Ray Legnini and Rob Garrett of Aviom

Pardon my namedropping, but Buck Dharma of the Blue Oyster Cult told me about a cool new little CAT-5 monitor mixer, when he and I were chatting at NAMM, but he could not remember the name of the manufacturer. I appealed for help on the LAB afterwards, and some nice folks told me that a company called Aviom is the maker of the A-16 Personal Monitor Mixing System. I have seen little Mackies in the big room at Ocean Way Nashville, for players to structure their own monitor mixes, as well as Yamaha 01V’s used by musicians at Cirque du Soleil, and with the Neil Diamond band.

The A-16 mixer is really compact, and the data for its 16 channels can be looped through a number of remote units, being driven by the A-16T transmitter, which digitizes the analog incoming signals from instruments or a console. Aviom is positioning the A-16 as usable by studio musicians, and also in live situations, both for wedge mixes and IEM’s. I would say that one would have to be careful if allowing musicians to drive their own wedge mixes, a nice limiter might be in order, but to run ears, this thing would be really appealing in a lot of situations, particularly for players that are in a stationary seated position, like drummers and keyboardists.

The mixer unit can be set on a table, or on a mic stand mounting bracket made by Aviom. It does not have faders, but a single set of knobs for volume and tone, and then push-button switches to select which input is being addressed. The user can save 16 different scenes. On the transmitter, each pair of inputs can be put into a stereo mode, and then on the mixer, there is also a pan control. 1/4” inputs and thru jacks are on the transmitter, and the inputs can be padded down if needed.

If this package holds up well in actual use in the field and in studios, it is difficult to imagine anything other than it becoming incredibly popular. There is also a third optional component, the A-16D A-Net distributor, which can receive a signal from either the A-16T transmitter or another A16-D, and it has eight separate CAT-5 outputs, so that the users do not need to daisy chain their mixers.

Aviom’s Ray Legnini told me that retail for the mixer will be around $440, with the transmitter going for $750, and $300 for the A16-D distributor.