The Guide · Part 4
Reference Appendices
The quick-glance material — kept as pure-lookup pages so you can scan them mid-setup instead of reading. They live in Quick Reference; here's the map.
The cheat sheets
A · Frequency cheat sheet
Where things live, what to call the problems, and a quick problem → fix map.
B · Gain-staging targets
−18 average, −6 peaks, fader at unity, set for the loudest passage.
C · Compressor quick reference
Starting ratio, attack, release, and target gain reduction by source.
D · Common mistakes
The greatest hits — the errors everyone makes once, and how to skip them.
Appendix E — Scenes, snapshots & show files
The X32's saving hierarchy, from biggest to smallest:
- Show file — the whole enchilada. All your scenes, routing, libraries — everything for a given event or band. Back this up to a USB stick at the end of every gig. Consoles fail; USB sticks in your pocket don't.
- Scene — a full snapshot of the desk's current state. Save a scene once you've got a mix sounding good, and save new scenes as milestones ("Post-soundcheck," "Show-ready"). You can recall scenes to jump between setups or bands.
- Snippets — partial scene recalls that change only some parameters. Advanced, but useful for song-by-song changes in theater/worship contexts.
- Channel / preset libraries — save-and-recall for individual channel strips or processing blocks (just the EQ, just the gate, etc.). Build a library of your go-to starting points and stop dialing from scratch.
Safe workflow
Save often, save a fresh scene before you make big changes (so you can always recall your way back), and always dump the show file to USB before you leave. The half-second it takes has saved countless gigs.