Soundcraft Si Expression 3

In the ever-expanding world of digital mixing consoles, it's a wonder each manufacturer doesn't have a university course for their proprietary operating systems. Just last year while working in the Konserthus in Oslo I witnessed contract engineers come into the venue only hours before a show and look at the Digico consoles before asking for assistance. Kristian Vin Rijn, who was the stage manager at the time, then had to give a crash course on the menu structure before letting them loose with the show.

It's imperative therefore that any new digital consoles on the market be as user-friendly and intuitive as possible before anything else. That's where the Soundcraft Si Expression 3 comes in. This is a neat package, with a true everything everywhere setup. All channels have a full compliment of gates and compressors available at all times. The effects are hardware-based and the console has internal Lexicon hardware with a variety of effects.

Above each channel is a rotary knob, which can be gain, HPF or pan, and each button is just as it would be on an analogue mixer, one function per control. The fader channels illuminate different colours to organise FX, Stereo, Linked Mono, GEQ, POST Fade Aux, and PRE Fade Aux, there is a BSS GEQ on every bus for plenty processing and a nice clear touch screen.

This is a very easy console to get your head around with a very clear layout. No multitude of screens and menus to run through to make an adjustment, just a very clear layout with intuitive functionality. The processing is powerful and the ergonomics for ease of operation for a new operator have been well thought out. You can figure this console out by looking at it. There are options for AES, Firewire/USB/ADAT*1, AVIOM, CobraNet, BSS Digital Audio Bus (BLU Link)*1, Dante*1 CAT5 or optical MADI cards. The MADI card is an enables interfacing to multi-track recording systems or plug-in systems like Waves, and also links the Si Expression to any of the Soundcraft or Studer stageboxes.

So, all in all a very impressive and very easy to set up and use package. I'd be confident walking into a gig and setting this up out of the box. In a world where engineers are keen to impress us with features and flexibility, Soundcraft have given us usability and intuition. Sometimes we just need it to work.