Peavey Unity 500

Mackie's enormously successful 1604 and 1202 mixers have inspired a fleet of imitations, all keen to get a slice of the action. Sound Engineer Steve Brodie checks out Peavey's take on the compact mixer concept...

Let's not be coy about this: if it wasn't for the Mackie 1202, the chances of the Peavey Unity 500 ever gracing the designers' drawing boards would have been remote indeed. Mackie certainly started something big with the CR1604 and its smaller brother the 1202, and manufacturers jumping on the compact mixer bandwagon today face the dilemma of whether to create complete Mackie clones or offer a different set of compromises whilst retaining the general ethos of the original. Examples utilising both approaches have followed in the wake of the 1202, and on the whole I feel that this form of plagiarism is no bad thing; it broadens choice and keeps manufacturers on their toes.

Outside Appearances

My first impressions of the Peavey Unity Series 500 are of a serious mixer. The solid steel casing sports clear white legending, and the pots are rubber with a pleasing tactile quality, but can be pulled off rather easily. The top of the unit is a single steel sheet which is folded to provide a raised area at the rear for all the connectors, bar the power supply, while the lower area accommodates the controls. I was pleased to note that all the connectors looked substantial and securely fixed to the top panel, which bodes well for reliability as it will help prevent excess strain being put on the circuit boards from repeated reconnection.

All the audio connections are made on unbalanced quarter‑inch jack sockets with the following exceptions. The mic inputs are on the usual XLRs, whilst the master outputs are on balanced jacks. I would have liked to have seen these on XLRs too, but at least they are balanced. Provision is made to connect tape inputs and outputs to the master buss via phonos. The insert points are conventional TRS‑balanced jack sockets, but curiously they are labelled 'Patch'. It's staggering that an industry that can pull off a standardisation as complex as MIDI can't agree what to call a jack socket! The headphone socket is of course on a stereo jack, and I was delighted to see that power comes in on the rear of the unit via a standard IEC mains socket.

Controls And Features

The first six mono channels are equipped with mic as well as line‑level inputs, and 48V phantom power can be applied to all the mic inputs via a global switch on the rear of the unit. The remaining four channels can accommodate line‑level sources only, in either mono or stereo. To begin with the mono‑only mic channels, the channel strip commences at the top with the line‑level jack socket, followed by the XLR mic input and the pre‑EQ insert or Patch socket. Following this (still on the raised section of the top panel) we have the gain control. This is the only control to be positioned on the raised section, the two levels otherwise providing a demarcation between connectors and controls.

Moving to the lower panel, the EQ section comes next. This provides 2‑band shelving filtering with 15dB of cut or boost at 50Hz and 13kHz. Two auxiliary sends are provided, both of which are hard‑wired as post‑fader, which does limit your options when creating separate mixes for performers. Beneath the auxiliaries, we find the Pan control, followed by the channel 'fader' which is actually a rotary pot to save space — a fair compromise.

All the controls are centre‑detented at their unity gain point, or in the case of the EQ, in their neutral position, except for the Pan controls, which have no detent at all. It's all very well to make you aware of the unity gain points (and thereby encourage the use of good gain structure) with centre‑detenting, but to then leave it off Pan is surely slightly perverse.

The line‑level, stereo/mono channels have an identical array of controls, but the connectors are quite different. There is provision for only two line‑level jack sockets configured as a single mono input or a stereo pair; there are no insert points and no gain controls. The auxiliary inputs and outputs are located above these channel sockets. The sends are mono and the returns are configured for mono or stereo use. Next to these are the master outputs and the tape inputs and outputs on phonos, mentioned earlier.

The master section is rather basic, consisting of level controls for the aux returns, the tape inputs and the headphones. The master output level is governed by a single pot. Separate left/right controls are always preferable — but then smooth fade‑outs would be impossible on two pots. Completing the picture are the 12‑segment LED arrays on the master outputs, which peak when you are within 6dB of clipping.

Performance

The sound quality of the Unity 500 is quite up to standard for making quality recordings onto DAT. During the review, I made some spoken word recordings with pleasing results. The simplicity of the control options mean that assuming your gain settings are sensible, excellent results can be achieved with a minimum of fuss, which could be a real boon for location recording jobs when setting‑up time might be limited.

I would have welcomed some way to meter the input of a channel on the LED meters, so that I could be sure of my gain structure. In the absence of this, gain‑setting is largely educated guesswork. This is a good example of how the Unity 500 could lose out to newer designs such as the upgraded Mackie 1202VLZ (reviewed in SOS February'96) which has pre‑fade capabilities, along with several other useful features missing on the Peavey. I also have to say that I found the chosen EQ frequencies rather odd. Most manufacturers implementing a shelving 2‑band EQ opt for 12kHz and 80Hz or perhaps 60Hz, but the 50Hz chosen for the LF seems a bit low (and a touch boomy to me), and the HF is a touch on the hissy side if you are heavy‑handed with it.

On the one hand, I feel that my criticisms are a little churlish in light of the price of the Unity 500, which is rather less than much of the competition, but it seems to me that these are simply design decisions which would have little if any effect on the price. However, it has to be said that the Unity 500 does provide six excellent mic preamps. These are worth the asking price alone, and would certainly have cost rather more not so long ago.

If it has the features you need, the Unity 500 is worthy of serious consideration. If, however, you are less sure of your needs now, or of how your requirements might develop, you really should look at the competition. As I said at the start, a competitive market should work to the consumer's advantage.

Thanks to Thetford Music (01842 766325) for the loan of the review model.