I have been recording and mixing in a 7.1.2 Atmos environment for some time now, but only the front L/R speaker volume was controlled outside of my DAW. The entire speaker system was controlled by the master fader in Nuendo. I finally reach a point where it was no longer workable, and needed to manage the volume of ALL speakers effectively.
Read more My Economik rep immediately suggested the SPL SMC 7.1. Although it was (ahem) somewhat above my budget, I could see from the specs that it totally solved my problem. And it did. What a great piece of kit! In addition to one-knob volume control, you can solo any one of the channels, either through the speaker dedicated to that channel, or to the center speaker. You can really dig into the mix and see what each channel is contributing. Not to mention whether you wired the speakers correctly and you are actually sending tracks to where you think you are (more complicated than you might think).
As far as I can tell, there is no coloration added. For me, there is still a bit of a gap, in that the SMC 7.1 supports an 8 speaker system, whereas 7.1.2 is 10 (2 overheads). I control those two channels through a Crane Song Avocet (stereo), so I really have a 2-knob system. Notwithstanding, I highly recommend the SMC 7.1.
