Mackie DL Series Digital Mixers with iPad® Control

Best in Show Award

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:40:29 +0000

During Winter NAMM 2012, six experts shopped the NAMM show floor to find the top gear. Mackie was one of only six companies awarded NAMM University’s Best in Show Award – a prestigious industry accolade.

Best of Show Award

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:26:47 +0000

At the Winter NAMM show, the editorial staffs of Pro Sound News and Pro Audio Review magazines presented their ProSoundNetwork Best of Show Awards.

Church Production’s DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:01:03 +0000

Once out of the packaging you’ll notice that while it looks awesome, this thing doesn’t really look like a mixer. Sure it has input and outputs, and Mackie even put typical pots for adjusting your input gain, but that’s about it. That’s because the Mackie DL1608 utilizes an Apple iPad (not included) as the entire brainssole control surface of this console. Any generation will do (1st, 2nd or 3rd), they all fit inside the perfectly designed cradle on the console that locks down the iPad into the mixer— safe and secure. A free download of Mackie’s Master Fader App onto your iPad and you have all you need to mix. There are 16 input channels, 12 XLR inputs and four combo inputs (XLR/Balanced and 1/4 inch). There are two XLR outputs for your mains, six Aux outputs that are ¼-inch connections, and one headphone jack on the front with volume control. Once you’ve docked your iPad, started the app and made your connections, you are ready to go.

Mixing on the DL1608 is, in a word, fun. Each channel can be labeled. There is a library of common names/icons that can be used, or you can type your own. You can even take a photo using the iPad’s camera and use that as your icon. When I mixed my friend Clay Carnill’s (www.claslan.com) acoustic show, I had a fun time taking pictures of him and the instruments used for my channel labels. Each channel on the DL1608 has a noise gate, compressor, and EQ section. The EQ section has four bands of parametric EQ, plus a high-pass filter. There is a library of presets for different inputs but I found it really easy to use common iPad gestures of tap, drag, flick, swipe and pinch to navigate the EQ. Setting gates and compressors was similarly easy. I was able to quickly put together a great sounding mix for this acoustic performance.

Click here for the full review

Tools4Music (Germany) DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:49:42 +0000

Hand aufs Herz – wer hätte gedacht, dass Apples iPad innerhalb von nur drei Jahren so radikalen Einzug ins Musikgeschehen und auch ins tägliche Leben halten würde? Das Angebot an Apps für den Musikerbedarf ist mittlerweile riesig. Terminorganisation? Hometrainer für Harmonielehre? Mobiles Recording- Studio? Notenblätter zu Hause vergessen? Alles anscheinendkein Problem mehr, wenn man online nur richtig organisiert ist. Click here to read full review

Sound on Sound’s DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:46:24 +0000

When it was first unveiled at the NAMM show, Mackie’s DL1608 live-sound mixer caused quite a stir. Not only was it relatively inexpensive, it also allowed remote control of the mix from one or more (up to 10, infact) iPads via Wi-Fi. This means that, using the DL1608, you can leave the mixer on stage and control the mix from the front using only an iPad, with no multicores to worry about. As I regularly mix pub gigs, the prospect of not having to roll out a multicore appealed to me immediately. Click here to read full review

Professional Sound’s (Canada) DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:28:44 +0000

The Mackie DL1608 is unlike any digital mixer I’ve ever seen. It is so innovative in its interface, features, and capabilities and has an unprecedented price-point to performance ratio that may very well mark a turning point in how all small-scale club sound is handled. Click here to read full review

Music Tech’s (UK) DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:21:06 +0000

Mackie is a big-hitter in the live sound world so it’s perhaps not surprising that it is among the first to take this fusion of technologies to the next level with the DL1608, an iPad controlled digital mixer. And when the company says iPad controlled, it means it: there are no physical faders. So it’s a bold step forward, but how does it perform? Click here to read the full review

Live Sound’s DL1608 Road Test

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:04:22 +0000

I’ve had a chance to check out and use the new Mackie DL1608 digital mixer for a while, and if I had to use a single word for the review it would be “cool.” Mackie has managed to put together a small package with a lot of great features, and paired it with an Apple iPad for the control surface. Click here to read full

Keyboards (Germany) DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:54:34 +0000

Mit dem DL1608 ersetzt Mackie als erster Hersteller die physischen Potis und Fader eines Live-Mixers durch die virtuelle Touch-Oberfläche eines iPads und eröffnet damit Möglichkeiten, von denen man vor Jahren noch nicht einmal geträumt hätte. Click here to read full review

Keyboard’s DL1608 Review

shaunna.krebs — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:49:27 +0000

THE FIRST THING TO KNOW ABOUT MACKIE’S DL1608 LIVE MIXER IS THAT though you need an iPad (not included) to run it, that’s for control only—the Mackie hardware itself does all the mixing and audio processing. Why use an iPad? Had Mackie built in a display with anything close the iPad’s resolution and multi-touch capability, this would likely add more to the cost than the price of an iPad—which many musicians already own. But does the DL1608 make a good case to mix your band’s gigs in this way beyond “because you can”? Let’s find out. Click here to read the full review