A few days back working at Warwick Arts Centre gave me the opportunity to get my hands on the Soundcraft Si3 for real recently.

First up was two nights of comedy – Mickey Flanagan and Sarah Millican gave us a slice of both bloke and girl humour in the theatre. This was mixed (if you can mix one microphone…) on the in-house Soundcraft MH3.

On Saturday and Sunday operations moved to Butterworth Hall with Chinese New Year, followed by the One World Week fashion show. This was my chance to use the Si3 for real.

It’s significantly different to the Yamaha desks I’ve been using recently. There’s no screen to speak of, and you rely on the OLED displays over the faders a lot more. At first, it’s a bit weird not being able to see all the channel settings in one place, but it soon becomes more natural.

One advantage of digital is the ability to share mixing responsibilities - while the students mix on the left-hand set set of faders, I can place a copy of the same channels on the right-hand set to save them from feedback or clicks & bumps with having to fight for the same piece of desk. You can’t do that with analogue!