Mackie hui User Manual

H

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I      R E F E R E N C E  G U I D E

Take a look at HUI. Lots of buttons, a few

funny-looking knobs, some faders, and a big ol’
jog wheel. If you didn’t know any better you’d
think you’d run across some sort of supersonic
audio mixer. You have — sort of. But HUI is
more than that.

First of all, HUI was designed to work with

digital audio workstations (or DAWs). For pur-
poses of illustration we’re using the Digidesign

®

Pro Tools

®

 4.1 audio hardware/software pack-

age (eventually other DAWs will be compatible
with HUI). As you may well be aware, Pro Tools
allows you to record, edit, mix, and play back
audio in the digital realm. You can make seam-
less electronic edits, EQ changes — basically
anything you’d do in a recording studio — without
affecting the original source material. With your
DAW you can try out infinite possibilities, save
practically infinite versions, and then spend the
rest of your known existence trying to decide

which one was the best. If you make your living
recording and mixing audio for CD, major motion
picture soundtracks, TV/radio audio soundtracks,
or multimedia, a DAW is manna from heaven.

But — and this is a big but — using a mouse

and computer keyboard to do things you used to
do on an analog mixer can be very strange.
Clicking on a visual representation of a fader
and trying to drag the mouse smoothly in order
to achieve an amazing fade-out is difficult, if not
impossible, for many of us. Likewise, turning a
“virtual knob” on a computer screen just doesn’t
cut it for some folks. And that’s why Mackie De-
signs teamed up with Digidesign to create HUI.

HUI gives you hands-on control of all of your

DAW’s parameters. Now you can create a fade
with a real fader. Move a HUI fader and your
DAW “makes note” of your action and mirrors it
on the computer screen. Similarly, when you
make a fader move on your screen, HUI’s fader
moves, too. Adjust EQ by turning one of HUI’s
V-Pot

™

 knobs and the DAW takes care of the

rest. In fact, mouse-clicking is practically a
thing of the past — with HUI, what used to

take multiple mouse-clicks and key combinations
can now be accomplished with the push of a
button or two. You can use HUI’s hands-on
controls to do everything from recording a single
track to grouping multiple tracks, assigning in-
serts and aux sends/returns, automating mixes,
and mixing programs for surround-sound.

Touch-updatable moving faders, V-Pots, elec-

tronic “scribble strips,” a 40 by two-character
display, built-in meter bridge, and an ergonomi-
cally laid-out control surface make HUI the
logical choice for returning analog-style control
to your digital world.

The built-in control room section provides a

convenient way to monitor your mixes without
having to use a separate mixer. It has three
stereo inputs and three stereo outputs, plus a
headphone output. The monitor inputs can be
mixed together, or they can remain discrete,
direct assigned to their corresponding monitor
outputs.

For additional tracking capability, we added

two of our handy studio grade microphone
preamps for direct analog connection to your
digital audio interface’s A/D converters. These
mic pre’s are the same design as those on our
large format recording consoles, and offer
plenty of gain, insert patching, and phantom
power for condenser mics. You can use them for
recording any sound source with low noise, low
distortion, and wide frequency response. To top
it off, we added a third mic preamp for a remote
producer talkback mic or slating capabilities.

You can do so much with HUI. It’s a mix con-

trol surface that sets new levels of interactivity
within today’s and tomorrow’s DAW environ-
ments — it will grow with your system, DAW
software upgrades, etc. HUI can greatly improve
your creativity while diminishing your workload
and the repetitive grind of multiple sessions.