I have looked at matrix systems and, to me, they seem all the reverse of what churches need - a many into few facility rather than a few into many - perhaps I am looking at them wrong. I have written a separate post about this talking about a zone mixer which is, unfortunately, not made any more. I would appreciate the A+H link if you have it.

I have used VCAs and they are great but beyond most church budgets - and also beyond most volunteer operators abilities to control.

Great article, just wanted to clarify a few things. First, the distinction between ’studio’ desks which have groups, and ‘live’ desks which don’t is nowadays a little bit simplistic, and I had bad visions of church sound techs rushing out to put studio desks into their live worship spaces. Recording studios are where studio desks should live.

Many good live desks have groups, which work as described. They also have other features specific to live work like mute groups, which are more commonly used in the situation described above. This is where you press 1 button and all the channels you’ve assigned to that mute group are then muted - e.g. mute group 1 is the band, and mute group 2 mutes the lectern and wireless mics. Another useful feature for the multitude of feeds you have to send out is a matrix section. This sends lots of different sources on your board to lots of different locations. Carey from Allen and Heath has done a great explanation of this on their website if anyone wants more info.

The other thing, which I think warrants comment is VCAs. On some very expensive desks (like the A+H ML series, Soundcraft MH series, and in my case the Midas XL and heritage series desks) instead of/alongside groups they have vcas, which do almost the same thing, apart from instead of turning everything through the group up or down, via a sort of master volume knob, they have the same effect as moving each individual channel fader assigned to the VCA down by that amount.

Just don’t get me started on digital desks ; )

Matt