The Blackbird Academy, a premier studio and live sound engineering school in Nashville, has recently installed and integrated the Roland M-48 Personal Mixing System into their program.
The Academy’s unique “hands-on” approach curriculum provide students access to world-famous Blackbird Studio gear and engineers.
“At The Blackbird Academy, our prime emphasis is teaching the students to provide the client with high-quality sound and service throughout the production process,” says co-director and instructor Kevin Becka. “The compact, M-48 mixers punch this ticket by being easy to use, having a full set of features like EQ, reverb, panning and level controls, plus they sound great.
“I have experience with this system in a live sound setting and am amazed at how well it fits into our tracking, and overdub sessions at The Blackbird Academy.”
The M-48 mixers are used every day in Studio I at The Blackbird Academy. The studio is built around a Beatle theme, and like Abbey Road, the control room for Studio I is on the second floor. When they built the room, it was going to be a daunting task to drag copper downstairs to all the live room panels. Becka was happy that the Roland M-48 system worked with their existing Cat-5 runs.
The M-48’s personal mixers have proven to be easy for the students to grasp and get up and running quickly. With the bankable channels and multi-function encoders, its effortless for student/engineers to show the musicians how to jump between the functions and concentrate on getting themselves a great mix. The three-band EQ and reverb parameters are simple but sound great and are very usable.
Becka concludes, “We are very happy with how the M-48 works with our curriculum, studio workflows and how the students have taken to the system – they are very impressed and so are we.”
