ProAudio Review - May 2008 - (Page 42) STUDIO | MACKIE Continued From Page 41 REVIEW AK5385 and AK4358 chips, respectively. These are mid-range chips in a high-grade product line and the 1200F’s performance, end to end, is excellent. Mixing is done with a DSP chip, and an FPGA chip handles the routing tasks. The box isn’t crowded, and the circuit boards and chassis are nicely laid out, but there’s a lot of circuitry and firmware here. | IN USE The 1200F uses the standard Core Audio drivers in Macintosh OS X 10.3.9 or newer, while Windows requires installing a Mackie driver. The installation procedure, including installing the software console, is straightforward. After a bit of poking around to get the feel of the console, I plugged in some mics and started listening. The preamps are clean and quiet, with no obvious coloration, but the input gain knobs are rather touchy. With about half of their 60 dB gain adjustment range occurring in the last 90 degrees of rotation, optimizing gain with low output mics or quiet sources is fiddly. The gain knobs feel wobbly, and at the top of the range, the gain can jump a dB or by just touching the knob. Other controls worked and felt fine, though turning the Analog Output level control rapidly produces a curious echo-y zipper noise on the monitored signal. The highimpedance (1 M-ohm) instrument inputs sounded excellent on both a guitar and a bass, with plenty of headroom, good clarity, and no unexpected hum or buzz. I wanted to see how close the 1200F’s internal mixer could get to the functionality of tracking with a real console. My dream was to emulate a split console, with the 1200F’s mixer serving as the “input” part of the monitor mix and the DAW’s mixer representing the “tape returns.” It sort of worked, but it would take some getting used to, and I’m not sure this is the optimum dream. The 1200F has many signal paths, some of which are (virtually) hard-wired; this can sometimes make things more complicated than they should be. Take headphone mixes for example; each headphone output has its own dedicated mixer, and each mixer has its own dedicated pair of DAW returns to bring recorded tracks into the mix. Headphone Mix #1 uses DAW outputs 25-26, Headphone Mix #2 uses DAW outputs 27-28, and so on. If you want four headphone mixes (or even if you want to send the same headphone mix to each of the four headphone jacks) you need four stereo auxiliary sends on each of your DAW’s tracks to get a mix of those tracks into the 1200F mixer. At times, having independent mixes of the recorded tracks is important, for example when overdubbing a group of players. But more often than not—and particularly when tracking a band together—a single mix (which could be as simple as a click track) will satisfy everyone in the studio. It would be nice to be able to use the same stereo DAW output in more than one 1200F mixer. Since you have full control over the inputs (which are available in every mix) you could easily give each player a basic mix of recorded tracks plus “more me,” which is usually what’s requested during tracking. Setting up a mix with the on-screen faders is fairly quick, though the pans are a bit finicky and don’t follow the “constant power” law, common to Mackie’s mixers. What’s missing, however, is channel equalization. With a conventional console, you can easily brighten the rhythm guitar in the headphones while recording the track flat (to make final EQ decisions later), but there’s no provision for doing that in the 1200F mixer. Should you want to add reverb to a monitor mix while tracking, you’ll probably have enough outputs so that you can use one mixer as a reverb send, though if you’re using all the mic inputs, you might come up short finding a return input. Since many FX units today have digital I/O, this might be a good application for the 1200F’s AES/EBU or S/PDIF connections. One of the touted features of the 1200F is its ability to function as a standalone mixer when not connected to a computer. With only the input trims to adjust the balance between inputs, and the routing and panning fixed by what was saved when it was last shut down, its flexibility is rather limited. It’s hard to talk about digital recording without mentioning latency. Computer latency is largely dependent on how large a sample buffer is required for glitch-free operation. The 1200F’s driver can be set to buffer between 32 and 2048 samples, but your particular system might need more. The modest 1.3 GHz Pentium laptop I used for most of my testing needed an ASIO buffer setting of 96 samples (about 2 milliseconds worth at 44.1 kHz) for clickless playback of an eighttrack project. Naturally, your mileage will vary. Since input monitoring during tracking is an important feature, let’s take a look at the latency of the monitor path. The 1200F manual uses the phrase “zero latency,” but it really isn’t. (Other Mackie publications more accurately describe it as “low latency.”) There’s delay MACKIE continues on page 55 ➤ ohms. This provides a good match for most of today’s popular transformerless condenser mics, but an SM-57 will sound better with a 500-ohm load, a trick I picked up from experimenting with input impedance switch on a Mackie 800R preamp. Internal gain structure (preamp gain plus A/D converter sensitivity) is similar to other contemporary mic preamps with digital output; a calm speaking voice a foot away from a The Virtual Console typical dynamic mic won’t hit 0 dBFS even at full gain, but sensitivity is completely adequate for typical studio applications such as close miking of acoustic instruments and vocals, or distant miking of drums, orchestra, or choir. With exception of the high impedance instrument pickup inputs, all analog inputs are differential, and all outputs are single-ended balanced (no signal on the low side). Polarity is preserved throughout. A/D and D/A conversion employs AKM PRODUCTPOINTS • Sounds great – mic preamps, A/D, D/A • Lots of inputs and outputs of many flavors • Input routing is highly flexible • Reduced I/O capacity above 48 kHz sample rate • DAW returns have dedicated assignments • Mixer latency may cause problems for vocalists SCORE The 1200F is for the serious DAW user, particularly in the working environment with a separate studio and control room. For the small project studio, it may be overkill. 42 | ProAudio Review | May 2008 www.proaudioreview.com http://www.proaudioreview.com
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