DiGiCo S21 Console

The DiGiCo S21 console is the compact member of DiGiCo’s S range, built on the same FPGA based processing that made the SD range the benchmark for large tour consoles, but packaged in a footprint you can actually fit on a stage or in a permanent install. Under the polycarbonate worksurface you get the same audio engine and channel strip quality you would expect from the bigger DiGiCo surfaces, with 21 motorized faders spread across two sections and a pair of 10 inch multitouch screens giving full hands on control of up to 40 mono or stereo input channels, 16 buses, 10 VCAs, a 10×8 matrix and the master bus. Four layers of channel banks let you group any combination of inputs, sends and control groups onto the faders, and the screens make jumping between them a quick drag, swipe and drop job, so you can build a custom fader layout in seconds. That same drag and drop logic is what makes the DiGiCo S21 console is a genuinely strong multi operator surface, since more than one engineer can mix the same show at once without stepping on each other’s channels.

On the I/O side, the console ships with 24 mic/line inputs onboard, 12 analog outputs and two expansion slots for DiGiCo expansion cards, so you can add balanced analog I/O, stage boxes or digital network connectivity depending on the job. The built in USB interface runs 48 channels in and 48 out at 24 bit/96 kHz, which makes it a clean way to route a full quality multitrack dump to a playback system or a laptop, and you also get 20 rotary encoders for hands on parameter control, the full DiGiCo FX suite running on the AFS engine, and transparent EQ, dynamics and filtering on every channel. For an engine this capable, it is a surprisingly straightforward surface to learn, and a mix built on it will carry straight into a large system without the artifacts you hear on cheaper digital consoles.