Current Issue

Jan/Feb 2012

Print Article     Email Article

  Page 1 of 3   >>

Audio Review: Roland M-48 Live Personal Mixer

by John F. McJunkin

It has been said that monitor engineering is the most thankless job in the world. Demanding, prima donna musicians and vocalists insist that the engineer ignore everything else to focus 100% on perfecting their personal mix: “That hi-hat needs to be panned further to the left, the second tenor’s tone needs to be rounder, and I need some more 1K pulled out of the acoustic guitar.” And once the mix is correct, it’s on to the next song, with a whole new mix and brand new ticky-tack demands to be met.

Now multiply this by four to 12 musicians and it becomes clear what a trying task monitor engineering can be. Attempting to meet these demands while handling a front-of-house mix complicates things even further.

I’m painting a pretty ugly picture here to make my point, but anyone who has mixed monitors knows what I’m talking about. Plenty of people rejoiced in the introduction of personal monitor mixing around a decade ago, and the technology associated with it has come a long way. Now, those prima donna musicians and vocalists can nail down that exacting, precision mix themselves.

Roland Systems Group recently entered this market with its RSS M-48 Live Personal Mixer. This mixer is a component of Roland’s V-Mixing system, which, along with the M-48, includes digital snakes and consoles, and the capacity to capture multi-track recordings. I reviewed the V-Mixing system in the August 2008 issue of Church Production, prior to the introduction of the M-48. The system is based on the Roland Ethernet Audio Communication (REAC) protocol, which facilitates the transfer of as many as 40 channels to the M-48 via 16 stereo groups at a resolution of up to 96 kHz.

There are competitors with similar capabilities, but Roland has raised the bar with the M-48 in some significant ways. In addition to level and panning, the M-48 adds some pretty sophisticated mixing conventions. Specifically, each of the 16 stereo groups represented on the M-48 has three-band equalization and reverb, and a limiter is available on the mix to keep in-ear monitoring safe for musicians and vocalists.

One other area in which Roland raises the bar with this mixer is routing flexibility. Traditionally, personal monitor mixing systems distribute signals in such a way that the layout is precisely the same for each user (kick on channel one, snare on channel two, etc.) With the RSS M-48, each user can have a completely custom layout (drum group on channel one, lead vocal on channel two, bass on channel five, etc.) This flexibility in routing truly improves the user experience. Vocalists, for example, may not want or need the capacity to mix the drum kit themselves, opting for a single group controlling the entire kit. Similarly, a drummer may be perfectly content with a backing vocal group, but indeed wants the ability to mix their drums in the monitors drum-by-drum.

The M-48 is a compact device, measuring 11.75 x 6.75 x 2.6875 inches. Eight knobs dominate the lower half of the front panel, above which are located scribble strips and solo buttons. Bank switching buttons on the left of the panel determine whether the knobs affect groups one through eight or nine through 16. Above each scribble strip is a green LED that lights when a signal over -40 dB is present. To the right of the knobs and scribble strips are buttons that determine which parameter is adjusted by the knobs—specifically, volume, pan, reverb send, high and low EQ, (and the mid EQ also includes a button to facilitate frequency- sweeping.) Across the top of the front panel from left to right are buttons for store and recall of memory, level adjustments for the auxiliary input and the unit’s built-in ambient mic, and a line-level output for speaker control.

  Page 1 of 3   next page >>

John McJunkin is the CEO of Avalon Podcasting in Chandler, Arizona, which offers high quality podcast production and consultation services to a broad range of clients. He’s also the host of the Podcast Pro Tech & Tips Podcast at www.avalonpodcasting.com.