QSC Partners on New Series of Audio Mixers
QSC Audio Products announced a co-development partnership with M&W Pro Audio Ltd. to create a series of digital audio mixing consoles. Greg Mackie and Peter Watts are, respectively, the M and the W in the organizations’ name.
QSC Audio Products announced a co-development partnership with M&W Pro Audio Ltd. to create a series of digital audio mixing consoles. Greg Mackie and Peter Watts are, respectively, the M and the W in the organizations’ name.
After retiring from Mackie Designs (now Loud Technologies) in 2003, Mackie still had a desire to create the innovative and high-value products, company officials said. Long-time friend and collaborator Watts convinced him to come out of retirement in 2008 and develop the concepts for a line of digital mixing consoles. Watts is also an experienced pro-audio veteran who has spent 35 years designing analog and digital recording consoles, including the first digitally controlled console, the Trident DiAn.
With concepts and preliminary designs developed, Mackie and Watts began looking for a partner to bring their mixers to life.
“We needed a pro-audio partner with established sales, marketing and distribution. A partner with a solid reputation for quality and reliability; one that had the technical capabilities to develop advanced digital mixing consoles and the manufacturing know-how to produce the products,” said Mackie in a statement, “I knew I could trust QSC to be exactly the right partner.”
“We are delighted to be working with Greg and Peter. Their passion for creating fine audio products mirrors our own,” said Gerry Tschetter, QSC vice president of marketing, in a statement. “Our efforts to create value and performance on the [processing, power, and loudspeaker] side have yielded a number of highly successful product lines. It’s great fun to be working on the [mixing] side as well.”
Design work on the products will be done by both M&W and QSC while manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing and technical support will be handled entirely by QSC. The first products are expected to be announced during the first half of 2011.
