I truly believe that Mackie is releasing the product that will change the way that sound engineers handle live music. My biggest problem when I was doing live sound was getting a band’s trademark sound “just right.”
Mackie just came up with a way to do just that with their new Mackie DL1608. I have absolutely no reason to own something like it, but I have a strong desire to anyway.
The new workflow:
- Sound engineer does a few acoustic tests in the venue to end up with a mains EQ profile that approaches a flat frequency response curve.
- Band shows up and hands the sound engineer their exported base profile(s).
- Everybody plugs in, sound engineer rings out each input channel.
- Software adjusts “pre-fader” (post-gain) levels automatically based upon the largest difference between a “target” input level and actual input level achieved while maintaining level parity.
And that is it! The band can even create multiple profiles for individual songs and their own monitor mixes. At this point the sound engineer’s job is limited to making sure the sound design (already complete!) simply transfers well into their own venue.
At the end of the day you end up with an incredibly repeatable sound, a very happy band, a very happy sound engineer, and as a result, a very happy audience.