I love gear! As long as it’s good, solid, stable, and does what it says it’s going to do, that is.
Every now and again a new bit of gear appears that is a must-have and I’ve just found one. Dark Matter Audio are close to releasing the DMA1 and I’m going to camp outside their door on delivery day.
There are plenty of techy reviews out there already, so I won’t go into too much detail except to say that it has 4 inputs and 10 outputs, USB port and WiFi/Ethernet connections, an ever-growing app store, and sounds genuinely fantastic. It comes with a complete set of sound tools: loop-station, compressor, delay, reverb, amp sim, overdrive, modulation effects, synths, and a touch-screen and foot-controller to drive it all. Oh, yes: it also does surround-sound!
But what is it for?
OK: it was first shown to me as a guitar effects unit but it’s much much more than that. Here’s a list (by no means complete: I think of new uses every time I get my hands on it.)
Gigging rig. Throw away your mixing desk, guitar effects pedals, vocal pre-amp, etc. Take a DMA1, plug a mic into one input, guitar into another, additional mics/instruments into the other two inputs, and attach a pair of powered speakers. job done. Every song can have its own settings for the mics and guitars, recalled by a quick touch on the screen or foot-controller. Attach monitors to the outputs and you can even build your own monitor mixes!
No more crap sound engineers! (See my blog post Memo to sound engineers for a list of their worst sins) on showcase gigs: just send the engineer a stereo mix and tell him/her not to add EQ or reverb. Perfect sound every gig. And again, you can control your own monitor mix.
Struggling with latency in your DAW? (Ooo-er, Missus!) I hate not being able to make myself sound more talented with a bit of delay when I’m recording lead guitar tracks. No problem: use the DMA1 to send a clean signal to the DAW out of one output and monitor yourself in glorious stereo with surround-sound effects out of another.
Fed up with musicians all asking for different headphone mixes at the same time? Give them each a DMA1 and they’ll leave you in peace.I want 3 for the studio straight away.
Travelling recording system. Away from home? don’t let those inspired ideas slip away: record them on the DMA1.
Some people who’ve seen it say it’s just an iPad without the non-musical stuff: WRONG! The sound quality alone is miles better than the iPad, there is no latency, and you don’t have to plug in breakout boxes, interfaces, etc.
And no, I don’t work for them or have shares in them. Wish I did: this is a killer box.
Dark Matter Audio’s site.
