A sound desk is the one piece of kit everyone in the audience hears, whether they notice it or not. Our hire desks are digital consoles from the Behringer X32 and Midas M32 family, a platform you will find in professional theatres and on tour. They handle radio mics, band inputs, playback and foldback from one surface, and they remember your settings between rehearsal and show night. Hire the desk on its own, add a stagebox to cut down on cabling, or ask for a technician to run it. Prices are per day.
Before you compare desks, count your inputs. A school musical with eight radio mics, four area mics, a keyboard, a drum kit and playback is already past twenty channels. Dance shows usually need far fewer: a mic for announcements and a stereo feed from a laptop. Either way, add a few spare channels for whatever turns up at the technical rehearsal.
Every desk here runs the same 40-channel, 25-bus processing engine, so the mixing capability is identical across the range. What changes is how many microphones plug straight into the back, how many faders sit under your hands, and how much table space the desk needs.
Matching the desk to the room
The full-size Behringer X32 carries 32 microphone inputs, 16 XLR outputs and 25 motorised faders. It suits a busy musical where you want a fader for everything and no one wants to change layers mid-number. Be realistic about space: roughly 900mm wide and 20kg, so it needs a table of its own.
X32 Compact and X32 Producer both offer 16 microphone inputs and eight outputs. Compact is a desktop console. Producer is built to rack-mount, which works well where the desk lives permanently in a rack or travels in a flightcase.
Midas M32R Live keeps that 16-in, eight-out layout but uses Midas PRO preamps and Midas motorised faders. If a visiting engineer or a hired-in band has specified a Midas desk, book this one.
What a stagebox is actually for
A stagebox turns a 30-metre multicore into a single Cat5 cable. Our X32 Compact Desk Package pairs the console with a Behringer S16, adding 16 microphone inputs and eight outputs at the stage end. The M32R Desk Package uses a Midas DL32, which puts 32 inputs and 16 outputs on stage.
Both link to the desk over AES50 on shielded Cat5e, up to 100 metres. Preamp gain is set from the console, so nobody walks on stage mid-show to adjust anything. Those stage-end outputs earn their keep too, feeding wedges, in-ears or a foldback speaker in the wings without a separate return run.
Worth knowing with the DL32: the console processes 32 input channels, so you pick which sources to use rather than running all 48 at once.
Operating it yourself, or booking a technician
Digital desks reward preparation. Once the show is set up — channel names, gain, EQ, effects, mute groups — you save it and recall it exactly at the next performance. Scenes and cues take that further: store the settings for each number and step through them on a single button, which matters when a mic has to open and close on a line.
None of that is obvious the first time you sit in front of one, though. Someone who has mixed on an analogue desk will find their way around soon enough. Where nobody in the building has used a digital console, book a technician for the first show at least, and treat it as training as much as cover.
The things people forget
Three practical points come up again and again. Position: mix from the floor of the room where you can, not from a control box with the window shut, because you cannot balance what you cannot hear. Distance: measure the cable run from your mix position to the stage before deciding on a stagebox, and remember it goes round the room, not across it. Backup: save the show file to a USB stick at the end of every rehearsal.
All of these desks can also be driven from a laptop or tablet over Wi-Fi using the manufacturer's free editor apps, with a wireless router in the chain. That is how you set levels standing in the audience instead of guessing from the back wall.
Rates are per day and exclude VAT. Ask us about multi-day and show-week rates, delivery, and hiring with a technician.
Common questions
Count every source: each radio mic, each area or float mic, every instrument line, and your playback feed. Then add three or four spare. A play with four radio mics and playback sits comfortably on an X32 Compact or Producer. Add a pit band and a full musical's worth of radio mics and you are looking at the 32 local inputs of the full X32, or a Compact paired with an S16.
A multicore is fine for short runs and modest channel counts. Choose a stagebox when the mix position is a long way from the stage, when you need more inputs than the desk carries on the back, or when you want outputs at the stage end for monitors. It also means one Cat5e cable instead of a heavy loom, which is a real difference when you are loading in through a fire door.
They share the same processing engine and much of the same layout, so anyone who can drive one can drive the other. The M32R Live uses Midas PRO microphone preamps and Midas motorised faders, and it is the one a visiting engineer is more likely to have asked for. Both handle theatre work well. The choice usually comes down to budget and to whether anyone has asked for Midas specifically.
Yes. Every desk here can be dry-hired, and hire prices are per day. If nobody in your team has run a digital console before, a technician for the first performance is usually the sensible call — the desk is capable, but a show day is a poor time to learn it. Ring 0333 404 0621 or email sales@1stintheatre.co.uk and we will help you work out which way round suits you.
