I'm pretty sure the first time I ever had to “mix” a show it was on an old Mackie 1642 mixer. I showed up at the coffee shop with my college acoustic band and was told the guy who was making the cappuccinos would also be our “sound man” for the night. It quickly became obvious that he knew how to make a mean soy latte, but he really didn't know how to use the sound mixer. Fortunately Mackie has always built easy-to-use, compact mixers. With the barista back behind the bar where he belonged, I got behind the 1642 and quickly figured out that the EQ could be found on the blue knobs, the Aux sends were red, the Gain was white. Simple enough, and I somehow managed to set up a decent mix, and play the show.
That was many years ago, and much has changed—including the small-format mixer market. Now everyone wants digital. Well, earlier this year Mackie up'd the ante on the small-format digital mixer market and introduced the DL1608, a modern-day take on the compact analog mixer market that Mackie dominated 10 or 15 years ago. After spending a few weeks with the new DL1608, I can report that it offers features you'd only expect from a larger-format console that costs tens of thousands of dollars.
The first thing I noticed when I received the DL1608 is how simple and well thought out everything is. Its seems that Mackie has taken a page out of Apple's book and started a unique user experience, beginning with the aesthetic of the packaging. Whatever they're doing, it works. From the moment I saw the box I was excited about trying out this product.
In Hand and into Action
Once out of the packaging you'll notice that while it looks awesome, this thing doesn't really look like a mixer. Sure it has input and outputs, and Mackie even put typical pots for adjusting your input gain, but that's about it. That's because the Mackie DL1608 utilizes an Apple iPad (not included) as the entire brainssole control surface of this console. Any generation will do (1st, 2nd or 3rd), they all fit inside the perfectly designed cradle on the console that locks down the iPad into the mixer—safe and secure. A free download of Mackie's Master Fader App onto your iPad and you have all you need to mix.
There are 16 input channels, 12 XLR inputs and four combo inputs (XLR/Balanced and 1/4 inch). There are two XLR outputs for your mains, six Aux outputs that are ¼-inch connections, and one headphone jack on the front with volume control. Once you've docked your iPad, started the app and made your connections, you are ready to go.
Mixing on the DL1608 is, in a word, fun. Each channel can be labeled. There is a library of common names/icons that can be used, or you can type your own. You can even take a photo using the iPad's camera and use that as your icon. When I mixed my friend Clay Carnill's (www.claslan.com) acoustic show, I had a fun time taking pictures of him and the instruments used for my channel labels.
Each channel on the DL1608 has a noise gate, compressor, and EQ section. The EQ section has four bands of parametric EQ, plus a high-pass filter. There is a library of presets for different inputs but I found it really easy to use common iPad gestures of tap, drag, flick, swipe and pinch to navigate the EQ. Setting gates and compressors was similarly easy. I was able to quickly put together a great sounding mix for this acoustic performance.
Specifics and Surprises
There are two digital effects sections on the DL1608: reverb and delay. The reverb sections offer nine different types of reverbs: plate, ambience, room, hall, gated, cathedral, and spring—all with controls of pre-delay, damping, decay and roll-off that allow you to fine tune to your personal taste. There are also five delay offerings, including mono, tape, stereo, ping-pong and multi-tap. And there are controls for volume, feedback suppression and dampening.
There is also a 31-band graphic EQ and master compressor/limiter for the master sectionmain left/right output and all six Auxes.
The DL1608 has full recall capabilities, as well. The Mackie design for this consists of “Show” and “Snapshots.” A Snapshot is a file of the current state of your console. Input, FX, Aux and Main LR channel settings are all saved inside of a Snapshot. A Show is a collection of snapshots; you can have up 99 Snapshots inside of a Show file.
Let me just stop for a moment and point out that I've already described features that I'm used to only having on really expensive large-format digital consoles. If this were all that the DL1608 had, it would be amazing. But there is more. The next three features put me over the top about this mixer.
Somehow, Mackie has managed to integrate the playback and record features on this thing. So that means when you play a song from an iPad using your iTunes app, it comes into a channel on the Master Fader App. I love this—I don't need to bring my phone, another computer, or another iPod to play pre/post show music.
You can also record what's coming off the mixer in an MP3 .WAV format. Record rehearsal and then pass out MP3's Wave files to the band so that they can hear what's working and what's not.
The Master Fader app also allows for a “Sends on Fader” type view of the console. Selecting different outputs (LR, Aux 1-6, Reverb and Delay) displays the fader's sends to that particular output. This is a feature that is great when running monitors.
The DL1608 can also be networked for wireless operation when using a network router such as an Airport Express. Most All of the DL1608's mixing features can be used in this wireless mode, so that you are free to walk the room while making changes to your mix. You can actually connect up to ten iPads wirelessly.
Wrap Up
As you can see, there are a lot of amazing features in this little console. And I can't emphasize enough how fun and easy it is to use.
One benefit of getting a console like this is that any volunteers you train will be able to learn digital mixing concepts that will apply down the road when they start to help you out in “big” church, unless your church's “big church” services only need 16 inputs. Then this could be your main front-of-house (FOH) console.
If you were using this in your youth room or children's rooms, you'd be able to set up Snapshots and Shows for your volunteers as a starting place each Sunday. At $999 street price, its not a “cheap” small format mixer, but there is nothing else that offers as much as the Mackie DL1608 in such a small package.
