Things I'd Change In The Mark II Version

No product is perfect, of course, and below are a few minor items that I don't like about Ultramix, and wish they'd change. These are all minor changes that would, to my way of thinking, make a good product even better.

Documentation

The manual is a modest fifty pages, of which the first third are devoted to unpacking and installing the hardware. The discussion of the software is brief and less than comprehensive. It definitely needs broadening and deepening. For instance, it needs a reference section that presents in detail each menu item, each item shown on the screen and each item on the UltraPilot, plus an index and glossary. It also should include a list of all key commands. A few are presented, but I suspect that navigation by keyboard is a lot more comprehensive than the manual and the menus let on. Finally, the manual should include a listing of all normal functions and the various ways to accomplish them, by key, by mouse on the screen and by UltraPilot.

Software

The most serious annoyance during operation is the lack of indication, while you are updating a mix, of "where the old level was." This means that when you punch out, any discrepancy in level is going to be painfully audible as a jump in level. As Alex noted, he often likes to polish tom fills and other little percussion moments late in the mix process, and needs to be able to punch in and out quickly and smoothly during cymbal decay and similarly exposed moments.

My suggestion would be to have the glass fader, perhaps with a color outline, show the level in computer memory when you are recording and its difference from the VCA level. I'd also like some positive indication of when the glass fader and VCA levels are the same. As it is now, it's a little touchy to find the null point, and it would be neat if the faders would "flash" at the null point.

Computer screen management is a highly personal process. Unfortunately, Mackie throws out your screen settings as soon as you close them, reopening with a default setting. This gets very annoying in the later stages of mixing when you're busy toggling back and forth from the Event Edit window to the Groups to the Faders, etc. It is also annoying, but less so, when you close and then reopen a file.

The Undo function is a little mysterious. Along with more explanation in the manual, it would be neat to be able to Undo more than the last thing you wrote.

One neat function the software provides is the ability to select a channel/s and write a global level to that channel. Unfortunately, that function isn't always available, for reasons I do not grok. I'd like it to be always available.

Another very handy screen display would be a level display, in both MIDI and dB gain/loss, of the level of any selected channel.