Phonic Digital Mixer 16

[Anderton]

I’ve been trying to "front-load" aspects the make the Phonic Digital Mixer unique in this review - like the outstanding effects, user interface, touch screen, etc. It’s not that something like an Aux bus isn’t important, and of course we will get to that, but the approach to the aux buses is fairly traditional...which is not the case with the Control Room section, so let’s cover that next.

The Control Room outs are separate from the Main Outs, and use two XLR balanced output jacks. There are also two 2-track RCA ins and outs. This shot shows these jacks on the rear panel.



In a studio situation in the days of yore, these would have connected to your two-track mastering deck – reel-to-reel or DAT. With today’s computer-based setups, these are less relevant, particularly if you have the USB 2/FireWire interface in the Digital Mixer as you can monitor the DAW outs via the interface. However for live use, this remains useful for doing live recordings, feeding in pre-show music from a CD player, etc.

As to physical controls, the layout is relatively simple. This shows them on the front (top) mixer panel.



There are volume controls for the Control Room outs and headphones out (the latter feeds the single front-panel headphone jack). The switch above the control room level control determines whether the 2-track input goes through the control room out jacks, or the main stereo or solo signals selected in the Control Room tab (described next). The switch to the right of that determines whether inputs 15+16 get their input from the standard mixer ins, or are switched over to listen to the 2-track input. This is all very straightforward.

The Control Room tab is where the real action happens, as it allows for all kinds of monitoring options. You could also consider this the “DJ page” as you could cue up a variety of inputs to do beat-matching and such that wouldn’t appear in the Main Outs. I’m not implying that this is a DJ mixer by any stretch, but that type of musical thinking is turning up in other ways (e.g., Ableton Live) and I’ve worked with acts that basically treated musicians as signal sources, and the mixer as an instrument for bringing the signal sources in and out, soloing, muting, cuing up additional sources, etc. The Phonic Digital Mixer would be excellent for this type of application.

Anyway, as we describe this remember that this is not about the main outs – this is all about monitoring and diagnostics. Referring to the screen, in the upper left you have the option to do all monitoring either pre- or post-fader (what Phonic calls “after-fader,” or AFL), on a global basis. Of course, you can also set individual channels, auxes, or groups to pre- or after-fader individually.



If you press the Solo button, you can then solo individual channels to monitor them. This is equivalent to pushing the front panel Solo button. When you do this, a headphone icon appears in the appropriate channel, aux, or group button on the Control Room screen. You can also clear all solos.

However when you solo a track, it defaults to being switched out of the main outs. You can defeat this by designating a channel as Solo Safe (as with channels 1-6 on the screen shot). As an example of why this is useful, imagine your mixing a concert and all of a sudden you hear a buzz and aren’t sure where it’s coming from. Place all the channels into Solo Safe, and then you can solo each channel in the Control Room section, isolate the source, and take appropriate action without interfering with the mix emanating from the main outs.

The remaining elements on this screen are the level meter that shows the level at the Control Room outs, the level control for setting this level, and the Stereo/Mono switch. I feel that being able to monitor in mono is essential when check out phase issues and whether a mix translates in mono for the people in the back row as well as stereo.

And that’s pretty much it for the Control Room section, although note that you can also solo the effects – great for making tweaks to the effect without being disctracted by any other sounds.

[Anderton]

Y'know, sometimes I'm a little bit slow.

For some reason, I just wasn't "clicking" with the mixer. I understood all the elements, everything made sense, I was able to make it work, it sounded fine, the computer interfacing worked, and all that...but I felt awkward using it.

Well, tonight I was working on a post describing the aux busing/grouping and how that works. And that's when I realized I was approaching this mixer as I would approach other mixers, including previous digital mixers I'd used. But it's not the same animal.

I've mentioned the touch screen, but tonight it hit me that the heart of this mixer is the touch screen, not the multiple faders, switches, etc. With other mixers, the display is a readout of what's happening with the mixer, and that's fine. But with the Digital Mixer 16, the touch screen is more about adding an element of virtualization to the mixer that lets you access its operation from several different viewpoints. I'll explain this more later on, because what I said probably won't make sense until you see a practical implementation, but suffice it to say that all of a sudden I felt I understood the gestalt of the mixer.

Now, I'm not going to take all the responsibility for my mental block. The manual is very comprehensive, and explains every operational element with clarity and precision...which is what a manual is supposed to do. But what it doesn't do is explain why this is a different type of mixer, and why it's necessary to approach it from a different standpoint.

If I had to summarize my shift in thinking in one sentence, I'd say that before, I saw the touch screen as something that supplemented the mechanical elements like the faders, switches, controls, etc. Now, I see the mechanical elements as supplementing the touch screen.

Okay, let's look at this from a more practical standpoint: Dealing with auxes and groups.

[Anderton]

We've mentioned that along with the Main Outs, Control Room Outs, 2 Track I/O, AES/EBU, Word Clock, and I/O added by the USB/FireWire card, there are eight balanced, 1/4" Multi outs. They're called Multi outs because you can assign any aux bus or group to whatever Multi out you want. In fact, you need to assign them, because there are eight aux buses and eight groups, so you have to decide out to divide up the eight Multis.

Let's look at the most conventional aspect of dealing with auxes and groups: sending signals from an input channel. As expected, there's a variable send for each aux bus, and the ability to switch into a group (you don't have send levels for a group because by definition, the channel fader sets the level going into the group, with the crucial control being the group master so you can bring the levels of the individual channels up and down simultaneously).

Before proceeding, I need to explain one more thing. The Digital Mixer 16 has several ways of classifying screens, two of which are View and Meters. These are part of the virtualization I mentioned earlier. I would actually think of them more as "Edit" and "Monitor" rather than View and Meter, but any one-word description is going to fall short.

Anyway, let's take a look at a typical channel view, in this case channel 5.



The aux/group action is toward the bottom of the screen. Channel 5 isn't assigned to any groups, because the group buttons are black - tan would indicate channel 5 was feeding a group. But look closely at the group buttons: You can see the group master levels. This means that no matter what channel you have selected, you can see which groups are actually doing something - e.g., they have their masters up.

As to the auxes, here you see the amount of send, and whether the aux is pre or post. So, signal is being fed to aux bus 1, 3, 5, and 6, with 6 being sent post-fader.

The value of this screen is, of course, that's it's channel-centric - if the aux buses go to different processors, you can see how much signal is going to which processor. But what if you want to zero in on seeing what's happening with one particular bus?

Let's assume aux 1 feeds reverb, and you want to know which channels are feeding the reverb, how much they're sending, and whether any signal is going to the reverb at the moment. Go to the aux/group view screen, where all this data is available.



For example, here you can see that channels 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 are sending to the aux 1 bus, as well as their send control levels, but only channels 4 and 5 are generating signals at the moment.

There's still one piece of the puzzle: Assigning the bus to the desired Multi. The following shows the Main/Multi View screen, where you do the assignment and quite a bit more.



Here we've chosen the Multi, which in this case is Multi 7 (I deliberately chose different numbers for the channel, aux, and multi so there wouldn't be any confusion about which element was being shown). You assign using the source buttons along the button, where you can choose an aux or group. Again, there are the helpful level indicators on the bottom of the buttons. The Multi outs are like any other outs and channels in that you can add EQ, dynamics, change the order of the EQ and dynamics, add delay, etc. as described previously.

You can also use the Meter screens to monitor what's going on very easily, which is what we'll get into next.

[Anderton]

Here's another aspect of the touch screen that's really helpful: The ability to use Metering screens to monitor various aspects of what's going on in the mixer.

Here's a fair simple one - metering for the channels and mains. This lets you see at a glance which channels are producing audio, and the overall main output level.



And here's the meter screen for monitoring what's going on with the auxes and groups.



The Multi metering screen gets more involved, as it not only shows levels for the multis, but also, fader positions and which dynamics effects are enabled. You can also turn Multis on and off here, and monitor what's going on with the control room out, AES/EBU in, and effects.



So you might be thinking "That's all well and good, but it's kind of a pain to have to switch among all those screens to see what's going on with the mixer." But, there's also an "overview" screen that shows what's happening with all the channels, auxes, groups, and mains - everything except for the multis, which as we just saw, has its own pretty comprehensive screen. This "division of labor" makes sense, because the multis are more of a set-and-forget type of parameter; it's what feeds the multis that you need to monitor. The Meter/Fader screen is ideal for that.



Bear in mind that you cannot manipulate these faders directly from the touch screen. They'll reflect changes you make with the mixer controls, and you can touch a control and move it with the data wheel. This is handy if, for example, the faders are set to the channel layer and you want to make a quick adjustment to an aux without switching layers; but as the faders are motorized, you can switch among layers easily anyway if you want to move a physical fader instead of doing an adjustment with the data wheel.

[Anderton]

Well, mixer - obviously. But, there are some elements in common with an instrument. This is a mixer where I've definitely seen my ability to get around it increase exponentially in the last two weeks as I've become more familiar with the workflow. What at first seemed like too many options (should I select View Aux to see what's going on with the Auxes? Or the Meter screen? Or a channel to see what's feeding it?) now seems more like a way of letting you choose the most appropriate way to deal with a particular function.

The downside of this is that you need to know what the options are in order to take full advantage of them. But even if you don't, you can still manage as there is some redundancy of functionality among the various screens. It's just that like an instrument, the more you practice, the better you get. For example, when you start playing guitar, you might know only one way to play a D chord. That will work for when you want to hear D, but as you get better, you learn how to voice a D chord at multiple places on the neck, choose the most appropriate note for the root, and so on. It's the same principle here.

There's one additional positive element that's worth mentioning. Often with software-based technology, if I go away for a while, I forget how to accomplish some rarely-used, specific task ("now what was that way you can stretch a clip using DSP?"). So far, the Phonic Digital Mixer 16 doesn't seem to fall into that category. Although the overall logic behind the operating system escaped me at first, it's really quite simple and the most important aspect is to understand the difference between the main touch screen sections - view, meter, fader, patch, delay, effect, EQ, dynamics, utility, and setup. As delay, effect, EQ, dynamics, utility, and setup are all pretty obvious, that means once you know what to expect from the view, meter, fader, and patch screens, you have it nailed.

I've reached the point with this mixer where everything is really falling into place. Stay tuned...

[RoadRanger]

Interesting that yours has stickers over the model name on both the top and back? Phonic has really muddied the waters by calling it a "Summit" in the world market but an "S16" in the US market. Further, the "S16" name is going to be used worldwide for a very similar but quite different mixer coming out any day now and already in their current catalog:
https://phonic.box.net/shared/static/n03rny835v.pdf
This one adds USB3 and the ability to record directly to a USB drive so you can use it as a stand alone workstation. Also remote control via built-in WiFi to an iPad . Full MIDI including the ability to use it as a DAW control surface. Oh, and external monitor and mouse support.

BTW I have an "old S16" coming in. One of the advantages of the Phonics FUD about the model name is it appears they are phasing out the S16 name on the Summits so you can buy an S16 for about $400 less than a Summit even though they are the same exact mixer . MAP on a Summit w/usb+firewire card is $1900 but the S16-PACK (S16 w/usb+firewire) is going for $1500 . As I'm going to be using this mostly live i don't see the neeed to wait for a "true S16" but anybody using it in the recording studio should probably get the new one.

[Anderton]

Originally Posted by RoadRanger

Interesting that yours has stickers over the model name on both the top and back? Phonic has really muddied the waters by calling it a "Summit" in the world market but an "S16" in the US market. Further, the "S16" name is going to be used worldwide for a very similar but quite different mixer coming out any day now and already in their current catalog:
https://phonic.box.net/shared/static/n03rny835v.pdf
This one adds USB3 and the ability to record directly to a USB drive so you can use it as a stand alone workstation. Also remote control via built-in WiFi to an iPad . Full MIDI including the ability to use it as a DAW control surface. Oh, and external monitor and mouse support.

BTW I have an "old S16" coming in. One of the advantages of the Phonics FUD about the model name is it appears they are phasing out the S16 name on the Summits so you can buy an S16 for about $400 less than a Summit even though they are the same exact mixer . MAP on a Summit w/usb+firewire card is $1900 but the S16-PACK (S16 w/usb+firewire) is going for $1500 . As I'm going to be using this mostly live i don't see the neeed to wait for a "true S16" but anybody using it in the recording studio should probably get the new one.

I think the issue is that Summit Audio objected to the name, was going to reach an accommodation, but then decided not to...or something like that. I think it's kind of a bogus issue, as a digital mixer is pretty different from a rack-mount signal processor ("Damn! I bought this digital mixer thinking it was a rack-mount compressor!"), but hey...the legal system is not for me to understand.

That S16-Pack sounds like a really good deal...

[RoadRanger]

Interesting re: the Summit name issue!

I see that MF shows out-of-stock until 11/11 so I'd speculate those are going to be the "new" S16's?

As we seem to be the only two folks in HC land with one I'd like to discuss it a bit - Perhaps there is a better forum for that than "Pro Reviews"? In particular I find it a bit limiting that the pre-fader aux sends are post EQ, post dynamics and post delay assuming that is true as the block diagram shows? I suppose it would be "fun" to put a bit of delay on that lead singer's monitor send when he pisses you off but otherwise not terribly useful in live use? It would be nice if you could select the "tap" point of the pre-fader sends - I'd never want it post compression or delay and would often just want it post gate only or post gate and limiter, no need for pre gate ever I think? I'd be happy if they just moved it to pre delay .

I also find 8 groups a bit silly on a 16 channel mixer - now if it allowed multiple groups to be summed to multi outs they could be used as matrices for fills and delays .

Oh, and I don't see any easy way to toggle the vocal FX on and off between songs - pretty much a necessity for live use.

[caitlyntw]

Hello RoadRanger,
It is not our intention to confuse customers with the Summit/S16 naming. Given the circumstance at the time, we needed to restrict our spending on our product development and people, not legal. The next digital mixer from Phonic will indeed have full MIDI capabilities, remote editing program, optional external screen/mouse, and we are looking into naming it something other than the S16. That product will be at least $2000 MAP without the USB recording interface, so your current Phonic digital mixer is still a great deal.

Regarding the pre fader aux sends, we felt it was the way users are accustomed to on Cubase, Samplitude and other mixers. But our product managers can definitely look at adding other options via a future firmware update.

[RoadRanger]

Originally Posted by caitlyntw

Hello RoadRanger,
It is not our intention to confuse customers with the Summit/S16 naming. Given the circumstance at the time, we needed to restrict our spending on our product development and people, not legal.

Sounds reasonable to me - it was just rather confusing to us here in the states thinking about buying one .

The next digital mixer from Phonic will indeed have full MIDI capabilities, remote editing program, optional external screen/mouse, and we are looking into naming it something other than the S16.

Yah, IMO yous guys kinda burned that one - kinda silly trying to explain to dealers and potential customers the difference betwen an S16 and an S16 .

That product will be at least $2000 MAP without the USB recording interface, so your current Phonic digital mixer is still a great deal.

We shall see .

Regarding the pre fader aux sends, we felt it was the way users are accustomed to on Cubase, Samplitude and other mixers.

Yous guys may never understand how that statement would tick off a live sound guy (hint: you mentioned two "recording only" mixers totally useless for live sound). OTOH your works like the Yamaha 01V96 so I can't really fault you - except I sure would like mixer designers to pay a bit of attention to what the live sound market needs.

Probably the most respected small live sound mixer is the A&H MixWiz - partially because it defaults to the pre-fader sends also being pre-EQ and re-insert (but it has internal jumpers to move that tap point on a per-channel basis).

The Presonus StudioLive is gaining a lot of market share now as it is very "live" friendly. The pre-fader sends are switchable to post gate, post limiter, or post mute - with a fixed order of insert, phase, HPF, gate, comp, EQ, limiter, and mute. It also is a true 16 channel board as opposed to yours only having 13 for the stage - in live use you always need one input for a talkback mic and two more for the break music. The SL16 has 23 channels of A/D including 16 "normal" channels, a stereo channel for break music, two more stereo channels, and a dedicated talkback channel.

I'm going to try to use a stereo analog to s/pdif converter into your AES input for the break music and get back up to the number of channels a MizWix has in normal use - I'd be happy with that .

[TuMadre]

Originally Posted by RoadRanger

...is also is a true 16 channel board as opposed to yours only having 13 for the stage - in live use you always need one input for a talkback mic and two more for the break music. The SL16 has 23 channels of A/D including 16 "normal" channels, a stereo channel for break music, two more stereo channels, and a dedicated talkback channel.

I noticed in Andertons post near the top of this page, a photo showing 2TR ins (as well as outs) - in my world these are for break music.

Is there something about this board that won't output this into the mains?

[RoadRanger]

 

Originally Posted by TuMadre

I noticed in Andertons post near the top of this page, a photo showing 2TR ins (as well as outs) - in my world these are for break music.

 

Those are switched into channels 15 and 16 using those up if you want to use them. The Yamaha 01V96 also does that .

[caitlyntw]

Admittedly, our main product manager for the Phonic S Digital Mixer has a strong studio background and is from the recording side so his personal passion and preference tends to bleed into the resulting product. I'm going to ask him to take a careful look at all your comments and see if we can improve the product for a live application.

We're open to all feedback on Phonic's next digital mixer to make it a live desk. Changes are always easier when we're still in development phase.

[RoadRanger]

No worries - Presonus is a recording biased company too and their mixer had issues for live sound usage when it first came out . In fact there is a beta firmware out now that once again improves their "live" usability.

You actually start off with a couple advantages over the SL - you have full range fully parametric EQ and the hi and low can be switched to LP and HP so your output EQs can be used as a "poor man's" crossover with an aux fed sub setup and your EQ should be more usable for feedback suppression on the monitor feeds . Feel free to contact me off-line if you'd like further input from the "live side" .

Unfortunately without those three more inputs I mentioned (stereo iPod and talkback) you'll always have limited appeal to the live market - the Yamaha 01V96 gets away with it because everyone adds an 8 channel ADAT expander to it anyways as it only has 12 mic pre's so it ends up with 20 mic inputs and 4 line inputs (2 of those normally used for the iPod) plus 14 outputs (4 multi's, the mains plus 8 on the expander).

[Anderton]

Originally Posted by caitlyntw

Admittedly, our main product manager for the Phonic S Digital Mixer has a strong studio background and is from the recording side so his personal passion and preference tends to bleed into the resulting product. I'm going to ask him to take a careful look at all your comments and see if we can improve the product for a live application.

We're open to all feedback on Phonic's next digital mixer to make it a live desk. Changes are always easier when we're still in development phase.

FWIW - I just wanted to add that is NOT corporate-speak for "go away." I've met the Phonic people at trade shows and they are indeed very interested in feedback, and requests have an interesting way of showing up in the future.

I'm approaching it more from a studio standpoint myself, so that makes your comments additionally valuable as it gives a different perspective. But of course, that's what's cool about a pro review: I don't know everything, so when you get an entire group of people discussing a piece of gear, a much fuller picture emerges.

Speaking of which...I'm done with my NAMM video obligations, so I can get back to pro reviews again.

[RoadRanger]

Originally Posted by Anderton

FWIW - I just wanted to add that is NOT corporate-speak for "go away." I've met the Phonic people at trade shows and they are indeed very interested in feedback, and requests have an interesting way of showing up in the future.

Kudos to them for participating here and to you for a bunch of valuable info that I'm sure will be most helpful when my Summit/S16 shows up on Friday or more likely Monday . I was hoping to use it Saturday but the vendor I bought if from had to track down the last one in the country (?) and ship it from Nevada. They usually ship from NJ which is next day via UPS ground for me.

EDIT> Just checked UPS tracking and it's been rescheduled to Friday delivery - yeah for me .

[Anderton]

Receive on Friday, use on Saturday? Wow, that's pretty brave. Remember what I said about the "eureka" moment when the UI made sense to me - there are many ways to view what's going on in the mixer, and once you "get" the operating system, it all falls into place. Until you do, it can be somewhat mystifying.

I'll be curious to see what you think of the reverb when you get it. It really sounds good to me, but as we all know, reverb is pretty subjective...I tend to favor the smooth/transparent/airy type more than the "you can hear the reflections" type.

[RoadRanger]

I'll not be using much more than the basics - it'll be a reunion gig for a local band from the 60's for a fundraiser they're putting on. A gate on the kick is all I need for dynamics and some sort of basic reverb/chorus. I've used a StudioLive and a Behringer DDX3216 (Yamaha 01V96 clone) before so am not "starting from scratch" as far as digital mixers go. Hey, "No guts - no glory", eh?

[RoadRanger]

Well, I didn't even power it up before the gig and it had a 12/09 manufacture date on it so an old firmware. Besides the usual digital board startup issues (EVERYTHING is off and not assigned to anything ) and some things that newer firmware improved upon (and I was aware of from reading the release notes) the only issue I had was I didn't have the manual with me and couldn't figure out how to "safe solo" everything. Worked smoothly and sounded great otherwise. I did HPF the mains at 100hz and used a post-fader aux for the sub feed - the multi out I used was HPF'd at 40 and LPF'd at 100 and it worked well enough without an external crossover . Having only 13 channels for the stage left me with one spare but I only had two mic's on the drums. I'll definitely be trying to use the AES input for break music soon to free up a couple more channels for the stage. I did received the USB/Firewire card free in the box but haven't installed it yet. Anyways this week I'll update the firmware and set up a starting scene suitable for live work. I haven't looked but I assume it doesn't have one already loaded?

[RoadRanger]

I updated the firmware to the latest Monday night no problem. It is MUCH easier to do on this mixer than a StudioLive. The Summit/S16 just needs the file on an SDCard whereas the StudioLive requires a firewire connection and a program installed on a computer. Probably not a problem for yous Mac-centric studio guys but us lowly live guys tend to be PC and getting firewaire on a PC is a bit of a nightmare .

I also spent a couple hours setting up a baseline "live sound" scene. I did find a couple issues that I'm discussing with Phonic over on their user forum:
http://getsatisfaction.com/phonic/topics
Specifically you can't presently get the FX into the monitors . Occasionally the talent will ask for that although I try to discourage it . Phonic is in the midst of changing the FX from being a typical aux fed configuration to being insertable on any channel, aux, or group so if they do that and also allow summing multiple sources on the multi outs we'd be golden I think .

There is also no button to defeat the FX between songs so the talent can chat up the audience. I've suggested that they let you re-assign the "main" "on" button to that function as I find that redundant to the fader right under it. Maybe they'll also allow the six buttons under the display to be re-assignable as they presently only duplicate the touch screen buttons directly above them .

[RoadRanger]

 

Originally Posted by Anderton

I'll be curious to see what you think of the reverb when you get it. It really sounds good to me, but as we all know, reverb is pretty subjective...I tend to favor the smooth/transparent/airy type more than the "you can hear the reflections" type.

 

I didn't get to fool around with the FX much but they didn't instantly offend me unlike the FX on some other boards. They are certainly "good enough" for live use and might even be "great". They will shortly change the FX to be insertable and that should get interesting .

[RoadRanger]

BTW I set up an unofficial user's forum for this mixer here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PhonicS16

[Anderton]

Originally Posted by RoadRanger

There is also no button to defeat the FX between songs so the talent can chat up the audience. I've suggested that they let you re-assign the "main" "on" button to that function as I find that redundant to the fader right under it. Maybe they'll also allow the six buttons under the display to be re-assignable as they presently only duplicate the touch screen buttons directly above them .

Hey RoadRanger - thanks for sharing your experiences, and also, for being "fair and balanced" in your comments. I'm sure Phonic is taking notes

Regarding the effects thing, there's an "all effects off" button in Sonar X1 that I've found REALLY useful in the studio. I can definitely see where this would be great for live performance. I don't know how much latitude Phonic has in terms of making updates (e.g., remaining space in ROM) but it's encouraging that the mixer will continue to evolve.

I'll be checking into your user group from time to time. You might want to include a link to this review, too

[RoadRanger]

Originally Posted by Anderton

I'll be checking into your user group from time to time. You might want to include a link to this review, too

Way ahead of you :
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PhonicS16/links

BTW I did do some more critical listening of the 'verbs and am quite pleased with them. Yous studio guys are more demanding I'm sure and mostly use plugins on your DAWs these days? But for anyone doing "live to two track" recording or otherwise mixing down on this mixer I can't imagine a nicer hardware FX unit . It even makes my Nady SP1 talkback microphone sound good - and MF basically paid me to take it with one of their micstand/microphone bundles a few years back that was less than the stand alone (which is what I wanted to buy) .

[Anderton]

Thanks for the link. It would be great to get some other owners in here so you won't have to feel so alone

The reverb was a real surprise to me. Frankly, it sounds better than a lot of plug-ins. Usually, I would expect reverb in a unit like this to be "here's a reverb, yeah it's not that great but what do you expect in a mixer? Now go away." But that's not the case at all.