the stage. I use it so that there are almost (but not totally) separate systems for vocal reinforcement as band reinforcement. The Center Cluster is almost solely vocal reinforcement, with just a tiny amount of band in, just to help even out the coverage of L and R through out the house. The L and R are just band, and some sound effects.

The problem with trying to do some type of "surround sound" in theatre is that logistically it's near impossible to get full surround coverage to every seat (or even enough seats to make it worth while) to even bother trying it. Of course it depends on the venue and there are a few that I work in, that given the funding, are actually small enough, and shaped in a manner that I could do it, if I had the budgets to do it. But many venues just are not shaped properly to allow it. They are often too wide or if it's a thrust house with the audience is on 3 sides of the playing space, etc... just too many seats to cover in a manner where each patron would actually hear the audio from 5.1 speakers and it would actually track properly across the stage. Even in venues where the seating is arranged like a movie theatre, because you can just pop the speaker down in the "ideal" locations behind the "screen", you would have to have very large speaker arrays to provide even coverage to each seat, or even a majority of the seats. Now with line arrays growing in popularity these days of course that makes things a bit easier, but even even then, the visual of having 3 arrays big enough to cover the majority of the space is usually just too big of a footprint and would get knocked down by the rest of the design team or the management. And that doesn't even include any surround provisions. In some of the big venues they do have 3 large line arrays, but even then those don't cover all of the seating areas, just most of the "good" seats. Those systems still need under balcony fills, front fill across the lip of the stage, upper balcony fills if the balcony is very deep, etc.... So trying to get 5.1 to all of those seats, and do it well, would just require more speakers than is typically practical. And while some of the small 99 seat type venues certainly would be small enough to pull it off, most of them don't have the budgets for that sort of thing.

Another big issue of course is programming time. It's rare I would have time to program all the panning moves needed into a show. I'm lucky if I get enough tech time to program some orch. mix changes and automation of the lav. mics when large groups enter or exit the stage. I'm sure the really large budget productions get a lot more time, and they also have large sound crews to work on it, but even then I only know of a handful that actually track the actors image across the stage. Most theatre sound systems are some combination of large Mono reinforcement systems for voice with some stereo stuff going on for the times it's practical, like sound effects or orchestra reinforcement.

There are some very complex systems out there (companies like Track the Actors and Outboard Electronics, you can google them if you're really interested) that will actually track actor location on stage and then do very complex routing adjustments with delay time adjustments to each output in the sound system. Of course these also cost a pretty penny as well. I've yet to see/hear any of these in action, just word of mouth. That then opens up the can of worms of, is level panning good enough? Which can start a very heated argument in a room full of sound designers, trust me. Some will say level adjustments is all you need, and some swear that you need to do it with both levels and delay time adjustments as well. I don't have the time or money for either, so I just don't worry about it. But I have done plenty of playing around with delay times to help localize the voice back to the actor on stage. There are some tricks that can make that fairly easy to program and it works well and I can tell the difference if the reinforcement is subtle and not blaring away in your face. So given the time and budgets I would rather have both the level and delay time panning.

Having said all that, in Fiddler I did use the Center and Sub feeds on SAC's Surround Panner. So I could dial in channels to the sub as I saw fit. I also used it to take the Orch Sub mix and assign it to the L/R output, but "dial in" a bit of it to the Center Cluster as well. But it would have been a lot more easy and more intuitive to a theatre designer if I just had an output matrix. That is what we are more used to having and is more or less standard procedure once you reach a certain level of production values in theatre.

I could see that surround panner tool being of use on heavy playback shows (i.e. non musicals). But then I doubt I'll be using SAC much at all on those shows. There are other tools out there designed from the ground up for theatre sound playback that fit that bill better than SAC, even with SAW linked in. And once I put those into the system, if I was using SAC at all, it would just be to pass through the audio to the sound system and do some routing (like hearing impaired feeds and other things that often are done by the FOH console in theatre). That is, once I start to get to the point where I replace the DSP boxes with SAC. Right now the DSP units are summing together SAC feeds and my SFX playback feeds and routing them and doing system EQ and Delay. At some point when I have a large enough SAC system that I don't run out of inputs while doing a live mix that I have open inputs for the audio playback, I'll probably dump the DSP units. So then I would just be bringing up SAC for a handful of area mics (if needed) and routing playback audio and doing system DSP tasks on the non musical productions.

I'd love to have an i/o matrix for assignments and routing as well. One of those 2D matrix charts would make it quick and easy to assign physical inputs to SAC channels. It could even have a channel disable control by clicking on the SAC channel label in the matrix.

Yea, that's what I was kind of thinking of as well. I suspect some year down the road that could be done in SAC. It's just a different way of looking at the same information, not a new routing scheme.

The matrix mixer might be nice, but it seems a monitor mixer gives you far more flexibility and control. That'd be especially true if monitor subgroups could be sourced virtually from FOH or Mon1 like the inputs and returns can. Seems like it'd cut down on the CPU load necessary to do submixes on monitor boards.

I do find it very nice and easy to set up my monitor mixes using the SAC model/method. With the new F-Key layouts, it's very similar to using the Yamaha Sends On Faders mode. So it's easy to put exactly what you want in each "mix". However, when I dealing with routing within the various "systems" using a Monitor Mixer just for lets say front fills is kind of a pain. It's a lot of extra work that on other desks would just be adjusting a couple of knobs in the output matrix. For things like Front Fills, Underbalcony, etc... I don't really (or rarely I should say) need to dial in each channel. Rather if I was using an M7, I would make a Orch. Mix and then dial that mix into each Matrix Output as needed. Then I would take my Vocal Mix and dial that into each Matrix Output as needed. With SAC I need to dial in each input as needed. Now, using the tools in SAC to copy parameters and such, one can do that, but it is still a lot more work and it's one of the things I like better when working with the M7 or LS9 desks.

Just as an example, I might have the L-C-R that I described above, but if I have a front fill, I would want both Orchestra and Voice in that front fill, but I might want more flexibility than a simple On/OFF. I could do the simple On/Off in SAC right now, by using Submasters to mix audio down then assign to the Hardware Outputs in SAC. But if I want to "dial in" a variable amount of something to the Front Fill then I pretty much have to do it either on a channel by channel basis in SAC using a Monitor Mixer, which is time consuming, or do it outside of SAC in a DSP box, which is what I'm doing now.

If SAC did have what you talked about, where I could feed a Submaster feed from the FOH console to a Monitor Desk that would be very handy and provide pretty much all the needs in most situations I could think of. It's just getting adjusted to doing things in a way that is not typical in the theatre world. But right now SAC doesn't do that, so it's just On/Off for each Sub Output assign to a Physical Output.

With 16 auxes and every one available as sends on faders, it seems like it may only be a matter of time before nice digital consoles gain the same ability to run separate EQ and dynamics on each "mix" that SAC provides. Of course, then again, maybe they wouldn't to encourage purchase of a separate monitor console. Seems like that'd be a good chunk of lost revenue unless they started charging a lot more for the setup.

I'm pretty sure there already is EQ (not dynamics) on each Mix Bus on the M7, and I know for fact that each Matrix Bus has EQ. So a lot of that is already there and I'm sure it will only expand as time goes on. Everything gets cheaper and "more" with digital technology. I would bet some of the more expensive models of digital consoles already have dynamics on each output bus as well. Or it wouldn't surprise me, lets put it that way.

Of course most that can afford that level of mixing console (the $50K, the $100K or more digital desks) can easily afford 2 of them so they can have a separate monitor desk. I don't see a big push in the industry to consolidate the monitor and FOH console into a single unit, like SAC has done.

What SAC has done, as I see it anyway, is bring that level of flexibility and control down in cost to where folks that never dreamed of being able to have separate monitor and FOH consoles can actually do that and afford it. And it just so happens to do it in a really slick and virtual way that is actually more flexible and fun to work with than having 2 separate consoles.

[damongold]

i officially gave up my 2 digidesign venue Dshows and a protools HD rig that i have replaced with SAC/SAW system. i have no regrets and am soooo glad i made the switch. no control surfaces yet, i have not needed one. im mixing a 14 piece band with 16 stereo in ears, plus house, fills and wedges. i have also killed over 1500lbs off my pack!!!

[RBIngraham]

Don't take my comments as harsh criticisms of SAC. Given my choice, I'll take SAC any day over any of the alternatives that I can afford. Unless my budgets expand to include LCS sized budgets (which pretty much means Broadway or Cirque' sized budgets) I don't see anything else in the market I would rather use.

My comments are just a few minor things I miss from working with the mid to low end Yamaha desks.

[gdougherty]

I'm pretty sure there already is EQ (not dynamics) on each Mix Bus on the M7, and I know for fact that each Matrix Bus has EQ. So a lot of that is already there and I'm sure it will only expand as time goes on. Everything gets cheaper and "more" with digital technology. I would bet some of the more expensive models of digital consoles already have dynamics on each output bus as well. Or it wouldn't surprise me, lets put it that way.

Of course most that can afford that level of mixing console (the $50K, the $100K or more digital desks) can easily afford 2 of them so they can have a separate monitor desk. I don't see a big push in the industry to consolidate the monitor and FOH console into a single unit, like SAC has done.

What SAC has done, as I see it anyway, is bring that level of flexibility and control down in cost to where folks that never dreamed of being able to have separate monitor and FOH consoles can actually do that and afford it. And it just so happens to do it in a really slick and virtual way that is actually more flexible and fun to work with than having 2 separate consoles.

There's an output EQ on each mix, but no ability to do a separate EQ for an aux and FOH on a channel by channel basis. The M7CL isn't like the LS9 where you can double the inputs onto a second layer and run monitors from the second layer and FOH from the first layer.

[RBIngraham]

There's an output EQ on each mix, but no ability to do a separate EQ for an aux and FOH on a channel by channel basis. The M7CL isn't like the LS9 where you can double the inputs onto a second layer and run monitors from the second layer and FOH from the first layer.

Got it. I see what you are talking about now. yes you are correct, there is no way to do separate EQs and the like for monitors, that's pretty much a SAC exclusive, unless you chew up more than 1 set of inputs.

Yes, there are not 2 layers on the M7, and the LS9 does have 2 layers. But if you have enough spare inputs there is nothing stopping you from using one set for FOH and another set for monitors.

Still... not as cool as SAC, but it works, if you really need that. Maybe I'm just used to doing it all from one desk so much that I just don't get the need for separate EQ and Dynamics on monitors. But most bands are used to having separate consoles for monitors. And most theatre just uses the FOH console for monitors unless it's a big budget production. Even then the monitor desk is just used for routing usually. It's not something that is "manned" during the performance.