Studio Mate Mixer Review

For most giggers, the cost of equipment is a real issue. We need to get the best gear for the best price. This is one area in which Carvin really shines. For decades, it has given us more bang for our buck with both instruments and audio gear.

With this in mind, I decided to put this Carvin sound system through as much testing as possible. The system I received for review featured a CX1272 12-channel mixer, two 832 speakers, two CM50 mics, mic cords and speaker cables.

I had a gig the same day I picked up the Carvin gear, so I threw šscuce me, loaded the equipment into my truck and took off for the club; there was no time to even unpack the boxes, much less reading a manual. At this particular gig I was playing with my four piece rock band, wich includes drums, bass, electric guitar and myself on six-string electric and 12-string acoustic guitar. The club held about 200 people and was very standard in terms of stage size, ceiling height and wall coverings. Set-up was very quick and easy. we were running three vocals, my 12-string and the kick drum through the mains, and rolld back the vocals and 12-string through the monitors. Išd like to make a note about the speaker cables that were included with my Carvin system: they were 50 feet long. I carry 30 foot cables for my own system and inevitalby Išll get to a gig where I need a 31 foot cable. Having 50 feet of cable was a total luxury.

The system itself sounded great; we plenty of bass in the low end for the kick and enough highs to satisfy my 12-string acoustic guitar and my lead guitarists falsetto backing vocals.

My favorite feature of the entire system was the CX1272 mixeršs power section. Seven hundred watts is a ton of power for a small, all-in-one package. We had more clean power and overall headroom than we would ever need for a gig this size or twice this size.

The onboard effects were also very impressive. Carvin uses a 24-bit processor and instead of 100 or more effects, it has refined the system down to 16 very clean, very tasty effects. You get four reverbs, two flanges, four choruses and six echo reverbs with delay times of 50, 100, 150, 250, 350, and 500 milliseconds. They are accessible through analog knobs (I love analog) that are easier to dial in than your car radio.

I did one more gig to really test the system. This time, I used the mixer and speakers strictly as the monitor end of a larger sound system at an outdoor event with multiple groups. I fed two monitor sends from my main board to channels 1 and 2 of the Carvin. From there, I powered the 832 speakers plus a couple of floor wedges. I ran everything from vocals to brass to keys to guitars through my new monitor system, with great success.

The performers could hear everything, so they were really happy. This allowed them to play their best so the audience was really happy, and in an instant I could see that old equation of good players working with good gear equaling a good time.

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