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These effects can be used in any of the 01V96i’s four effects slots and can be routed to any of the unit’s effects aux buses or to individual channel inserts. The downside is that unlike in your your DAW, you only get to use four at once; they are so good you will wish you had more! Studio Manager 2.0 I looked briefly at the Studio Manager software in my previous review. Studio Manager is a great way to edit and store settings and scenes in your mixer with the convenience of your mouse, keyboard and computer screen.

hybrid Yamaha/Steinberg drivers for using the USB connectivity of the device on the 01V96i page of Yamaha’s website. Lastly the mixer ships with a version of Steinberg Cubase AI6, a light version of Cubase that is still full-featured enough to be useful for tracking bands and recording live performances. Installation of the mixer as a USB device was quick and painless. It ran flawlessly in Cubase 6 on my test Mac, a 17" MacBook Pro 2.5 GHz i7 with 8 GB RAM running OS X 10.7 Lion. Getting the Studio Manager software set up correctly, as well setting up the board as a control surface for Cubase, required the quick start guide online, but the documentation got me running in good order. In use I installed the 01V96i as the centerpiece of my home edit suite where I mix and do overdubs, and I was impressed by its performance. It’s one thing to have a multichannel “sound card” set up, but to have one with this much flexibility and horsepower takes things to a whole new level. I had zero issues with latency, with buffer settings as low as 64 for tracking, and no hiccups on playback of 16 channels at once. Routing 16 channels from your DAW to the external channels of the mixer can save you CPU power by taking advantage of the 01V96’s internal effects, as well as using the hardware channel inserts and the omni ports with your favorite external gear. I enjoyed the new effects immensely and must give special praise to the REV-X algorithms, which are easily the best reverbs I have heard built into a digital mixer.

This board and its preamps are clean as clean can be and of very good quality for an all-in-one device of this nature, and the same can be said for its conversion. Now, will the 01V96i replace my Millennia HV-3D 8-channel mic pre or my Lynx Aurora 16 any time soon? No, but when you consider that said combo is close to triple the price of the 01V96i, it is really an unfair comparison. A wonderful partnership When I reviewed the 01V96 eight years ago, I tried in vain to set up the older mixer as a controller of Nuendo. This time around, the integration of the 01V96i’s remote layer as a Cubase/Nuendo controller is native and flawless. I instantly had 16 motorized faders, complete with mute, solo and pan, running seamlessly and bi-directionally. The only downside is that the board hardware was designed prior to this paradigm being commonplace, so the 01v96i does lack transport controls on its surface. But that’s what Steinberg’s CMC-TP (review forthcoming) is for, and the two make a dangerous combo indeed. What if you don’t use Cubase? The 01v96i also has native settings for Pro Tools and a setting for General DAW use that I would guess to be based on the Mackie Control protocol. Conclusions I will be honest, in my work environment I had all but written off digital mixers as essentially live devices, but Yamaha has made a very wise move evolving the 01V96i from just a conventional digital mixer into a 16-channel interface. While a street price of $2399 is not spare change, you get a multichannel interface plus a full standalone digital mixer with clean preamps, Yamaha’s VCM effects, killer reverbs, a 16-channel control surface complete with full-throw motorized faders and more... and suddenly you can see that price is a flat-out bargain. Mixing and recording bands in the studio or on stage just got a lot easier. Price: $2399 street More from: Yamaha, www.yamahaproaudio.com
RECORDING September 2012

With version 2.0 Studio Manager is more stable and feature-rich. Additionally, the VCM effects have their own stylized vintage hardware graphic interfaces, with a few examples in the screenshots. I can’t reiterate enough how much faster it is to make routing, channel and effects setting decisions with a DAW-like look and convenience. Getting up to speed I have a long history with both previous versions, having owned the original as well as having used the 01V96 in a broadcast/production studio in Bangladesh, so getting around the mixer’s myriad edit windows and channel layers came back pretty quickly. For the beginner, though, I recommend reading the manual to become familiar with all areas of this mixer. The 01V96i manual has been rewritten and I compliment Yamaha on a well-written 70-page document that is concise and easy to follow. Also included for deeper study is a CD with a 176-page version in PDF form. You can find additional quick-start documents for setting up the Studio Manager Software as well as the

http://www.yamahaproaudio.com

Recording - September 2012

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