Sometimes I insert the effects into my DAW signal chain, specially for reverbs. They seem much more natural that the plugins I use, even being digital...

If you’ve seen one of the Ui24R launch videos, you’ll probably see the Soundcraft guy talking about the similarity of this product and the others in the Ui line (namely the Ui12 and the Ui16), and although they look about the same size and shape, he points out that this latest addition to the family doesn’t in fact have much in common with its siblings. The Ui24R is, apparently, a completely new product in terms of concept and design, and this is underlined by the assertion that “only the handles are the same” — which is, I think, a great introduction to this new mixer. There is a lot of flexibility offered by the internal patchbay, so much so that I haven't been able to make full use of it. The Ui24R is endowed with both subgroups and VCAs, which can be especially useful when mixing on a smaller screen where the number of channels in view is restricted. There’s a handy feature called View Groups that allows you to set up a number of instantly recallable custom views (like user-defined fader layers) and this can make mixing a live show much easier with fewer visible strips. It’s nice to have both groups and VCAs as they are useful in different ways, but both contribute to making the operator’s job easier and extending the amount of flexibility and control you have.

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Once you’ve balanced your channels, created a monitor mix for your musicians and built-up a great sounding FOH mix, the next step would be to store your current settings. The Ui24R has an elaborate snapshot system that will enable you to store multiple different desk settings to recall instantly throughout the gig or per venue.

For live shows and recording, the main mixer control surface layout is where most time will be spent, and it’s a very good layout — neat, very clear, and everything easily understandable and accessible with most screen buttons labelled in full rather than with hieroglyphs, the main exception being the ‘Ui’ badge, which is really a button, and is used to display or hide the side panel containing useful navigation shortcuts to some of the main fader layers, mute groups and so on. Built-in dual-band Wi-Fi eliminates the need for a router to provides a reliable connection to up to 10 mobile devices in mission critical situations You’d expect any decent digital mixer to include at least channel EQ and dynamics, with some processing available on the outputs, and this is often where product differentials are most noticeable. The Ui24R provides a four-band parametric EQ, high- and low-pass filters, compressor, de-esser and noise gate on every input channel, and a 31-band graphic EQ, gate and compressor on every output channel, with the main left/right outputs also benefitting from low- and high-pass filters. Lexicon Reverb PreDelay: easily set the time before first surface reflections and simulate desired acoustic environments

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The mixer section is interesting and impressive. There are an increasing number of these digital ‘stagebox’ mixers coming onto the market and — depending on your requirements of course — they are generally extremely convenient, being portable, easy to set up and operate, and have the ability to store settings, which is ideal for gigging bands and small-scale shows. This classy all-in-one stagebox-cum-mixer combines some of Harman’s most highly regarded technology — to great success!