Quote Peter Dakin:

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The new digital multicores are a fairly new medium, and as mentioned, there is yet to be a standard between manufactures.
The major issue with digital multicores is the sharing of head-amps with a monitor console. Some manufactures handle this with ease (digico) however others are nigh-on impossible and useless, making dual consoles difficult.

If I was doing the installation I would go with a decent copper multicore system any day.
With a digi multicore, if your FOH desk was to crash/die you'd have to find a like for like replacement, whereas with a copper multi, you could quickly sub-hire any desk and still have a show.
It depends on how flexible a system you require. If you're always going to use your own consoles and not having touring ones coming in then there's merit for the Digital systems. However a copper snake will work with nearly all systems, and slot nicely in with stage drops etc.

With both systems, you need to also plan and implement enough returns to feed the house system as well as monitors.
Average is 12, but depending on house system you might require more.

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The ilive concept was released 15 years ago in the IDR system. Not particularly new!

I would go with cat5 any day of the week, much easier system to install, far cheaper than buying an analogue desk with external graphic eq's and compressors and gates for every channel.

I do find that a lot of people avoid cat5 systems due to lack of knowledge and prefer to go with the tried and tested copper which is perfectly fine but does have lots of limitations and problems that are not present in a cat5 system. Having said that a cat5 system has many flaws as well but to say you could hire any desk with a copper system is a bit dated as you will find a large majority of hire companies will have a large array of digital cat5 desks in their inventory due to the ease set up and cost effectiveness.

Just my tuppence

Gary

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