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The Yamaha MGP24X is an updated version of the venerable MG24/14X. It's a 24-channel, four-group mixer with both stereo and mono output busses. We have an older MG series mixer in our student room, and it's never been my favorite small, analog mixer. So when the UPS man dropped off the new version, I was curious to see how much has changed.
Right off the bat, the appearance is striking, and you can't miss the LCD screen and associated controls above the master section. The graphics are sharp and the controls easy to read. As my eyes age, I appreciate this detail more and more. I received the 24-channel version to test; 12-, 16- and 32-channel versions are also available.
Basic Specs
It was sort of disappointing to find that the 24-channel version has just 16 mic inputs and four stereo line input channels (the 32-channel version has 24 mic inputs with four stereo line). And while I was interested to see how the one knob compression worked, I found—to my chagrin—they only put them on channels 9-16. Each of the 16 mic channels has inserts, however.
The mixers offer six aux sends; the first four are pre/post switchable in groups of two, and aux five and six can be switched to use the built-in effects engines or become post-fade sends on a per-channel basis.
The faders are all 60-mm, and while there is a pleasant wood wrist rest below them, I wish they could have found another 40-mm and used longer 100-mm faders. All controls have a solid feel to them, and the mixer doesn't look cheap, which is nice for a mixer in this class.
On-Board DSP
The mixer does have a fair amount of DSP for an analog desk. The EQs are based on Yamaha's Virtual Circuit Modeling (VCM) technology that purports to mimic vintage analog gear. In practice, it's a three-band EQ with mid-sweep. The low-shelf appears to be centered around 250 Hz, while the high starts rising at about 2 kHz. The mid-band is about four octaves wide and sweeps from 250 Hz-2500 Hz. The EQ sounded good enough, especially for a small mixer.
As I mentioned, the highest eight channels offer one-knob compression. The knob simultaneously lowers the threshold (increasing gain reduction) and raises makeup gain, so the level remains fairly constant. They sound fairly decent for a simple system, and lend usable control to highly dynamic sources. When turned up too high, they do start to bring up background noise, and I really wish they were on each of the mic channels.
Mic pre's can make or break a small board, and Yamaha appears to have spent some money on these. Yamaha labels them “D-Pre mic preamps” and they are claimed to be “studio-grade, Class-A with an inverted Darlington circuit.” I'm not sure what that means, but they sounded pretty good. Compared to another small mixer, the D-Pre's didn't have quite the same warmth, but did display plenty of resolution and were generally quite clean. They didn't seem to run out of steam like many small mixers do, especially with hotter sources.
Yamaha developed an iOS app for controlling the on-board effects, GEQ, compressor and audio playback. In use, it’s actually quite helpful.
Two effects engines are built in, one based on the Rev-X engine and the other is SPX-based. I've long been a fan of the SPX effects, and I found with both engines, I was able to fairly quickly arrive at usable settings. With further tweaking, I found both vocal and drum effects sounds I was pretty happy with. The iOS app really helps with that—more on that in a moment.
On the Output Side …
The left and right bus has both a compressor and a graphic equalizer (GEQ). To conserve DSP, you can either have 14 fixed bands (at basically 2/3 octave spacing) or any nine of the 31 available bands at 1/3 octave spacing. In practice, this works well enough; if you need more than nine bands on a GEQ, you probably have other issues.
The compressor on the left and right bus is an interesting idea. We'll often use a little compression on the final outputs to help glue the mix together, and with a three-band option, some very creative effects are possible. However, there are no gain reduction meters anywhere to be found, so you have to pay close attention to how hard you hit it. While you can certainly use the compressor to make the mix a little punchier, you can also completely destroy it. It's an interesting addition to a mixer that is otherwise quite simple to use.
The mono output has a built-in, adjustable low-pass filter (LPF). This feature, coupled with the GEQ and comp on the left and right output may negate the need for a speaker processor in smaller systems.
The console has more headroom than I expected. With many small mixers, one has to be careful to not saturate the main bus lest things start sounding compressed. I pushed a bunch of hot inputs into the left and right bus, driving it all the way to clipping, and didn't hear that telltale saturation. This was a pleasant surprise.
iOS App for Control
While you can adjust all the DSP controls with the built-in LCD screen and dual encoders, Yamaha developed an iOS app for controlling the on-board effects, GEQ, compressor and audio playback. In use, it's actually quite helpful. The desk has two USB ports on it—one for a thumb drive for recording to or playing back from, and an iOS connection for the app. This port charges your phone and allows for music playback.
When you launch the MGP Editor, you are presented with the home screen, which displays an overview of the current settings. Unfortunately, you can't interact with anything there (other than music playback). Instead, you have to use the menu at the bottom to reach each section.
The knobs operate with horizontal swipes instead of vertical for raising and lowering values, which is pretty much the opposite of most apps. Also, I found when swiping from page to page in the multi-band comp section, it was frighteningly easy to raise the gain of an output all the way—so be careful with that. And I really wish they had put gain reduction meters in the app so you can see what you are doing.
Hybrid Channels
The marketing materials from Yamaha make a big deal out of the two stereo hybrid channels on the desk—and they are clever. Each channel has a leveler and a ducker, plus a mono/blend/stereo switch.
Music playback is always a challenge because the level can vary quite a bit from song to song. The leveler does a respectable job of keeping the output fairly consistent without making it sound overly compressed. You can adjust the threshold and makeup gain to keep things heavily limited or just take off the peaks.
The ducker is a clever concept. Sometimes you have events where you may be playing some background music but also need to make announcements. After choosing the key source—channel 16 or group 1—the ducker lets you drop the level of the playback as soon as someone speaks, and then return it to normal playback level when they're done, saving you from having to sit at the board all night during a party.
Finally, each of the Hybrid Channels has a mono/blend/stereo switch on it. The idea is to let you collapse a stereo source either a little or a lot depending on your speaker placement. I found the blend mode did a really good job of maintaining some sense of stereo without it being too wide.
Conclusion
The MGP24X is a solid product. It feels well made, sounds good and is easy to use. The addition of the DSP extends its capabilities without breaking the bank. Though some of the controls are limited, the desk is pretty aggressively priced, so it's hard to complain. While not without compromise—what device is—this mixer is a nice upgrade from the original MG series.
MSRP $1699
