So I have dusted off a DL1608 to operational check for a planned future event. After some eight months void of MasterFader/Dl use, the pluses and minuses that existed 8 months+ prior, appear ever more magnified now, what with the release of a variety of other manufactures similarly targeted offerings of M.I. consumer-level digital audio mixers.
A docked iPad original ( OS 5.x), a wfi iPad Mini original (OS 8.x), an APE ( dual/band,DHCP ), MasterFader Classic, and all appears to connect and operate with the quick relative ease and simplicity as I had known it to months earlier.
IMO, the Beauty of the DL1608/MF Classic is the Classic app interface. The app is something I would suggest to be a work of art in HUI design. I find the the MF app ideally suited for the experienced and inexperienced users alike, providing essential and capable parameter control for the more seasoned operator, but with an ease and appeal most beneficial to the novice operator. Three years after the then `iPad Control Mixer category of one' DL1608 debut, and with the subsequent app revisions, the beauty in design is even more apparent with any comparative operational or demonstration time spent with competitive systems
remote apps and their user interface design.
The flip side to the Beauty of the DL1608/ MF Classic would be none other than the ugly Beast of the poor, sad, insulting, tragic and IMO and experience, virtually useless implementation of what has been marketed, promoted, sold, and implemented by Loud Technologies as a Reverb effect.
Three years passed and what might have been acceptable at such time of product debut as a somewhat recognizable, viable, and useful reverb, can only be considered unacceptable by today`s standards, quality standards established with the release of the other similar and competitive product lines and their implementation and variety of inclusive audio effects, in particular, reverberation. It sounded bad then, and it sounds worse now, as if the `capacitors have degraded '. But of course it did not really degrade, although it sure seems as if it amounted to it.
By as much as I have ascertained and compiled via user comments and reviews, not much if anything at all in fact has been changed or improved upon for the DL32R/ MF3.2 product model other than twice the fun and joy, or disappointment and misery depending upon ones perspective of course.
Acknowledging that I was fully aware at time of purchase of the state and quality of the effects, and with no expectations based on any manufacture stated promises of any improvement of such, there was only the consideration in my mind that it may be a possibility in a future firmware/app update, though not to be thought of as holding out hope for a miracle.
And so as much as it may sound as I am venting, I refer back to the praise and beauty of MF Classic. A damn shame Mackie`s DL line is dogged with the reality and reputation of the less than stellar FX. So it be. Sending the DL out to work with the accompanying Alesis Nanoverb as per norm.
