Rich says Grace (with the m906 Surround Monitor Controller)

I drive a cool little black Toyota. It’s got a sunroof, 5-speed, good stereo and it gets me from place to place without problems. What I’d really like to be driving is a precision engineered silver Porsche 911 Targa. Well, lucky for me, one arrived in the mail recently; only it was in the form of a Grace Design m906 high fidelity 5.1 monitoring system.

Grace m906 remote with rack unit

Do I really need the Porsche of Controllers? I must admit, at first I was a bit skeptical. How good could this be, considering it has a relatively high price point for a controller. I’d heard excellent things about it, but you never really know until you take one out for a spin. I’ll tell you this; after the first day of use, I was already planning a large list of older items for me to sell to raise the funds to buy this baby. I’ll run you through the process of how I installed the m906 into my studio and then list the reasons why it won’t be leaving. Since I’m a work at home studio type, this unit is perfect for my setup. I run a Pro Tools HD3 setup with a 192 I/O into a dual 2GHz G5, There is a full NHT Pro 5.1 monitoring setup, an Oxygen 8 and a stack of high-quality preamps. All of my reverbs, compressors and soft synths are in the computer- the rest now sit in the closet. It’s clean, crisp, powerful and totally automated. Since I prefer not use mixing boards (just controllers), I simply plugged the m906 digitally into the 192 I/O. The audio path is then directly distributed to my speakers via the mainframe, and the remote control unit sits on my desktop.

The m906 rear panel, with a 5.1 DAC out, two 5.1 control room outputs, 6 cue outputs, three sets of 2-channel inputs, two complete sets of 5.1 intputs, and a digital I/) section featuring word clock, superclock, ADAT, AES3, S/PDIF, Toslink, and another AES3 x4 on a multipin jack. Whoo! Connect this!

Hey Mikey... he likes it! One of the first things I liked about this unit was the solid ‘feel’. In the boxes come the mainframe unit with analog and digital I/O and a 1/2 RU external power supply, 6-pin XLR DC power cable and a remote control unit with 25’ remote cable. Setup and plug in are thoughtless, but you should certainly read through the comprehensive I/O option list. For me, I started with a simple ADAT optical cable for single-cable, 8-channel input up to 48kHz. I plugged my external cd player into the S/PDIF input, and will soon plug my multiplayer (DVD/SACD) player into the 6 unbalanced (-10dBV) inputs. Also, I can easily hook up another set (or 2!) of monitors. Im having a good DB25 digital cable built so I can use the AES3 Multi-channel input for full multichannel resolutions up to 192kHz. The m906 can accept analog or digital inputs, and can be referenced to AES3, ADAT, S/PDIF, and TOSLINK digital clock. There is also the option to hook up external Word or Super Clock if you choose. Interestingly, the m906 uses a technology Grace Design calls s-Lock PLL (Phase Lock Loop). PLL is automatically applied once the unit detects the incoming clock source, providing a highly stable ultra-low jitter clock to run the units DAC’s. This is a paragraph explaining s-Lock, right out of the manual: "S-Lock is a crystal based PLL used for regenerating the incoming digital clock. The crystals used have extremely low intrinsic jitter and are capable of locking to sample rates of up to 192kHz. When the digital input selected for the DAC is active, the s-Lock circuitry automatically captures the incoming recovered clock from AES3, S/PIF, TOSLINK, or ADAT or from an external World Clock or Super Clock. Once phase-lock with the incoming signal has been achieved, the DACs, which have been running off the original clock, are switched to run off the ultra-low jitter s-Lock system clock. If at any time, the s-Lock is lost or not achieved, the DACs are run off the original clock. The s-Lock system can effectively lock to input sample rates of 44.1kHz or 48kHz +/- 10Hz, 88.2kHz or 96kHz +/-20Hz and 176.4kHz or 192kHz +/- 40Hz." Aside of all the I/O options (check out the pic above to see them all), there are two headphone outs; one on the remote and one on the mainframe. A separate stepped rotary encoder on the remote dials up the volume in well-lit .5 db’s, allowing me to monitor every mix on a record at EXACTLY the same volume. It also helps that the 906’s headphone amplifier is based on the Grace 901 reference headphone amp, except this one lets me listen up to 192kHz. In my first headphone experience, I found some background noise in my mix I had never before, thanks to the quality of not only the amplifier, but also the unit's converters. It was a "wow" moment, literally.

A close-up of the controller

So is it worth it? Grace also thoughtfully included a fixed level 5.1 DAC output, fed directly from whatever is selected as your current digital source. Essentially, you can route a direct digital surround mix to a recorder, set at 0dB as the default. On that note, the m906 has many hidden features ‘under’ its remote control. Aside of the LCD screen, headphone and volume knobs, digital meters, channel solo/mutes and input selectors (analog and digital), there is a calibration mode. This can be used for such things as input source offsets, individual 5.1 speaker output levels, and the fixed DAC output level and talkback/48v phantom settings. What’s that you say, talkback? Well yes, there is an XLR input for such, which is essentially a single channel from a Grace 801R preamp. They even included footswitch jack for external operation, should you choose not to press the talkback button on the remote. I grew up with a father who always paid a little extra for things that were well made, would last for years and got the ‘job’ done efficiently. That mantra applies to how I buy studio gear as well. The Grace Design m906 is worth the investment and I’m now a very satisfied customer. To me, it’s not only a supreme high-quality 5.1 monitor controller; it’s now the nerve center of my entire studio.