Yamaha Ls9-32
The Yamaha LS9-32 has been the industry standard for almost 10 years. If you walk in a church you will most likely see a Yamaha console, and its probably a LS9 or a M7CL. There is a reason why people love them. Their user friendliness, their durability , and thier sound has been above the rest. the LS9-32 comes with 2 x empty My slots for expansion just like the QL5, and just like the QL5 the Ls9-32 has 32 local inputs and and 16 Omni outputs that you can assigns to anything at any time. It has the same sample rate and frequency response as the QL5. the LS9-32 is about 8 Lbs lighter than the QL5. The Ls9 does not have the build in Dante, so if you wanted that feature you would have to purchase a Dante card and use one of your MY Slots. It also does not come with the Dugan card. So in my opinion if you just wanted a workhorse , durable, clean sounding 32 channel fully automated mixer then the LS9-32 is great. You cannot go wrong with this unit. It does not have all the bells and whistles as the QL5 but it gets the exact job done in the same amount of time. that being said bells and whistles can come in handy and are nice to have 🙂
Yamaha QL5
The Yamaha QL5 was released just a few months ago, and its already starting to make a big noise in the industry, especially with churches. The QL5 out of the box ships with 32 mono inputs and 2 Stereo, with the ability to do up to 64 Mono and 8 Stereo channel mixes. It comes with 16 buses and 16 Outputs. You have full control of 32 single + 2 Master smooth faders. The 2 main features that the QL5 has that puts it ahead of its competitors are the built in Dante, and the built in Dugan Card . Just the Dugan card alone is worth $2000.00. It’s a 16 channel automatix mixing controller that lets you manage live mics . also all the effects and EQ capabilities that are in the CL series consoles are in the QL mixers as well. That being said the QL mixer can co exist with and DANTE capable product , from Shure wireless units , Crown amps, to external processing units and DSP
QL5
32 + 2 fader configuration adapts to a wide range of channel layouts. A compact console with large-scale capabilities.
Mix channels: 64 mono, 8 stereo.
Busses: 16 mix, 8 matrix (Input to Matrix supported).
Local I/O: 32 in, 16 out.
Fader configuration: 32 + 2 (Master).
Stainless steel iPad support stays.
Realistically with the QL5 your options are limitless…