Keep your act and your audience connected without lifting a finger!

Mic stand hammocks available direct from us for a limited time only. Note: Hammocks only suitable for system techs/engineers under 12 and under 20kgs.

You’re In Safe Hands

You’ve read the previous Techblog all about making your life easier by choosing redundancy, right?  Taking the weight off, by getting something to do the monitoring of your precious feeds and switch in some backup plan if something screws up?

Well, as you might have gathered, we have got this covered for you, and not just once, but three times!

Let me introduce you to the MX36.  The MX36 will look after all your signal redundancy needs, and for sets of four channels, not only for stereo pairs.  So, your Left-Right-Sub-Fill mixes can be hooked up to this handy processor, on Dante, AES and analogue all at the same time.  Without needing to connect a PC, or an iPad, you can set-up how you want to use the redundancy direct from the front panel with two simple button presses, and then leave it in charge.

Big Green Rings

This in itself could be a bacon-saver, but the MX36’s modus operandi isn’t actually the redundancy aspect – it’s all about the three big green rings.  Let us explain – have a quick look at the rear panel…there’s a lot going on:

That arsenal of connectivity should give you a clue as to what the MX36 is all about – it’s designed to switch up to three x four channels from your consoles to feed the upstream processor or amplifiers, allowing for quick and easy management of the desks.  It’s also designed to output these in all three formats – so you get a set of four analogue outputs, a set of 2 stereo AES outputs (with external wordclock sync if you need it) and four transmitter outputs on the Dante network, all simultaneously with no set-up required.

If you can’t use the redundancy aspect of things, just turn it off – one button press per A/B/C set of channels sorts this out.  Or, if your main act want that extra safety net, have it running on one set, and not on the others – it’s totally flexible and instant to configure.

Always Listening, Always Checking

As if that wasn’t enough,  every single line that connects to the MX36 can be individually confidence checked via a high power headphone monitor section.  Look at this diagram – everywhere you see the green “headphone” graphic is a group of monitoring points:

This means that you can check each individual channel in your Dante streams, each half of any AES stream, and every analogue input one at a time.  There is also a high resolution meter that allows you to check levels accurately, and you can even listen to your local mic input and the stereo background music input should you need to.  That’s pretty comprehensive!

So those big green rings from earlier – these are the three most important buttons on the panel – the three buttons that switch between your three consoles:

There’s a subtle cross-fade, performed by the DSP, to avoid any nasty surprises, and more than one console’s L-R-FF-Sub set can be active at any time, should you prefer to cross fade instead of fade out and back in.  And yet there’s more functionality…!

VoG + BGM

As if this wasn’t enough, there’s also scope to include those extra little features that just make things easier and don’t waste channels elsewhere – a fully featured mic-preamp with 48v phantom power, sweetening EQ and compressor (all preset for best results), and a stereo line input for plugging in your BGM source.  The mic input is on the front AND the back, and the stereo input is a mini-jack on the front and “proper” balanced XLRs on the back.  Where these inputs are routed is quickly set up via  a couple of front panel buttons again, and we’ve even programmed in the most useful combos of routing options to your choices for the mic, so you don’t have to switch through all possible choices.

You can monitor the audio before you commit to putting it out there, and it is also bussed out on Dante to cascade to bigger systems.

Did We Mention Expansion Yet?

And maybe we won’t for now.  Someone will always want more inputs, or the ability to handle more than 3 consoles, so with the connection of a Dante cable, all of this becomes possible, including monitoring across more than one unit, and doubling up on the stereo BGM and VoG mic inputs.  If you want to read all about how that works – check it out here.

You Deserve A Break…

We really did design the MX36 to make like easier for you.  No longer will you have to press into service a box full of DSP that’s not designed for the job and have to spend ages designing a workable solution.  Gone is the need to hook up a computer and navigate a host of pages just to mute and unmute some channels.  And best of all, the MX36 will accept the most popular audio formats so you are guaranteed to have at least one easy connection method to every console.  If you’ve more than one, then protect your connections with the redundancy features.

Now crack open a beer, read the brochure and have a rest in that hammock. Actually maybe not THAT hammock!