anomie life

When one hears the name Marshall Electronics, also known as MXL, they probably associate it with Marshall Amplifiers, but interestingly enough Marshall Electronics and Marshall Amplifiers aren’t associated in anyway. With all the trademark and copyright infringing lawsuits flying around lately it really surprises me that these two companies can co-exist peacefully. Maybe MXL found a secret loophole and are surviving because of it. MXL has actually been around for about 25 years. They make LCD’s, optical systems, cables, and, obviously, microphones.

When shopping for an affordable microphone the V57M immediately stands out because its one of the most inexpensive condenser mics period. One might assume that since its at such a low price point then it must be a piece of junk. However, from my experience with it, this is not the case whatsoever.

A second thing that one immediately notices about the microphone is that its actually constructed nicely. Its got a nice gold look to it and you can get a shock mount for about an extra $20. The diaphragm is 1-inch and it has a frequency response between 30 and 20,000 Hz. Since its a condenser mic it also requires 48 volt phantom power.

When I plugged this thing in and recorded a quick vocal I was floored by the sudden change and brightness of the sound. I had previously just used a $99 Shure SM68, but that always sounded muddy and flat. Seriously, the V57M just took that sound and lifted it right out of the mud. The only issue I first had was that I didn’t purchase a popscreen filter, so the ’s’s kept on messing up the takes. At first we improvised by singing through a shirt and then I got clever and we used two small metal colanders. Finally, a few months later I went down to Mars Music and forked out $25 for a nice popscreen filter that clamps onto the mic stand.

I also tried this out on recording an acoustic guitar. We recorded the whole Rain Song using just this microphone for both the acoustic and vocals (tracked separately of course). The acoustic we used was a Tacoma that has a really bassy, rich tone and it sounded amazing on the recording. While we were recording it was actually storming outside so we opened the window and recorded the sound of the rain and thunder. The sound of the rain has often been mistaken for static on the recording, but the mic picked up the low end from the thunder marvelously. It worked great for the Tacoma, but when recording Scott’s brighter sounding Breedlove acoustic a few months later for Standing Here it was possibly a little too bright sounding and we had to equalize in some more low sounds to compensate.

The only real disappointment I had with this microphone was recording a piano. We tried this mic on my mom’s upright Baldwin as well as her Kawai baby grand. Oddly enough, both of them sounded extremely muddy. Granted, one cause of this could possibly be the room, but the sound was still dissapointing.

Overall though, and for the price point of $70, this microphone is absolutely amazing. It will literally take your old dingy vocals and bring them to the next level of clarity. Obviously, a $600 condenser mic is going to sound better than this mic, but for $70 you just can’t beat it.

In a previous post I briefly wrote about the Phonic Helix 24 Channel mixer, but I didn’t really go into as much detail as I think it deserves. So I’m going to write a full blown write-up/review/whatever you want to call it about the Helix 24.

Phonic is a relatively unknown company, but they claim they’ve been around for 25 years. They make mixers, digital interfaces, amplifiers, and speakers, but don’t really have a name in the industry so I doubt many professional sound engineers, especially live engineers, would trust them.

The Helix 24 “channel” is effectively 16 channels and 4 sub groups. I think they get to claim the extra 8 from the Auxes or Main stereo channels. 16 Channels might be seriously lacking if you wanted to use it for live applications, but for recording, 16 channels is plenty. All 16 mic/line channels have a built in preamp with external gain control, so when you change the gain control it affects the signal that the computer receives. Every channel also includes a 3-band EQ which, once again, is kind of on the skimpy side for live audio, but plenty for recording. The signal that goes into the computer is pre-eq anyway so its really only useful for monitoring. Only the first 4 channels have a pad if you have something that’s really loud, but I haven’t found an instrument yet that requires the pad to keep from peaking.

As far as Auxiliary outputs, the Helix 24 is mediocre. It claims it has “8″ AUX Returns, but its really 4 stereo AUX returns and 6 AUX Sends. Effectively, you have easy control over 4 AUX’s for monitoring. So for monitoring you can have 4 different monitor mixes and, if necessary, one person can use the main headphone for their mix. One side note though, if you want to actually be able to hear from the AUX’s you need a headphone amplifier because they’re unpowered signals.

I’ve had this mixer for a little over a year now. The first thing that I used it for was recording Running Blind. I immediately fell in love with the ability to play like I’m in a live setting, but actually have every channel going straight to a computer which can be mixed later. It kind of gives the best of both worlds of digital and analog. The audio quality that comes through the firewire sounds great, but every once and awhile the connection will get a little flaky on me. Sometimes I have to restart the computer or mixer to get the recording software to start receiving audio again. One morning I spent over 2 hours trying to get it working and finally got it running by uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers. That was in Windows and was quite a pain. But I recently acquired a MacBook and I’m hoping it likes OS X a little better. Windows + Adobe Audition wasn’t bad at all, it just had a few reliability issues here and there. But when it works, it works nicely.
One thing that’s great about the Helix 24 is that you can also use it for live sound. Whenever we’re rehearsing we just plug everything into it and use a set of studio monitors to amplify whatever we need. Sometime we plug everything in, sometimes we just plug in a few vocal microphones.

Overall, I really enjoy and definitely don’t regret my purchase of the Helix 24. It does everything I want in a recording/live mixer. And one of the greatest things about the Helix 24 is it’s price point. $729 for a 16-channel recording mixer isn’t bad at all. Mackie has a very similar mixer which they sell for $1250. So you get practically the same thing, but for $500 cheaper. Thank you Phonic for making a very affordable recording console for the musician looking for a way to do multi-track recording without robbing a bank.