Recording - August 2017 - 34

Mackie

DL32R
32-Channel
Digital Mixer

iOS-based control gives this rackmount
mixer highly affordable quality
REVIEW BY PAUL VNUK JR.

ne of my first non-review articles for Recording,
written over ten years ago, focused on using a
thrown together remote rig for tracking a band in a
large old house. This "portable" rig was made up of
a Mackie 1604 VLZ mixer, an Alesis ADAT XT20 used just as an
8-channel converter light-piped to a Frontier Design Wavecenter
PCI card. My DAW was an old Intel Pentium something-or-other
PC, complete with a big old CRT monitor.
Contrast this with the most recent live album that I tracked
in a old theater. There were seven musicians with three DI
instruments, five instrument mics, six vocal mics, and two sets of
room mics-nineteen inputs total into a digital mixer. Said mixer
simultaneously handled the PA mix for the room, complete with
compression, EQ, and gating on every channel, plus two reverb
sends. It handled monitor mixes for the group back to the stage,
and it also sent a direct pre-fader feed of the tracks straight to my
Macbook Pro running Cubase 9 over USB 2.0. Said mixer had
zero physical faders and was housed in a 3U rack enclosure.
Said mixer was, yet again, a Mackie: the DL32R.
Just as Mackie's designers launched the compact mixer revolution
almost two decades ago, they also brought to market one of the
first faderless digital mixers, designed to handle all control
duties on a then-new Apple iPad. Nowadays almost every digital
mixer on the market offers some sort of remote iPad app, but
Mackie is still a forerunner in both compact mixer design and
iPad mixing technology. This expertise abounds in the DL32R.

RECORDING August 2017

A big black box

The physical chassis of the DL32R is a 3U 19" rackmount
box that is roughly the size of a good old 1604VLZ, minus any
controls save a power switch and a headphone volume knob.
Compared to most rackmount mixers and interfaces, the unit is
built "backwards", with all I/O on the front panel. That includes
32 XLR inputs (8 of which are XLR/TRS combo jacks), 14 XLR
Outputs, a pair of 1/4" TRS monitor outs, headphone jack, and
a single XLR AES digital out. The front face also features a pair
of multi-function LED lights for indicating power and network connection, a pair of power amp style handles, and that's about it.
On the back of the box is a power switch, IEC cable socket, two
large cooling fans, a USB output, and single CAT5 Ethernet port
for LAN connection. The latter is actually on a removable card,
one that can be replaced by a Dante Card, giving the DL32R
complete access to standard Dante-enabled networked audio
systems (including Mackie's brand-new AXIS Digital Mixing System).
Special mention should be made of the DL32R's recessed
top panel. It's intended to house a network wi-fi router and/or
a hard drive for direct multitrack recording. The unit ships with
large Velcro® strips that you can use to attach said devices to
the mixer via built-in anchor slots.

Master Fader

To use the DL32R, you will need at least two vital accessories,
a wi-fi router and an iPad. Most any iPad will work including
the new iPad Pros. I tried the unit with an older iPad 2 and a
first-generation iPad mini with zero issues or concerns. The free
Mackie Master Fader app (now in version 4 and downloadable
from the App store) never crashed once in my tests, or more importantly, at the gig. Multiple units can be used at the same time
and I was able to monitor, mute, and solo the audio at the same
time that the Front Of House engineer crafted the house mix.
Wi-fi on the DL32R is not built in. Your wi-fi router must be
hardwired into the unit via CAT5 cable. It could be your home
or business router if you use DL32R in a fixed studio, venue, rehearsal space, or basement. However, with the low cost
of routers, I would recommend getting a dedicated one for use
with the DL32R and strapping it on top if you plan to go mobile...
which is kind of a key point of this mixer. Setup with my router
was instantaneous, since my iPads are already on my network.
The Master Fader app's user interface offers great functional
simplicity, and yet gives you access to every deep-level function
of the mixer... all with much better graphics than on

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2017