Recording - June 2015 - 16

Great River MixMaster 20

push button on the far right of the unit, or
by a momentary footswitch connected to
the rear panel. The talkback circuit dims
the signal. While the built-in mic won't
win any awards for tracking lead vocals,
it was clear and intelligible, easily picking up speech from several feet away.
The summing mixer, i.e. channels
5-20, starts with two 19-stage LED indicators. These aren't meters; they display
pan position (red at the center, green to
the sides) and currently set level (in blue)
for the selected channel. Below those are
16 LEDs, labeled 5 through 20, which
correspond to the summing channels.
They flash green when selected or when
editing, and show solid red once set and
saved.
Next to these are six blue backlit function buttons labeled: Solo, Clear, Save,
Chan, Level, and Pan. This section is
rounded out by a pushbutton rotary
encoder. Although this recorder has no
markings, Dan let me know that when setting each channel's level, one click equals
a step of one half decibel. Also according
to Dan, eight clicks of the encoder down
from fully-on sets the channel to unity
gain. (Also note that the unit is set for +4
dB operation.)
With the control buttons and encoder,
you can set up and tweak each channel
just as you would on a traditional mixer
with regard to panning and level. This is
a far cry from many less expensive summing boxes, which often only offer fixed
output levels... and if they offer panning
at all, it is usually a simple switch for left,
right or center.
Multiple channels can be selected and
set together, which is useful for setting all
of the channels to an initial fixed volume.
As another example, if you are using multiple stereo outputs, you can grab all of
the channels you want to set hard left or
hard right, and set them all at once. This
is a significant timesaver.
All of this may sound complicated, and
it does take some time to get used to. In
my experience with the MixMaster 20,
within a couple of days I was flying
around the unit with ease.
Recall
Included with the MixMaster 20 is a
simple graphic text-based editor program
which runs on both Mac and Windows. It
is connected to the unit via a standard
USB cable; the flow is bi-directional and
similar to an old-school MIDI dump.
16

RECORDING June 2015

Let me set the record straight here, with
information direct from Dan Kennedy.
Contrary to the rumors flying around the
Internet, Great River has no plans at this
time to implement realtime mix automation
on the MixMaster 20. This function lets
you store and recall mixer "scenes" on a
song-by-song basis and store them with
your DAW session. Sending, saving, and
recall operations are all effectively instantaneous, and I found scene-based automation to work perfectly and without fuss during all of my sessions with the unit.

Outputs, meters, and a big buttery
fader
The far right side of the unit features five
backlit buttons for output routing. The top
two select the speaker A and/or B outs. A
Tape Mon button toggles between the
Master bus and the monitor output. There
is a Patch button, similar to those found on
channels 1-4, that allows you to insert outboard processing onto your master bus,
and the Talkback button is at the bottom.
Master output level control is handled
by a small black Control Level knob. The
master bus out, which is the signal sent
back to your DAW or whatever external
recorder you are using, is handled by a
horizontal full-throw Penny and Giles
fader that is as smooth as butter. Last but
not least, the unit is rounded out by two
large backlit -20 to +3 honest-to-gosh
old-school VU meters.

Setup and learning curve
The most complicated part of the
MixMaster 20 is the initial planning and
setup. Luckily I use a DB-25 patchbay, so
hookup was fairly painless. Once it was
installed and ready to go, I was a bit surprised when turning the unit on for my first
time; it takes a good 30 seconds to fully come
to life. Like many high end pro audio devices,
it uses a staggered power-up sequence that
helps keep too much power from hitting the
unit at once, lengthening component life.
While the mic pre side is about as
straightforward as it gets, getting used to
the summing side, with its rotary encoder
and combinations of pushing and holding
buttons for selection and saving, is a bit
clunky at first.
After a few sessions, however, it does
fall into place, especially once I got used
to the the fact that while each click of the
encoder represents a 1/2 dB step, the LED

level indicators do not. That means that
you have to turn the dial more than one
click to get the next level LED to light up,
which can be a bit disconcerting at first.
Also, as I mentioned above, you will
need to memorize the order and combination of when to press, when to hold,
and when to click the encoder. As I got
used to the MixMaster 20, there were
more than a few times when I forgot to
save a setting, or even worse, accidentally reset/cleared all settings, which meant
I needed to start over from scratch. Since
text files take up very little computer
space, I strongly advise that you use the
USB connection and editor program to
save your work often in interim steps.
The sounds (of summer)
To get my bearings on the sound of the
preamps, I did some side-by-side tests with
the MP-500V and heard a noticeable

Recording - June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - June 2015