Soundcraft SI Compact 16: digital mixing with total flexibility

The Soundcraft SI Compact series is designed as a digital mixing solution for a multitude of audiovisual applications with total versatility in live, theaters, conference centers and corporate events, among others.

Talk about Soundcraft, a company belonging to the Harman group, is talking about mixing consoles. One of the achievements of this manufacturer, which has more than 35 years of experience, has been to always know how to adapt to the market, creating and producing equipment in accordance with user demands and offering, at all times, specific solutions for each type of application.

Always maintaining contact with the most expert sound engineers and attentive to their real needs when establishing its design lines, Soundcraft launched its first Vi6 digital console on the market in 2006.

Since then, there have been several models that Soundcraft has developed and which bring together not only the extensive experience of the British brand, but also that of two of its fellow brands in the Harman Pro group: Lexicon and BSS, responsible for the effects and dynamics and equalization sections, respectively, of the vast majority of its consoles.

The SI Compact series is designed to become the ideal digital mixing solution for a multitude of audiovisual applications. This series brings together all of Soundcraft's experience with great versatility for live performances, theaters, conference centers and corporate events, among others.

The new series, which started with the SI Compact 24 model, is now completed with the SI Compact 32 and SI Compact 16 models.

The smallest model in the series, the SI Compact 16, is a mixer with 16 mono inputs and 4 stereo returns, in which all inputs are equipped with a compressor, noise gate, parametric equalizer, high-pass filter and delay (designed by BSS). Due to its small size and low price, it is ideal for a multitude of purposes.

In the same way as the larger Si1, Si2 and Si3 mixers, all Si Compact series digital mixers include 4 powerful Lexicon effects processors, each with a dedicated effects bus, thus providing a wealth of sounds and parameters adjustable at the user's will.

Another notable feature of the new SI Compact 16 are the sliding potentiometers, all of which are motorized (with FaderGlow technology). This technology illuminates each potentiometer with a different color, depending on the bus to which they are assigned. And it has an independent set of buttons per channel, to adjust all its parameters, from input gain to equalization, dynamics and assignment to buses.

Total flexibility

The wide possibilities of this mixer are also increased by the various internal options and expansion of inputs and outputs that it offers: to the 16 mono inputs we have to add the 2 analog stereo inputs, the AES input and output, the 16 analog line outputs and the headphone output that all models include, without forgetting the possibility of connecting any of the accessory cards of the SI models, that is, AES, AVIOM, Cobranet and MADI cards.

The MADI card, for example, in addition to constituting an interface for multitrack recording, allows you to connect the Si Compact mixers to the Soundcraft and Studer Stage Boxes, which expands the number of inputs and outputs and, therefore, the flexibility of use.

This console also has 14 mono auxiliary buses, 4 matrix buses, L C R mix buses, 4 mute groups, 4 assignable inserts and integration with Harman HiQnet.