Recording - September 2010 - 31

a routing trick that lets you create everything from custom submixes to specialized effects sends. Each channel has signal-present and clip LEDs. Getting out Each Aux send can be routed pre or post fader, and the 1620i’s Return 3 can be routed back to Aux Send 1 on the 1620i— to add vocal reverb to a tracking-room monitor mix, for example. The Master section allows the Control Room and Phones to be fed by the Main Mix, Alt 3-4 bus, Tape, or FireWire (see below); in a very nice added touch, the Control Room and Phones levels are separately settable and independent of the Main Outs. Too many

RCA. If you wire up the Onyx-i with balanced cables wherever possible, this will greatly aid common-mode noise rejection, making these mixers wicked silent. Getting to a DAW The 820i, 1220i, and 1620i each offer multitrack recording to FireWire and a stereo FireWire return back to the mixer itself. This is a straightforward FireWire implementation that’s seen in many interface/mixers on the market, and it works seamlessly for most tracking and mixdown operations. Each input channel feeds an A/D converter that sends the input to a DAW for recording; individual channel switches let you determine if the FireWire send is pre

And then there’s the 1640i The 1640i is quite a bit more than “more of the same” when compared to its smaller cousins. This mixer pretty much nails the paradigm of the full-featured analog front end for a computer recording system, giving you all the flexibility you could hope for and topping it off with amazing audio quality. The 1640i has 16 almost-identical channels, each a mono mic/line input with an Onyx preamp and its own 48V phantom switch, lowcut filter switch, and (on the first two) Hi-Z switch. All channels have inserts, Mute, Solo (switchable PFL/AFL), and routing to pairs of subgroups as well as the Main Mix. The Perkins eq on the 1640i’s inputs is

small mixers force you to make compromises between sending a hot signal from the Mains, driving speakers efficiently, and listening to headphones in comfort. About the only thing I’d have liked to see that was missing was a second Headphone jack, but that’s what headphone distribution amplifiers are for, I guess. The Master section has a large LED level meter, which is especially useful when optimizing signal levels on soloed channels. On the 820i and 1220i, soloed channels are routed pre-fader at unity gain (Pre-Fade Listen or PFL); the 1620i has the option of After-Fade Listen (AFL), which keeps all channel settings in place on the soloed channel(s). There’s also a Talkback section with built-in mic that can be routed to the headphones and/or Aux 1 and 2. All of the mixers offer XLR and 1/4" TRS Main Outs, and 1/4" TRS balanced outputs for all other inputs and outputs except the inserts, which are 1/4" TRS send/returns, and the Tape In/Out connections on unbalanced

or post eq. The last stereo channel also has a switch that lets you choose its input source. You can listen to the stereo line inputs as per usual, or route the stereo FireWire return from the DAW through this input channel instead. You could use this to add a stereo mix of virtual instruments from a computer into a live mixdown, or bring back a DAW’s output for additional eq and effects processing. Finally, as mentioned above, FireWire 1–2 is a selectable option for the Control Room/Phones bus routing, so you can listen to your DAW’s output in combination with the Tape signal, Main Mix, and/or Alt 3–4 submix. Aside from one or two elegant tweaks like the FireWire return to the last mixer channel (and, on the 1620i, the ability to route the first two Aux sends and the Mains back to the FireWire interface), there’s nothing unusual about this interface implementation. Step up to the 1640i, though, and the game changes dramatically.

a 4-band with two sweepable mids and fixed high and low, plus an eq defeat switch. The 1640i is a full 4-bus mixer with the four subgroups routable to the left or right sides of the main mix in any combination, and has six mono Aux Sends (all selectable pre/post fader) and four stereo Aux returns. Aux routing is very flexible, with pots to send Returns 1 and 2 to Aux Sends 5 and 6 for more elaborate effects processing in a monitor mix, Return 3 switchable from the Main Mix to the Subgroups, and Return 4 available only on the Control Room/Phones bus. As someone who routinely confidencemonitors his own signals coming back from a separate interface on a second computer that’s being fed by the Main Mix (for my Internet radio show), I love this little switch, because it lets me check my work without causing a howl of feedback. Other little extras abound. The 1640i is rackmountable, with a rotating rear-panel I/O section and removable rack ears. You can solo any or all of the Aux sends with
RECORDING SEPTEMBER 2010

31
Recording - September 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - September 2010
