Roland Systems Group has enjoyed great success with its M-series digital mixers for several years now. These consoles leverage the breakthrough technology of the Roland Ethernet Audio Communication (REAC) network protocol, which facilitates the use of a single Cat5e or Cat6 cable to transfer as many as 40 channels of signals from stage to front-of-house and up to 40 return paths from front-of-house to stage.
As the guy in charge of sound for a portable church, I find an Ethernet cable is a very welcome alternative to a heavy, unwieldy, inch-and-a-half diameter analog snake that must be uncoiled and recoiled every Sunday morning. I have had experience with the RSG S-4000 digital snake (even with an analog console) and also RSG's M-48 personal monitor mixers prior, and in the process, I've gotten my hands on an M-400 digital mixer once before. I truly enjoyed the experience and found myself very impressed with the capabilities of the system. So I was excited to get a look at the M-480.
Through the paces
The mixer configuration for my church service was very simple. As a matter of fact, I sat down with the M-480 system on the Saturday afternoon prior to the Sunday service I'd earmarked for evaluating it, thinking I'd need to set up a lot of patch bay signal routing, insertion of EQs and dynamics, and setting up reverb and delay sends. To the contrary, I discovered that the mixer came with pretty much everything pre-configured in an obvious and useful way—no surprises. The only changes I had to make involved monitor sends that fed transmitters at our front-of-house location. I just had to direct them to physical outputs built into the console for connection to the transmitters. On Sunday morning, I rolled out a Cat5e snake, plugged it into the REAC port on the console and at the D-1608 stage box, and then my stage crew started plugging in mics and DIs on stage. I could see the LEDs lighting up on the stage box from front-of-house as I applied phantom power to them, and I started seeing signal on the console's metering.
I had high expectations based on my prior exposure to the previously released M-400, and my expectations were met. As a matter of course, I invariably chose to dig into functions and devices I normally evaluate without consulting the documentation first, to find out if it's plausible to get full functionality out of the system in a simple and straightforward manner—my “Simple Enough For a Volunteer” test. I was well into my mix, complete with EQ, dynamics processing, effects sends, and monitor mixes before I consulted the manual with any questions.
The M-480 is based on a newly developed mixing engine that provides, on each input channel, a four-band fully parametric EQ, gate, compressor, and delay. For that matter, every output channel of the console also has a delay available. One major upgrade from the M-400 is the addition of six stereo returns, and the other big step up is cascade-ability—facilitating the capacity to connect two M-480s together to arrive at 96 channels of mixing and advanced synchronization of internal buses. The kicker for me was that it only takes a single Cat5 cable to connect the two consoles. That's impressive. The console's primary output is an LCR bus, and internally, the console sports 16 auxiliaries and eight matrices. For my church's simple configuration, this goes well beyond our needs, but on the other hand, it would be nice to have a separate output mix for recording services, and even more importantly, more than the four auxiliaries we currently have for monitor mixing. I've had as many as 10 musicians and vocalists performing at once, so a substantial chunk of the 16 available auxiliaries could be used up pretty quickly, come to think of it. The remaining six could start to go pretty quickly as well, with the effects available on board the M-480.
Indeed, Roland makes virtual representations of six of its classic effects units, including the Space Echo, Dimension D, and the SRV-2000 digital reverb. I was very impressed with the attention to detail in getting these effects exactly right. There are also emulations of a classic Roland flanger, phaser, and delay unit. Twenty-four channels of 31-band graphic equalizers (used two at a time in stereo inserts) are available as well, and this is very useful for ringing out monitors.
Observations & impressions
As far as the quality of sound in a more general sense, this console sounds great, with 24-bit/48-kHz digital resolution (although a 44.1 kHz sample rate is also available). The console's internal processing happens with 56 bits of resolution, and the system's nominal latency is only 2.8 mS. Additionally, the analog circuitry is dead quiet and free of distortion. I found the mic preamplifiers to be quiet on stage too, with virtually no coloration. I'm accustomed to a lower-resolution system with older signal processing technology, so the audio quality was vastly better to my ear.
In addition, the console physically sports eight XLR analog inputs and outputs, a talkback mic input, stereo RCA inputs for simple connection of a CD player or other playback device, a ¼-inch headphone jack, and both optical and coaxial digital outputs. Of course the console features REAC ports (two of them), but can also connect with a computer via RS-232, MIDI devices with in and out/thru connectors, and has both Type A and Type B USB jacks, as well.
The M-480's user interface is as navigable and user-friendly as any I've ever seen, and a true joy to work with. The fader section is completely self-explanatory, including the selection of layers. The channel edit section is also very straightforward, with buttons for a pad and 48V phantom power, and the compressor and gate. When I pressed either of the dynamics buttons, a pop-up appeared on the console's 800x480 color LCD touch screen, granting me detailed control over all the parameters associated with each. There's also a high-pass filter (HPF) on/off button and cut-off frequency knob, along with full knob controls for four bands of fully parametric EQ.
The console's eight matrices and 16 auxiliaries are also each represented by a knob in the channel edit section, which I found very handy.
The LCD touch screen granted me a lot of in-depth, yet easily accessed, control over detailed parameters of all kinds. There is a row of eight function buttons under the screen, and effects and meter buttons, which quickly navigated me to those respective sections. A “value dial” with cursor buttons enables entry of levels and amounts quickly, as well. There are shuttle controls for the console's USB memory recorder, and buttons to quickly navigate to set up (patchbay), system, group, and scene memory sections, along with eight user-definable “soft” buttons to get the user anywhere they want to go quickly. In addition, there are talkback and monitor sections within the user interface.
My overall impression is that Roland Systems Group has expanded the already excellent M-series line of consoles with a vastly more powerful unit in the M-480. It leaves little to be desired in terms of I/O, deep functionality, and ease of use. It sounds exceptionally good, too, and makes several excellent effects available. Above all else, however, I'm most impressed with the user interface. I've mixed on both analog and digital consoles, and this one features elements of both that simplify and hasten the process of making a mix happen. I have already been impressed with earlier incarnations of Roland Systems Group's digital live consoles, but you can color me completely enthusiastic about the M-480.
