Epi[demi]c reasons for an audio upgrade
With the onset of pandemics and travel restrictions, a couple changes to the usual cycles of life collided fortuitously. The in-person events at which I typical present went virtual, requiring higher quality audio and video setups to stream my content. In-person hobbies were shut down indefinitely so I decided to learn the electric guitar. Yes, it was time to buy some new audio gear…
Pandemic Happens
Ever since I futzed around with amateur sound board work for a variety of organizations and events, I have been a HUGE fan of Mackie. Their gear in my experience is very durable, very good quality, and their manuals are sprinkled with good bits of humor. I mean, seriously, they have the “rude solo” LED - “Please forgive its rudeness, it is only trying to help, and wants to be your friend.”
Now, to be sure, I’m not a professional audio engineer and certainly can’t comment on their relative strengths/weaknesses compared to other audio gear. But, for my needs, I’ve never been disappointed by Mackie.
Mackie Element EM-91C Microphone
I didn’t really have that many requirements for these “unprecedented times”. The first, primary need was a professional quality microphone with a large frequency response. By far, the universal recommendation was the Blue Yeti. Unfortunately, given the price gouging on Amazon, it would seem the Blue Yeti was giving toilet paper and hand sanitizer a run for its money. I never saw it under 2x its list price.
While I still had other USB-based microphone options, I decided to keep the solution primarily “old school” with XLR and 1/4 TRS cables. There were two options available:
- the EM-89D, which looks to be a great microphone for stage.
- the EM-91C, which has a nice, large diaphragm condenser to pick up all the character surrounding the conversation.
Obviously, I went with the EM-91C.
It can have its challenges though. It will definitely pick up lip smacking, dramatic breathing (also known as “the big fat sigh”), etc. I very much enjoy this microphone as it can bring the audience “closer” into the performance but you have to be careful not to get too close!
Mackie ProFXv3 10 Channel Mixer
On the electric guitar front, I certainly wanted to try to learn something fairly different from the technical things I do on a daily basis. At the same time, I didn’t want to torture the family with a massive amplifier blasting my nails on chalkboard newbie efforts across the house - nor did I want to invest in one. I was leaning toward a nice, small mixer board and built-in effects as a temporary solution to see how far this guitar habit would go.
Honestly, I only needed the two channels - one for guitar, one for microphone - landing me square on the 6-channel mixer as shown here:
I am, though, my own worst consumer at times. For just a bit more money, I can upgrade to some pretty desirable features:
- Built-in compression on channels 1 and 2
- 3-band equalizer on each channel, as opposed to 2-bands
- Mute buttons for each channel
- 4 additional channels
I certainly wanted to experiment with compression to see if it brought any value to the quality of the recording. I’d also made extensive uses of ‘mute’ buttons in my trade. Without any high pressure sales, Mackie got a great upsell :)
As an added bonus, the Mackie ProFX v3 mixers also have a 2x4 USB recording interface, allowing for sends/receives to a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) - also known as your computer. With some of the free software available, GarageBand from Mac OS X, and the licenses that came with the Mackie, there’s definitely room to expand my capabilities in post production.
Mackie MDB-1P DI Box
One nice feature of the Mackie ProFXv3 10-channel mixer is the combination XLR and 1/4” inputs on channels 1 and 2. Combined with the High Z input, it is possible to directly insert the electric guitar. In this way, I was able to use the GigFX effects engine to get that rock distortion sound (or a decent enough approximation of it) when I practiced.
There’s only one, small, 48V problem… the condenser microphone requires power to work, typically drawn from the mixer board via 48V “phantom power”. As best I can tell, the electric guitar I have (and quite possibly all of them) can’t handle phantom power. The struggle then became either using the microphone for recording with phantom power while ensuring phantom power was off when I used the guitar.
Or, you can use a Direct Injection (DI) Box - or direct box, for short. These boxes take the 1/4” “unbalanced” signal from the guitar and converts the signal to a balanced XLR signal destined for the mixer. The internal direct box electronics isolate the phantom power in the XLR connection from the 1/4” connection. There are a couple direct box variants but all I needed was a single passive channel model, namely the MDB-1P.
Wrapping it all up
Here’s the final configuration that I’ve assembled.
As you can see in the photo, I added an adaptor to take the 1/4” main outputs and convert them into a 1/8” adapter to plug in some headphones. I do have to hear my playing after all.
Additionally, the USB connection from the back of the board is connected to my Mac Mini.
Stay tuned as there might be a post with samples of the audio in the near future!
Attribution
Please note: with the exception of the final photo showing my home studio setup, all other photos in this post are Mackie product photos, produced by Mackie and sourced from their website. I believe their use on this page falls into the fair use and will happily take them down by request from Mackie if that is deemed not to be the case.