Liquid Mix impressions and result

[Martin Naef]

Bar,

I've recently had this chat with Mr. Punkdisco about the Liquid Mix and 
he asked me to write about my impressions. I've scored one last week on 
e-bay for a decent price and had the chance to put it to the test now (I 
know, I should save the money for the little mister, but sometimes daddy 
wants a new toy too...).

The result first: http://www.navisto.ch/tracks/Navisto-AnalogueDreams-v2.mp3

This is an older piece that needed some edits to sort out the timing, 
and a complete mix overhaul. For EQ and compression I used the Liquid 
Mix almost exclusively, reverb is my usual M3000 setup, the thick pad is 
the result of an overdriven AFM-1 filterbox with a bit of EQ and 
compression shaping. That's pretty much it in terms of effects. The 
synths are a mix of my external boxes (Nord Modular, Korg Z1 and ESX, 
Roland TD-10, and Cakewalk's Rapture and Dimension Pro).

That piece has two major changes from my previous workflow: First of 
all, it's really a "in the box" mix, as opposed to using the 01Vs as I 
did before for my own pieces. I should mention, though, that I 
definitely will not get rid of my mixers: Monitoring external synths 
through the DAW does not work to my satisfaction, the timing is just 
never quite right once you've got a more complex bussing structure in 
place with plug-ins that introduce latency.

So what about the Liquid Mix? So far it's proven to be a reasonably 
reliable piece of hardware. Failures so far had to be attributed to 
other things going wrong and leaving the LM in a messed up state - which 
is quickly solved with a reset on the box. It doesn't seem to be 
compatible with Sonar 7 64bit mixdown, though - not a big issue, but it 
did freeze Sonar...

Sound: The LM is a chameleon, with 20 EQ and 40 compressor emulations. 
With EQ and compressors in general, I find that the differences between 
decent models tend to be subtle, and it takes a lot of time to really 
get to grips with what model works best with what source. A good idea to 
start is to stand on the shoulders of giants and go by their 
recommendations - read: listen to what "big" mixing engineer use and 
experiment after their advice. The fact that all emulations have cryptic 
names on the LM doesn't help here, so it always takes an extra step 
through the manual to find the "classics". An even better idea would 
have been to follow your ears by switching through the emulations and 
identify what sounds best. Unfortunately, LM resets all parameters as 
you select a new emulation, so you can't easily do A/B testing. V3 
software, please?

So without any good clues where to start, I admit I was rather fishing 
in the dark with the emulations I chose, and it will take me another 
couple of months to really understand what's going on - if ever. Paul's 
approach of selecting a few models and stick to them is probably not the 
worst idea, although I felt I wanted to understand a much wider range. 
But the good news is that despite my choices being rather haphazard, I 
felt I was rewarded with a sweet sound. It's not the big "wow" effect as 
I had with effects like reverb, but rather a feeling that things just 
fall into place, with no nastiness as I explored the settings. I didn't 
play around with the really difficult sources yet (vocals), but I felt I 
could shape things better than with Sonar's built in tools (which are 
perfectly decent), particularly where I wanted a big bass (drums) or 
open up the highs (piano and toms) without them sounding "artificial".

The user interface is interesting. I agree with magazine reviews that 
certain "emulations" go a bit too far: sometimes e.g. a short attack is 
clockwise, sometimes it's counter-clockwise, depending on the original - 
but since the actual model isn't visible in the UI - neither by name nor 
visual, it's a bit pointless. I did use the remote quite a bit to tweak 
settings, but didn't really use the display - instead, I mostly used the 
VST GUI to show settings and click on the things I wanted to edit, but 
used the rotaries on the remote to actualy dial in the values. Saving a 
bit of money and going for the cut-down LM 16 certainly isn't a big 
compromise in terms of UI, although I'd probably miss the extra horsepower.

It's definitely too early to come to a final conclusion. But so far, the 
Liquid Mix is certainly a good tool for those who take mixing seriously. 
It's not the big massive "wow!" factor, but it just works, and works 
well. As for the sound, I currently have to rely on the word of more 
experienced people who like it a lot. Comparing the old and new mix of 
Analogue Dreams, I certainly like the new one a lot better. But much of 
this is down to a different instruments, different workflow (software 
vs. 01V), and more experience. I can't be bothered to go back to the mix 
and redo it all without the LM and see how far I get - I wouldn't expect 
the difference to be absolutely massive, but enough for me to justify 
the £250 I paid.

Martin