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Audio Review: Euphonix MC MIX
One issue that faces churches is the timely completion of productions that contain or comprise church services, whether they’ll be made available via cassette, compact disk or podcast. It’s vastly better to make the pastor’s message available an hour or two after it’s finished than four days later, particularly if the message contains references to current events. To this end, tools that speed up the process of production are very welcome to audio pros and volunteers alike. And even if time is not a big issue, there are plenty of church sound types who prefer the tactile familiarity of faders and pan pots, potentially because they are seasoned practitioners who simply grew up with that type of hardware. Either way, tactile control surfaces for digital audio workstations are popular and desirable, and Euphonix has introduced a new series of such devices, comprised of two principal units, the MC Control and the MC Mix.
The MC Control is the more sophisticated of the two, with a touch screen and a jog/shuttle/zoom wheel, along with a monitoring solution—features not seen on the MC Mix. This is not to say that the MC Mix is unsophisticated, as we will see. These units can be conjoined in a modular fashion to create a large and powerful control surface for your media application. I spent time with an MC Mix unit, and put it through its paces.
Testing Out the MC Mix
Go ahead and accuse me of using obvious (and alliterative) clichés, but the simple fact is that the MC Mix is sexy, with slim, sleek lines. It’s intended to occupy the space between your computer keyboard and monitor, and at 16.8 x 9.5 x 1.2 inches, fits that slot perfectly. It features eight channels’ worth of controls and displays, namely high-resolution (128x64 pixel) OLED (organic LED) displays, touch-sensitive 100mm motorized faders, push-button rotary encoder knobs and buttons for control of recording, automation, selection, assignment, knob set selection and shift function. Each channel also has solo and “on” buttons. The surface also features buttons for power, channel bank switching and channel “nudging” (shifting the control surface through your session’s fader’s one at a time, left or right).
One other button I found to be very cool and eminently useful is the “workstation/application” button, which toggles through the applications on your computer. The MC Mix can control multiple applications, and seamlessly toggle through them with this button. I’m known to use multiple apps in my workflow, and this is powerful to me.
There’s not much to the unit’s “rear panel”—just a port for the external DC power supply and an RJ-45 Ethernet port to connect to your computer or network. The controller has flip-down tabs just like your computer keyboard to tilt it up a bit, and also ships with plastic “riser brackets” to tilt and lift the controller off your desktop (and help elevate it up behind your computer keyboard).
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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.
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