Recording - September 2017 - 32

mixing board and disassociate it
from my DAW.
At the bottom of the mixer in either
view is the RAVEN transport and
control surface. There are up to three
selectable or stackable panels that
can include a standard transport, a
gesture-controlled navigation pad, locator
buttons, preset layout buttons, the batch
command buttons, and more. It's all userconfigurable to suit your needs and taste.
Of special note is the Mixer/Sends button, which flips the mixer to a set of secondary faders for controlling effects sends. This
is nice, as you get full-throw faders rather
than tiny sliders or pots. There is also a Fine
Faders control that constrains the faders to
a purposely tight and sluggish speed with a
minimal throw. This allows small incremental movements of half a dB or less.

In use

Setting up the RAVEN MTi2 and 3.3
software with Cubase 9 was surprisingly
easy, as long as I carefully followed the
instructions, which are available in an
online video or the downloadable manual. For some DAWs, including Cubase
8, there is even an auto-setup process; I
cannot comment on it, as it is not currently
functional in Cubase 9. That is one of the
few things to be aware of with the RAVEN
software. With multiple DAWs being supported, there will always be some growing pains caused not by Slate, nor by the
DAW company, but due to the marriage
of the two. As each DAW gets updated,
Slate has to adjust, alter, and program
accordingly.
Speed bumps for me included some
batch commands not working perfectly
(although this could be due to my learning
32

RECORDING September 2017

curve), minor setup squabbles and even
how the RAVEN software affected my DAW.
Some functions in Cubase now take a few
extra seconds to execute, like the Save As
function or Render In Place, or even pulling
up occasional Edit windows. Most annoying
was that clicking in track name windows to
rename tracks often took multiple tries.
Essentially these are annoyances
rather than showstoppers. I say this because the main feature of the RAVEN,
i.e. being a multitouch mixer, works
so wonderfully that it makes these little
growth pains seem minor.
My only other observation is that the RAVEN I was sent had a very faint modulated
hum, like the sound you hear when a TV is
on but the sound is muted. It was heard in the
room, but was not present in any recorded
audio. [Editor's Note: We reported this issue
to Slate, who responded that this behavior
has not been reported before and is likely
isolated to our review unit. A new RAVEN is
on its way to us as of press time, and we will
report on our results with the replacement
unit in our next issue.-MM]

Two-fisted mixing

I live in two worlds. As a live sound
engineer, I use a console with 32 faders, and when I do live sound I mix with
all hands on deck in real time. Oddly,
when I get into the studio, I usually
use a single-fader control surface and
use that one fader to set volumes or

perform automated rides on
individual tracks. Then I default
to numeric mouse mixing. In
other words, if I set a track
to 8.4 dB with the fader, I
will eventually round the track to 8.0
dB and type it in, and then move it up
or down by typing in 0.5 dB steps as
clients want something up or down.
I have tried multiple-fader surfaces
over the years, and while there are
some great feeling ones on the market,
most of them are 8-fader boxes. Inevitably
I have trouble jumping between banks
of 8-fader groups and then trying to
figure out which tracks I'm controlling,
since LED scribble strips aren't always
provided and many of those are too
small to read easily.
I initially assumed that I might find
the RAVEN a novelty and default to
my single fader-numeric-mouse mixing
style. After all, the RAVEN doesn't really
have faders, it's just fingers on glass. I
will totally admit how wrong I was-
mixing on the RAVEN was an almost instant joy! By the end of my first real mix
session with the RAVEN MTi2, I reverted
back to the days of mixing a song in
real time, just like when I mix live, and it
was by feel rather than by the numbers.
Not to get too poetic, but I felt like I was
connecting with the music again.
It was similar when a fellow engineer
came over a few days later; we could
both grab faders on the RAVEN at the
same time and mix in tandem with no
issues. Also, being able to reach out, grab
and tweak a plug-in like it's really there is
nothing short of a religious experience.

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