Console Scene Converter

What carries, and what doesn't

Two desks are never the same instrument, so a show can't move between them without some judgement. Here's where this one makes it, and where it stops. Converting up to a larger desk is mostly lossless; converting down gives things away, and the report names every one of them.

The three desks

• Behringer X32 / Midas M32 — 32 channels, 16 buses, 6 matrices, 8 DCAs, 6 mute groups, 4 EQ bands, 8 strip colours. Mono channels linked in pairs for stereo. Patches inputs in blocks of eight. AES50 stageboxes.
• Behringer X Air / Midas MR (XR12, XR16, XR18) — 16 channels, 6 buses, 4 FX sends, no matrices, 4 DCAs, 4 mute groups, 4 EQ bands, the same 8 strip colours as the X32. Mono channels linked in pairs. Patches per channel, which the X32 cannot. Local inputs and USB only, no AES50.
• Behringer Wing — 40 channels, 18 strip colours, 6 EQ bands, native stereo channels, local inputs and AES50.

How the differences are handled

• Stereo is translated, not copied. The X32 and X Air build stereo from two hard-panned mono strips; the Wing has real stereo channels. Going up, every linked pair collapses into one Wing channel — which is why channel numbers shift as you go down the list. Coming back, each Wing stereo channel becomes two linked mono channels. Both smaller desks only link odd-aligned pairs (1-2, 3-4 — never 2-3), so a stereo channel that would land on an even channel leaves that one empty rather than renumbering the rest of your show. A Wing stereo channel with its balance off centre loses that balance on the way down, and the report says so.
• Colours are matched, not copied. The X32 and X Air share the same eight colours, so those two are exact in both directions. The Wing's eighteen are entirely different, and an X32 green becomes the Wing's green rather than whichever Wing colour happens to share green's index number. Coming down from the Wing, eighteen colours collapse onto eight and the report counts how many groups merged.
• The patch is read from wherever that desk keeps it — the routing blocks on an X32, the channel itself on an X Air or Wing. That means a rig on an AES50 stagebox lands on the Wing's stagebox inputs instead of its local XLRs. The X Air has no AES50 at all, so those channels arrive unpatched and are named individually. And the X32's blocks of eight are a hard limit in reverse: a channel-by-channel patch can't always be expressed, so the converter picks the routing that fits the most channels per block and names the ones that fall outside it.
• You get the whole channel layer. An X32 or X Air conversion is a full scene file covering every channel on the desk; the Wing output is a snapshot covering all 40. Channels your show doesn't use are written blank rather than left holding whatever was on the console — so a converted show lands the same way every time instead of inheriting last night's band. Buses, effects and routing outside the channel layer are left alone.
• Going down costs something, and the report prices it. Every loss is graded by what you have to do about it: dropped, degraded, approximated, relocated, unsupported, or just check. Channels past the end, EQ bands that didn't fit, DCAs that don't exist on the target, colours that merged, a channel that fell out of a group you were riding — each one named with its channel number.
• Effects, inserts, graphic EQ and automix don't transfer. Neither does anything else the target desk has no equivalent for. Those are listed rather than guessed at.
• Check it on the desk before a show. Gain structure and dynamics especially. This saves you forty minutes of typing, not soundcheck.

Common questions

Which consoles does the scene converter support?

Three, in any combination and either direction: the Behringer X32 and Midas M32, which share a .scn scene file; the Behringer X Air series (XR12, XR16, XR18) and Midas MR, which use their own .scn scene file; and the Behringer Wing, which uses a .snap snapshot. That gives six conversions in total. The X Air field positions were derived from real XR18 scene files.

Can I convert an X32 scene to a Behringer Wing?

Yes. Drop an X32 or M32 .scn scene file in and you get a Wing .snap snapshot back. Channel names, icons, strip colours, input patch, preamp gain and phantom power, high-pass and low-pass filters, EQ, gate, compressor, bus sends, and DCA and mute group membership all carry across. Effects, inserts and the routing matrix do not.

Can I convert a Wing snapshot to an X32 or M32 scene?

Yes. Drop a Wing .snap snapshot in and choose the X32 or M32 as the target. The X32 is the smaller desk, so expect some loss: 32 channels to the Wing's 40, eight strip colours to eighteen, four EQ bands to six, and it patches inputs in blocks of eight rather than per channel. Everything that cannot be carried across is listed in the report rather than dropped silently.

Can I convert to and from a Behringer X Air or Midas MR?

Yes, in both directions and against either of the other two desks. An X Air show converts up to an X32, an M32 or a Wing, and a show from any of those converts down to an X Air. The X Air is the smallest console here — 16 channels, six buses, four DCAs, four mute groups, four EQ bands and no matrices — so converting down to it loses the most, and the report names every channel affected.

Does the X Air patch inputs per channel or in blocks?

Per channel, which makes it more flexible than the X32 in one specific way. An X Air channel can take any input, so a scattered patch survives a conversion to an X Air intact. Going the other way the X32's blocks of eight are a hard limit, and any channel that cannot be addressed inside its block is named individually so you know exactly what to repatch.

What happens to AES50 stageboxes when converting to an X Air?

The X Air has no AES50, so channels patched to a stagebox arrive unpatched and are listed in the report. You will need to repatch them to the X Air's local inputs or its USB returns on the day. Converting between the X32 and the Wing, AES50 patching carries across normally.

What happens to stereo channels between desks?

It depends which way you are going. The X32 and X Air have no stereo channel, so they build stereo from two hard-panned mono strips linked together; the Wing has native stereo channels. Converting up, each linked pair collapses into one Wing channel, which is why channel numbers shift down the list. Converting down, each Wing stereo channel becomes two linked mono channels. The X32 and X Air only link odd-aligned pairs — 1-2, 3-4, never 2-3 — so a stereo channel that would land on an even channel leaves that channel empty rather than renumbering the rest of the show. If a Wing stereo channel had its balance set away from centre, that balance cannot survive the trip down and is reported.

Does it work with a Midas M32 or MR18?

Yes. The M32 shares its scene file format with the X32, and the Midas MR series shares its format with the Behringer X Air, so both convert exactly the same way. Scene files saved from X32-Edit, M32-Edit and X AIR Edit all work, as do files saved on the console itself.

Which firmware does this expect, and can an update break it?

Scene files are a list of settings — plain text on the X32, M32, X Air and MR, JSON on the Wing — and a console applies the ones it recognises and passes over the rest. That is what makes the format tolerant: every firmware release still has to open the scenes engineers already have, so the parts a conversion touches — names, colours, patch, preamp, filters, EQ, dynamics, sends, DCAs and mute groups — have been stable across years of updates on all three desks. The real exposure runs the other way. This writes a scene file rather than exporting one from your desk, so it has to declare a scene version, and it writes the one current X32 firmware uses. If your console is several firmware versions behind, convert as normal and then open the result in X32-Edit, M32-Edit or X AIR Edit and save it from there — the editor rewrites the file in exactly the shape that build expects, and it costs you a minute. Whatever the firmware, loading a scene cannot harm a console: the worst case is that it loads wrong and you reload your own show. Save the current show first, load the converted one into a spare scene slot, and check it before doors.

What if my console will not load the converted file?

Open it in the desk's editor software and save it again from there: the editor rewrites the file in the shape your firmware expects. If it still will not load, the file has hit something this converter does not handle yet. Every desk here was mapped from real scene files rather than from a specification, so a firmware build that writes a field differently is exactly the kind of thing that only turns up when someone hits it. Keep your original scene, and treat a file that will not load as a bug in the converter, not a limit of the idea.

Will it overwrite the rest of my console?

It replaces the channel layer. A converted X32 or X Air scene is a full scene file covering every channel on the desk, and the Wing output is a snapshot covering all 40 channels — in each case, channels your show does not use are written blank rather than left holding the previous show. Buses, effects and routing outside the channel layer are not touched. Save your current show before loading a converted one.

What does the report tell me?

Everything the target console could not represent, channel by channel, graded by what you have to do about it: dropped means it did not make it at all, degraded means it arrived worse, approximated means it was mapped to the nearest available value, relocated means it is there but somewhere else, unsupported means the concept does not exist on that desk, and check means it is probably fine but worth a look. Treat a converted scene as a head start, not a finished show file.

Are my scene files uploaded anywhere?

No. The conversion runs entirely in your browser using the File API. The scene file is read into memory, converted, and handed back as a download — it is never uploaded, and no part of it is stored. Nothing leaves the page: no analytics, no counters, no network requests of any kind.

Why are the channel colours different from other X32 to Wing converters?

Because the two consoles use unrelated colour palettes. The X32 has eight colours plus inverted variants; the Wing has eighteen entirely different ones. Passing the X32's colour index straight through lands a green channel on Wing colour 2, which is blue. This converter matches colours by how they actually look, so an X32 green becomes the Wing's green. The X Air shares the X32's eight colours, so those two are exact in both directions.