DiGiCo S21: Overview

Overview

DiGiCo’s world-renowned innovation, deep feature-set and flagship audio quality of our high-end digital consoles is within reach of everyone. How? Meet the S21 – a world-class DiGiCo mixing console at an astonishing price.

Step up to the S21’s worksurface, complete with dual P-CAP multi-touch screens, 48 flexi-channels, the equivalent of 46 buses and benchmark 96kHz performance, and this console’s heritage is clear – the S21 is every inch a DiGiCo desk. It’s also a revelation in terms of what an introductory digital console can deliver.

Based on the same pioneering design approach as the industry-leading SD series, the S21 boasts the same proprietary audio algorithms plus a new ARM QuadCore RISC processor which runs in harmony with the FPGA core. The result is faster processing with lower power consumption, all packaged in the workflow that the industry’s most respected engineers rely upon – now available to everyone.

Under the Hood

Familiar to the touch and built for the road, the S21 offers mixing without limits. The integration of a high power QuadCore SoC with high bandwidth memory, a low power 484-ball array FPGA and a fourth-generation control SHARC DSP offers unprecedented power today as well as the potential for a future processing upgrade path. The compact footprint of the S21 has no relationship to the scale of processing power going on under the polycarbonate worksurface.

The two touchscreens each provide 10 channel strips, giving not only clear visual feedback and control of 20 simultaneous channels for a single user, but also the possibility when mixing large shows for more than one operator to take advantage of the newly designed drag, swipe and drop feature that simplifies custom fader layouts.

Visual feedback is further reinforced by the HTL (Hidden Till Lit) functionality of the encoder rings, while parameters currently not in use are automatically greyed out, always drawing your attention to the right controls.

The dual screen concept aims to aid the new user learning curve and remove distractions by not only giving you more channels to view at any one time, but also allowing one screen to be used as a setup or master whilst the other is utilised for operation. Both touchscreens are responsive to EQ shaping, with fine-tuning available via the tactile and intuitive rotary encoders.

Altering the Channel Bank layout, and mixing and matching any channel, aux, group, control group, or matrix within a bank, is easily accomplished by drag and drop at the touch of a screen.

I/O

The S21’s local I/O section includes 24 mic/line inputs, 12 line outs, two mono AES/EBU, and two DMI (DiGiCo Multichannel Interface) card slots which interface to standard industry formats such as Analogue, MADI, Dante, Waves SoundGrid, or Calrec’s Hydra 2 Network.

The console connects seamlessly with the DiGiCo remote I/O D-Rack providing an additional 32 inputs and up to 16 outputs.

Get instant access to 32 fully integrated low-latency Waves stereo Multiracks, each with up to eight plug-ins per rack, by fitting the DiGiCo SoundGrid DMI card linked to external SoundGrid or DiGiGrid server, giving a total of 128 additional I/O.