LIST PRICE: Starting at $649.00
One of the largest advancements in church audio over the past decade has been the movement towards the “silent stage.” Historically, it was fairly common for houses of worship to find themselves embroiled in the sometimes-difficult battle of balancing stage volume against the need for a clean house mix with controlled levels. Compounding the problem has been the recent trend of hosting services in spaces that are not dedicated or designed for the purpose of holding energetic worship services. If you have been an audio engineer for any amount of time you likely get the sweats from simply hearing the phrase “can I get more of me?
”With the adoption of In-Ear Monitoring (IEM) systems, many churches have been striking their stage monitors and replacing them with systems that allow each person on stage to have their own monitor mix for use with headphones, generic earbuds, or custom-molded drivers tailor fit for specific individuals.
There are two main types of systems in use today. The first are systems that are fully integrated into mixing consoles by their manufacturers. These systems send some number of console inputs (and console outputs) to the personal monitor mixers, including channel information such as channel/mix names, etc. The second type of system is a separate system that takes inputs via some audio interconnect and broadcasts those inputs to all of the personal mixers associated with the system. These systems can be scalable and are agnostic to the FOH or audio system that feeds them. For this review we looked at Movek’s myMix personal monitoring system, which is of the latter type.
Sound Inspection
myMix is a very capable system that is well optioned and has obviously been designed with a high premium placed on the musician’s experience. The basic myMix system supports 16 discrete channels of audio transferred via Cat5 cable and is expandable to support up to 512 channels. Each personal mixer may subscribe to 16 of the available channels on the network. From there each mixer is used to mix down its subscribed inputs to a stereo pair for the user’s personal monitoring needs. Each channel can be adjusted for level, pan, tonality, and FX, with the main mix having a dedicated EQ with shelving and parametric bands. Additionally, each unit is capable of broadcasting its stereo mix back out onto the network so that other users may subscribe to that mix. This could be useful in situations where one unit could be used to create a drum sub-mix for other users to subscribe to, thereby only using two of their channels for drums.
Headphones or ear buds connect to the myMIx units via a single 1/8-inch TRS jack located off to the side. The internal headphone amplifier proved to be plenty powerful and had no problems driving a set of high impedance Sennheiser HD650 headphones for this review. Other connections include an Ethernet jack for the audio network, a power port (when not using Power Over Ethernet), ¼-inch line level outputs for mix L/R, SD card slot, and 2 XLR combi jacks. Fairly unique to this system is the fact that each myMix mixer has two onboard pre-amps that allows them to accept local input signals, mix them as two of the 16 inputs, as well as broadcast them out to the network for other myMix units to subscribe to. The preamps are capable of supplying phantom power though we would have liked to see a bit more gain out of them for the dynamic mics that we tested with (SM57). This, however, is a great capability for facilitating talkback between band members (without the need to take up PA resources) as well as supporting rehearsals (via local input) without the need for a PA. The unit also has an on-board SD card slot that can be used to record multitrack sessions (and the associated mix settings) for later playback. Combining these features creates a very powerful capability that can support a worship team’s weekday rehearsal sessions, allow any user to individually rehearse via session playback, and then finish up by supporting the team during the actual performance.
Design Forethought
Much thought has gone into the design of the system to make it as musician-friendly as possible. This shows in both the user interface of the individual myMix mixers as well as the quality of the audio they provide. Walking up to a myMix personal mixer shows a main control knob, a small number of soft keys, and a screen that is exceptionally easy to read, well laid out, and intuitive. New users of the system should have little problem adapting to its use and understanding how to navigate its rather simple functions. Audio quality was very high and should have no problems satisfying even the most finicky band member. Additionally, each unit provides an onboard FX engine that allows you to affect each input, with overall options for hall verb, room verb, or delay. The FX were well done and were found to really open up the sense of space for the user. Another benefit of this capability is that it allows a different feel for each of the users without needing resources outside of the myMix environment, such as FX units, console-based aux busses, or dedicated sends.
… the myMix system is very capable … with a great deal of functionality, able to handle even the most demanding productions.
Audio channels are fed to the overall system via IEX-16 expanders. There are versions of these units that support both analog and digital interconnects, via DB25 and ADAT (via Toslink), respectively. It should be noted that digital inputs are limited to a sample rate of 48K. Support for higher bit rates or other digital formats such as Dante or MADI require outboard converters, though Movek has pre-defined packages that can provide support for this. Administration is provided via a built-in web server capability that is available via the optional myMix Control device or by jacking directly into an IEX-16 expander. The webserver, while a bit clunky in its user interface, allows you to view and manage all of the devices on the network as well as managing and naming the audio channels carried over the network. This includes settings related to mono vs. stereo pairing as well as any signal level adjustments required. Users can also load and save mixer profiles allowing quick recall of system configuration, etc.
Give and Take
One thing that should be noted is that the high level of capability and ease of use for musicians has to some extent come at the price of a more complex administrative experience. The network side of the system is based upon an AVB-like protocol, but one that is not currently compatible with traditional IP-based networks. As a result, the network infrastructure for the myMix system needs to be separate from any IP-based networks that you may already have installed in your facility. In addition, as the channel count goes up the network requires the use of managed switches to ensure proper functionality. While understanding the network requirements is something that Movek is able to provide support for, it would seem prudent that users of the myMix system have someone on staff or on the volunteer team that is network-savvy or at least doesn’t shy away from network configuration.
During the review period the only issues encountered with the myMix system were related to the web administration portal. There were some functions that tended to cause the web server to generate error pages. While not fully remedied during the review, the error did not hinder the ability to manage or use the system. To the contrary, the system was found to be very dependable in its operation and never suffered from audio dropouts or artifacts.Overall the myMix system is a very capable one with a great deal of of functionality, able to handle even the most demanding productions. Larger systems will be more administratively intensive, but the great musician experience, which is the intended purpose of an IEM system, will likely be worth that cost.
