Full Disclosure:
I am writing this review after just installeing the driver without either reading the manual or actually playing with either RMAI. Also, I am a PreSonus dealer.
PresSonus just released version 1.5.0.29399 of their Universal Control application/driver for their new 16RMAI and 32RMAI 4 rack unit digital mixers to the general public. This is the first generation to have fully recallable, digitally controlled X-Max preamps.
It is also the first generation of mixer to require remote control as the unit itself only has a few dedicated controls, including a mute all, solo mode and headphone volume, and an input meter toggle button that switches between level and per channel phantom power.
You can download the drivers and quick start manuals here:
The UC application is available for both 32 and 64 bit version of Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1.
I have not confirmed if it works for Window 8. The UC application also works under Mac OS 10.8.5 - 10.9.X in both 32 bit and 64 bit. PreSonus has submitted the iOS UC application and it should be available shortly. Sorry Android and Linux users, you are currently unsupported unlike other manufacturers that have their engine run on Linux and have both online and offline editors that also run on Linux including Midas, Allen & Heath and DigiCO. The good news is that you can demo either the new RMAI or SLAI mixers without having to connect to one, similar to their iOS applications.
You even get to choose between them!
Because this mixer does not have a control surface, it is imperative that the graphical user interface be both intuitive and easy to access all major features at a standard resolution of 1920x1080 or higher. After plodding through the interface for a few minutes, I found some major flaws that would keep me from using it in it's current state. First and foremost, it suffers from a lack of full screen mode or dual monitor modes. Is there a full screen Metro style app coming soon? I could span between two monitors, but this is a bit tricky without the ability to make windows full screen on each monitor. I also couldn't manually resize the window height, only the width.
Next up is the UC interface. PreSonus likes a modern UI with grey, white and a light blue. It looks cool, but it is hard to see in the daylight. I struggle with the capture application all the time for the resize slider because the shortcut keys don't work until the session is done recording. PreSonus should include an option to change the color scheme. While they are at it, give us a construction set to rearrange the entire layout.
Ok, so the layout is simple. You have your faders with panning, mute, solo and eq with built-in metering and clipping which is pretty standard. Above the faders is a channel strip gain, phantom power, phase, label and input channel assignment. You can select a picture, label it and toggle between pre or post send and link two channels odd channels together. I couldn't get it to link even channels which I struggle with on their SL consoles all the time.
Next up you have the rest of your fat channel setting including a noise gate with a key listen feature, a compressor with both auto attack and release and a soft knee. I wonder if it is still a fixed attack and release on auto. Shouldn't that be called something else besides auto? Finally we have four bands of fully parametric equalization with a variable Q, a high pass filter and an A/B audition/swap feature that the SLAI mixers introduced.
I've played around with the Mackie DL series mixers and both families suffer from the same weakness. Unless you memorize the color of the faders, you may not realize if you are sending aux's on faders or the output busses. Please label each fader to what we are controlling and not just change the color like S or A(X).
We have 16 aux's to work with here. They can be linked and they also can be set to pre1, pre2 or post. You select any of the aux's, the main buss, the four FX units, the talkback unit and the scenes/mutes groups in this section. This is quick and easy.
There are two delay and two reverb units onboard with only one of the four FX units master output faders being visible at one time. You can mute them and tap tempo along with bringing up the FX parameters.
