Today I received a shipment from Soundcraft: the GigRac 600 mixer/amp/ processor. I opened the packaging and pulled out the mixer and was delighted at the sight which awaited me. As you may know, Soundcraft makes some of the best audio equipment in the world and prides itself on providing quality mixers for both large and small applications.
Inside the box I found the Soundcraft GigRac, a small eight-channel powered mixer for use in portable situations. The mixer provides simple, efficient sound reinforcement. It comes racked in its own rounded corner case made from copolymer polypropylene resin.
This outer shell provides a secure and roadworthy case molded to form a protective enclosure around the electronics. The lid is held secure with the shoulder strap and pops off easily when you unlatch it, revealing the face plate of inputs and knobs inside. I also liked that the lid had enough space in it to store some cables and the power connector. These were held in by elastic straps to prevent interference with the knobs on the front panel. If you have other effects or equipment which you have already installed in a case, the four large screws on the sides of the case remove and you can put the GigRac into standard mounting rack rails.
My first reaction was that it was a cool piece of gear just by looking at it. Then it was time to hook up some speakers to see what else it had to offer. Connection to speakers was simple with the Neutrik speaker connectors on the back of the unit. If you have ¼-inch speaker cable do not worry, next to each Neutrik connector is a ¼-inch jack for you to use.
There are eight microphone channels on the front of the unit. These utilize the Neutrik Combi connectors, making it simple to plug in an XLR or ¼-inch connector. In reality there are more than eight channels available to you for inputs. All eight of the channels will accept a microphone or line-level instrument input. However, there are a few differences between the channels.
First, only channel one through four can provide phantom power for microphones. These channels have a switch below each input for a -20 dB pad when using microphones or inputs which have a hot signal. I found this to be a welcome addition to powered mixers as you will use the -20 dB pad on many occasions when plugging in microphones with an XLR connector. This is unusual to find on small mixers in general and provides you the option to knock the signal level down a bit so you can actually turn the volume knob up more than tiny increments.
Channel five through eight can accept dynamic microphones (mics which do not need phantom power) or you can use them to plug in line-level instruments such as keyboards, CD/Minidisc players, or guitars.
Channel five and six have stereo RCA/phono inputs on each channel while channel seven and eight feature ¼-inch stereo inputs on each for instruments. This means that you can effectively use four microphones, two stereo keyboards, and two stereo CD players or computer inputs. This gives you twelve possible inputs in an eight channel configuration on the GigRac.
The phantom power which is available on channel one through four is turned on via a front panel switch. If you don’t need it, I would leave it off thereby avoiding the loud pop from unplugging an input with the gain up on the mixer.
Each channel has a two-band EQ for low and high frequency attenuation as well as a send knob for monitors and one for effects. The frequency for low is 80 Hz while the high frequency is set at 12 kHz. I might have preferred to have the high frequency a little lower, maybe 6.3 kHz or 8 kHz to help minimize feedback but I also understand that the 12 kHz gives that top-end sparkle to the sound when you want to brighten it up a bit.
The effects are on board and give you ten options to choose from: Two hall reverbs, two plate reverbs, one room reverb, one chorus, one slap echo and one echo. These onboard effects are accessed from the front panel knob which turns nicely to illuminate the blue LED’s upon your selection. You may then choose to send your effect to the monitor or main output buss which will route the signal accordingly.
I found the effects onboard to be basic but useable. You cannot edit them or change a reverb time, but the selection and sound were fine given what this mixer/amplifier is supposed to accomplish. The one feature I liked was the addition of a foot pedal switch for the effects which you could use to turn on and off the onboard effects. If you were using this during a solo performance this could be a welcome addition to an effect during a certain part of a song or used to turn it off in between songs when you talked to the audience. This is an efficient way to turn the effects on and off without having to reach for the mixer.
The amplifier is a mono configuration on the 600, but can be used in a monitor/ main application. You simply hit the switch on the front and voila – the amplifier now has two independent sides, with your main output on one side and your onstage monitors on the other. There are three configurations of the GigRac available, the 300, 600 and the 1000. The numbers represent the watts that each amplifier has available, but you should be aware that the 300 and 600 are both mono mixer/amplifiers. The GigRac 1000 is a stereo unit with two seven-band equalizers and 500 watts per amp channel.
The GigRac 600 (MSRP $599.99) which I evaluated provides two channels of amplification which have 300 watts at 4 ohms and 220 watts at 8 ohms per channel. Any stereo inputs on the 300 and 600 units are summed to mono before output to the speakers.
There is one seven-band graphic equalizer which may be selected to operate on main or monitor side but not both. If you want to use the EQ for your main speakers and have a separate amp and EQ for monitors, no problem. You just use the ¼-inch monitor output to feed the signal to your external equipment and away you go.
The same goes for the effects onboard, if you have external effects which you like to use instead of what is provided, you simply hook up the effects ¼-inch buss out to your external unit and then connect the return input to either a channel or to the ¼-inch submix input on the front panel.
So you have your performance set up and you want to record? Just look on the front and you will see two RCA/phono jacks which connect a minidisc, MP3 recorder, DAT or cassette deck. Directly underneath the record outputs is a ¼-inch headphone jack for monitoring the main output buss, something which is often skipped in powered mixers.
You will also see on the front panel a ten-segment meter which lights up nicely as you use the mixer. This gives you the opportunity to monitor the mixer output and see how much headroom you have left in the amplifier. There are protection circuits which have clip/protect indicators on the front panel when you begin to reach the maximum signal that the amplifiers can handle.
The 300 watts per channel worked nicely for me, and I had the CD and microphone quite loud in the room. I liked the design of the GigRac and found that it gave me what I wanted in terms of a powerful package which I could scoop up over my shoulder on the way out the door.
This is a very easy and clean set up for you and the package meets the requirements which I would want in a small powered mixer. Small enough to carry on my shoulder, yet powerful enough to fill the room with sound. Easy to operate and understand, (down to the pictures on the front panel for users who are not full-time sound engineers) and a clean sound from microphone to speaker output.
I think this is the perfect piece for those wishing to have a portable system for small events. The wedding reception comes to mind where you want a small sound system for a trio of musicians which is easy to set up and operate.
And if that wasn’t enough, I found in the bottom of the case a rubber pad. I thought it was a mouse pad which came with the gear but realized after reading the note with it that they call it a GigMat. For use when you place the resin case on a slippery or vibrating surface so that it won’t slip and slide when you plug in or operate the unit. Soundcraft….they think of everything, don’t they?
Pete Tidemann is principal of Linear Velocity, an audio consulting firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be reached at hans@linearvelocity.com.
