Recording - June 2015 - 18

Great River MixMaster 20

similarity, especially in the highs and
mids. Overall the preamps in the
MixMaster 20 are a touch more neutral
than their Neve-flavored siblings. The big
difference between the two is the special
impedance trickery and weighted "vibe"
that is possible with the MP-500V. Over
all, the MixMaster 20 preamps retain a
classic console sound that stacks well;
they could comfortably be a studio's one
and only rack of high-quality preamps.
To test the summing side, I started with
a finished in-the-box mix with 10 tracks of
drums, 4 tracks of keys,
bass, 2 electric guitars,
acoustic guitar, male lead,
2 channels of female backing vocals, one male backing vocal, a spoken vocal
part, 3 stereo reverbs
(room, plate and hall),
and stereo room mics. First
I rendered it as an in-thebox bounce, leaving all of
the track plug-ins active,
but disabling all master
bus compression and EQ.
Then I created a new
busing scheme to send out
to the MixMaster 20 and
matched each of its channels to the panning set up
in the DAW session with
the MixMaster 20's levels
set to unity. I should note
that all of my sessions of
late have been mixed LCR
(hard left and right or center with nothing in
between) so it was very
easy to recreate a matchable mix on the MixMaster
20; however, setting up
individual pan positions
with finer accuracy doesn't add much to
your workflow.
My setup was:
Lead Vocal: Mono center
Bass: Mono center
Spoken Word: Mono center
Acoustic Guitar: Mono right
Drums: Stereo bus
Electric Guitars: Stereo bus
Backing Vocals: Stereo bus
Keys: Stereo bus
Room Mics: Stereo bus
Effects: Stereo bus
I used the output fader to match the inthe-box mix level as I recaptured the track
in the DAW.
18

RECORDING June 2015

When I listened back to the two mixes,
the initial perceived differences were slight.
It's similar to my experience with many high
end software/hardware shootouts. There
was a touch more air running into the analog domain, and a touch more depth, while
the in-the-box mix was more blunt and tight.
Just for fun, and to test the MixMaster
20's console character, I decided to run a
few more mixes. But this time, instead of
carefully matching gains and levels, I
deliberately pushed the input and output
levels hard... pushing the mix "into the

red," so to speak. Here is where the mojo
of the MixMaster 20 comes alive!
Like a large format desk-and thanks
to the MixMaster 20's massive headroom-there is plenty of room to saturate
the mix. Be aware that I am not taking
about clipping and distortion, and certainly not the harsh destruction of pushing
a digital mix too hard. Instead, the
MixMaster 20 gives hot mixes a gentle
harmonically-saturated thickening. This
helps to add an analog "glue" that we
usually turn to bus compressors for, but
here the dynamics stay nicely intact.
Speaking of bus compression, I also
ran further mixes through my usual 2-bus

chain of a Dangerous BAX EQ and an ADesigns Nail compressor. I loved how
smoothly and easily I could insert and
bypass this chain in the mix.
Final thoughts and considerations
There are two small things I missed on
the MixMaster 20. One is that there is no
dim switch for the monitor section. Yes, it's
pretty simple to turn down the monitor
knob, and yes, the talkback switch does
dim the mix, but the switch doesn't latch
on when pressed. The other is that there's
no headphone output, but Dan pointed
out that the box does include a stereo Cue
feed with talkback/dim that can be routed
to your choice of headphone amp.
I don't really miss realtime mix automation that much on this box. For this sort of
console, scene automation works quite
well. But I do wish that the editor plug-in
could graphically show you where the
parameters in the summing mixer
are set. As it is, though, it does
do its job well in its simplicity.
Wrap up
This is one of those rare boxes
that sets out to do a lot and actually accomplishes it all without hiccups, hangups, or workarounds. It
sounds fantastic both on the mic
pre side and as a summing box,
and once again, its build and
craftsmanship are beyond topnotch.
Pricewise it is on the high end of
summing devices, but there are
very few other boxes on the market (if any) with this much power
and functionality under the hood.
The closest thing to the MixMaster
20 that I have worked with is API's
The BOX (reviewed October
2014), which I would tend to characterize as "a mixer that sums,"
rather than "a summing box that
mixes," which is a perfect nutshell
summation of all the MixMaster 20
brings to your studio.
The MixMaster 20 truly delivers a large-format console sound
and more, along with four solid
workhorse mic preamps. If you are looking for a professional yet compact highquality analog hub for your DAW based
environment, look no further!

Price: $7000
More from: Great River Electronics,
www.greweb.com
Paul Vnuk Jr. (paul@recordingmag.com)
is a recording engineer, producer, live
sound engineer, and recording artist, living and working in the Milwaukee area.

http://www.greweb.com

Recording - June 2015

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