Mark Of The Unicorn releases their feel-good interface of the summer, the 896mk3. It's a Firewire audio interface with built-in effects and mixing with eight XLR / TRS combo inputs, true hi-Z guitar inputs and more, totaling 28 ins and 32 outs. It also includes 192 kHz analog operation, 32-bit floating point DSP and more.

Digital Mixing And Effects Processing

The 28 input, 32 output 896mk3 fits nicely into two rack spaces before routing it all to an on-board 16-bus digital mixer. This is all driven by hardware-based digital signal processing with 32-bit floating point precision. The mixer provides effects processing sans latency to inputs, outputs or directly to busses, autonomously from the computer. For recording purposes, you can capture your input signal wet, dry or dry with a wet monitor mix so you can apply your own effects later while ballparking the desired effect during play. You can even apply the effects operating the 896mk3 without a computer in sight -- it works as a rack-mountable mixer.

So what are all of these effects you've been hearing so much about? First, you've got Classic Reverb which provides five room types, three frequency shelves with adjustable crossover points, shelf filtering and minute long reverb lengths. You also have a standard compressor and the Leveler, which models the famed Universal Audio LA-2A optical compressor. Lastly, you have an EQ section with seven-band parametric EQ featuring four filter styles. Low and highpass filters are also present.

Overload Protection

The front panel on the 896mk3 sports an individual trim knob, a 20 dB pad switch and a 48V Phantom Power switch, corresponding to every one of the back panel combo jacks. Rounding those corners, each one of those jacks is equipped with a preamp and the V-Limit hardware limiter which guards against digital clipping. With prevention measures as high as +12 dB, you'd almost have to be intended to clip to actually do so.

Comprehensive Metering

Like its ancestors, the 896mk3 is all about front panel metering -- perhaps even more so. Every input and output gets a 10-segment ladder LED. An eight-channel meter bank is specifically dedicated to the eight analog ins while another bank of eight displays a selectable input or output bank determined by a front panel rotary encoder. Main output meters are also featured.

CueMix FX Software

While all settings on the 896mk3 can be accessed from the front-panel backlit LCD, you can also use the cross-platform CueMix FX control software to get in deeper. It features graphic mixing, editing of parametric EQ and a tabbed interface that provides access to every feature in a single window. MOTU included three separate tabs; one for inputs, another for mix busses and a third for outputs.

A "Focus" button calls up the settings on any channel or bus for more tabbed graphical editing. There is even a section for talkback and listenback.

Synchronization

The 896mk3 is also equipped with DDS (which stands for Direct Digital Synthesis -- do not let it operate on your teeth), a DSP-driven phase lock engine and an internal clock source with jitter so low, you don't even know. It can resolve to or generate time code thanks to a dedicated quarter-inch time code in / out.

Comprehensive I/O

In addition to the eight combo inputs, the 896mk3 includes a pair of headphone outputs that can be separately adjusted for volume. One of these volume knobs is the "master volume" which also controls the XLR main outs, but it can also be assigned to control any group of outputs be they analog, digital or a combination of both (Digilog? Anital, even?). Furthermore, you have two optical banks that provide 16 channels of ADAT optical, eight channels of S/MUX optical I/O or two banks of stereo TOSLink. These optical formats are all mixable as the banks operate independently. Independent sets of stereo digital I/O include AES/EBU and RCA S/PDIF.