The design of live digital consoles in the past has often been dictated by the desire to hide complex functions behind layers of menus and an assignable control surface. With the D5 Live, DiGiCo set out not only to emulate the directness and simplicity of an analogue board, but to improve on it wherever possible.

The first impression is of a blend of the familiar - three input groups of long-throw faders with a row of large illuminated buttons above them, three rows of rotary controls and input trim controls at the top - and the less familiar, in the shape of four large, full colour backlit LCD TFT touchscreens.

The surface is set out into three input sections. The master section screen controls the master and matrix sections, automation and console set-up pages.

All four touchscreens are pressure sensitive, protecting functions from accidental change by the sweat on a hand or a careless brush with a finger: you must press slightly to select a control or change a setting. This type of tactile feedback is consistent throughout the desk, and contributes to the feeling of security and predictability in mixing with it. Each screen shows the settings of eight input channels simultaneously, and provides interactive control over all functions per fader via a combination of LCD buttons and 'real' controls, while an input channel overview can be displayed on the master screen.

Each of the surface screens has an equivalent dedicated VGA video output on the back of the console, which allows you to view a duplicate of each surface screen on an external colour monitor. There's also a dedicated VGA output allowing you to connect an external 'total console overview' monitor.

You can connect any type of VGA monitor (standard, LCD or plasma) and the output provides up to 1280 x 1024 resolution.

The D5 Live provides the facility to create a dedicated external overview screen (not supplied), giving you a 'big picture' of the console at a glance. Using the Layout page, each operator can decide what information is displayed on this screen, according to the demands of the project being worked on. The overview screen has the ability to display matrix outputs and all buss outputs for auxiliaries, groups and the main buss. Again, these show full metering, insert switching, mute and solo, and dynamic fader positions. You can also view the fader positions and muting status of VCA-style fader groups when these are in use. All channel strips can be displayed in full on the overview screen, showing peak LED, full channel metering, insert point switching, gain reduction, gate movement, muting and solo settings, and dynamic, real-time fader movement.

Each screen has an adjacent bank of rotary encoder controls, to allow instant, real-time adjustment of all equaliser and dynamics settings with an accompanying frequency curve display. It's all simple, direct and instantly displayed.

All three groups of channel faders have a row of illuminated, digitally labelled, fader bank buttons alongside them, allowing each fader group to be switched between six fader banks at a touch, the faders moving precisely to their memorised positions as you change banks. Labelling, in fact, is plentiful throughout: with the touch screen keyboard or the full-size slide-out QWERTY keyboard you can quickly assign names to the LCD scribble strip, screens, busses and fader banks.

Metering is comprehensive, while the 30-segment LED meter overbridge displays input level, gain reduction, gate activity, insert send level and direct output level. It also carries a console illumination strip of white LEDs which, in common with the touchscreens and scribble strips, can be dimmed down in steps when working in a light sensitive environment.

The combination of so much visual and tactile feedback, and the small footprint, makes it a very comfortable console to use live, with no need to stretch or crane your head to see the positions of controls or status settings.

The latest software version includes a host of new features, of which these are a few highlights. The enhanced 38 x 8 output matrix allows any channel, buss or physical input to be routed into the matrix, and then routed out to any of the physical outputs. A new session arranges inputs horizontally across banks rather than vertically. All surfaces can change banks with one touch. The LCD multi-function buttons display a tick mark to confirm 'ON' status, and can show channel name only in a larger font. Talkback sources can be from any input signal; and disabled routing buttons distinguish between used and unavailable routes.