Roland has announced the compact, smartphone-centric GO:MIXER audio mixer at the Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas. The GO:MIXER is designed to allow smartphone customers to add professionally mixed audio to their videos and the device is compatible with both Apple iOS and Android powered smartphones. The GO:MIXER includes a cable in the box for a digital connection with the smartphone, which the company explain is of a much higher quality than using a handset’s built-in mono microphone or analog line input. Furthermore, the GO:MIXER can handle up to five inputs with the company explaining that the device includes a vocal microphone, guitar or bass, stereo keyboard and two stereo line-level devices (typically, media players or drum machines). One of these stereo line-level inputs includes a selectable Center Cancel function, which allows the volume of the main vocal in a given music track playing through the input to be reduced. Roland explain that this feature could allow singers to provide karaoke-style tracks. The hardware includes front panel knobs for hands-on mixing between these five sources, plus a stereo output jack for monitoring purposes via either an external speaker or headphones, together with a master monitor volume level.
Roland have introduced the GO:MIXER to help customers take advantage of more and more powerful smartphones with better audio and visual capturing abilities. One of the themes for 2016’s crop of flagship smartphones is that all have great quality cameras, often using a variant of a given theme. Today’s smartphone customers take advantage of their device’s great cameras to capture stills and increasingly videos. When it comes to recording music at gigs and other events, one difficulty that remains is that capturing high-quality audio has often required expensive and complicated equipment and lengthy post-event editing and mixing. The GO:MIXER can shortcut this process by providing live mixing and allowing customers to capture the audio direct on the device video in real time in a simple to use and set up package. The GO:MIXER device does not require recharging or replaceable batteries as it’s powered by the host smartphone, and measures under four inches square and a little over one inch deep: it’s small enough to be pocket portable but may, of course, be used on a desktop. Furthermore, the device is eminently affordable with a price of $99.
