It's always nice to come home to a present, and the upstanding folks at APB Dynasonics saw fit to let me demo one of their brand new ProRack Monitor model M1016 mixers for my birthday! I've literally just opened the box today and taken some photos, but I'll have plenty of use for it coming up, and of course anyone else who'd like to take a spin is welcome to borrow it.

Yes, that means these are now shipping and you can even have one for yourself.

If you haven't heard of the fine mixers coming out of Totowa, NJ on the LAB yet, I don't know what rock you've been living under. Many of us LABsters have been having extremely positive experiences with APB Dynasonics' excellent analog mixers, and there's no reason to expect anything but smiles from the new rack mount set, but that's my job to find out.

The M1016 offers the following features (shamelessly copied from their website):

• 16 Mono mic/line input channels, all with Spectra-quality microphone preamplifiers in a 10u (17.5” in x 19”) package.
• Built in Passive microphone splitter system on rear panel with Pin 1 lift switches.
• Minimum phase shift circuitry and internal Mother /Daughter Board construction derived from the Spectra console design.
• 48 volt Phantom Power switch, Polarity Reverse switch, Mic/Line switch, Mic Pad switch on input channels.
• Variable frequency high-pass filters on all input channels with a 20Hz to 400Hz sweep range at 12dB per octave.
• Input channels feature fixed high and low frequency EQ bands and two mid-sweep EQ bands, with EQ On switch with LED, The EQ internal design is based upon Spectra circuitry.
• Two (2) Mono mixes switchable between a pre or post fader source and include XLR balanced outputs and pre AFL (solo) TRS insert points.
• Eight (8) Stereo mixes, each with rotary level control and pan fader. These outputs each have balanced XLR outputs, Line (bus) inputs with each pair routed through return faders associated with each stereo master output section and pre AFL (solo) TRS insert connectors. Output may be selected to mono operation by front panel switch, making use of only the left inset point feeding both left and right output connectors.
• Internally illuminated Mute and PFL/AFL switches along with 6-segment LED channel metering on all input channels.
• Eight sets of 10x2 segment output meters on each of the 8 Stereo Output master sections. Master output level is controlled from eight (8) 60mm stereo faders, with each of these output sections having internally illumined Mute and AFL switches. Bus level signal monitoring using bi-color LED's are provided on each stereo mix bus pair.
• Rear panel rotates and may be locked in any of three preset angles (referenced to the front panel) – 90 degrees, 135 degrees, or 180 degrees.
• 100-240 VAC, 50/60Hz Power Supply - Field replaceable (plug in) without disassembly of mixer.
• Adjustable lamp dimmer provided for the 4-Pin XLR connector for use with (optional) gooseneck lamp.

I've played around with this unit on a few trade show floors already, and it's well built and feature packed... the ProRack series is really unbeatable in terms of quality and feature density. If you need to go small but still need a real feature set and the sound quality of a full frame analog board, I know of no alternative. 8 stereo/mono mixes plus 2 mono mixes, each with its own set of meters and little fader for a bus in (tracks, anyone?)... any show you could reasonably bring a compact mixer to, this mixer can handle. It would also make a great matrix, come to think of it.

For now, I leave you with some photos:

[Updated on: Mon, 21 April 2008 10:44]

Sorry, I had this corrected in our literature but I forgot to make this correction on our web site.

Chuck Augustowski
APB-DynaSonics

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Lets see if I can add a few photos so you don't have to click links ... Well just one.

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We've put a dozen or so shows on the ProRack now and all of my guys are thrilled with it's performance. It is quite simply a very high performance, full featured monitor desk packed into a 19" rack width package. Typically, if a job required more than one monitor mix and and the budget didn't allow for 2 techs and an onstage monitor mix, I simply passed on the show. Well, that's all changed now. My guys came up with the setup shown in the attached pictures and they say they are completely comfortable giving a client 4 or even 6 mixes from FOH with this setup. This means I can now put out very high quality small system packages with multiple monitor mixes and only one tech. This opens up a whole new lower price strata to my clients for a flexible and compact package. I am excited about this and the income potential it adds. A tip of the hat and a thank you to my pals at APB!

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[Updated on: Mon, 12 May 2008 14:09]

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