Frequency Central Looking Glass: smaller better featured matrix mixer
5,0 / 5,0 | 
Following on from Frequency Central’s Wonderland we now have Looking Glass which runs with the same idea in a more compact and enlightening form.
Looking Glass
I confess that I’m a little confused by the Looking Glass because I was under the impression (false impression it turns out) that it was some kind of expansion to the Wonderland matrix mixer Frequency Central released a couple of weeks ago. And no it’s not; it’s its own thing.
Wonderland is a great 8×8 matrix mixer but it lacked a couple of things like full-sized attenuators and any indication of what was going on. Looking Glass remedies those issues by reducing the channel count to make room for the larger knobs and status LEDs.
So, what we have is a 5×5 matrix mixer which can also be a patchbay and signal switcher. It’s only 14HP wide, making it a very space-efficient mixer of signals. You have 5 inputs on the left that have the very welcome knob attenuators. These then route into the matrix where you can route them to any of the 5 outputs through the touch of a button. As you poke a button to make a connection you get a status LED light up to let you know what’s going on. That’s the one thing that made me doubt the usefulness of the Wonderland Matrix Mixer.
In terms of outputs, you get regular outputs at the bottom and inverted ones at the top. Very useful for when combining modulations rather than audio.
Small form power
Matrix mixers are immensely powerful even in a smaller 5×5 form. You can use them for effects sends, bypasses, sequence switching, modulation mixing, mults and audio mixing.
Looking Glass can be purchased fully assembled from Frequency Central for £160 or you can get the PCB and front panel for £40. You may find other retailers that will do an entire kit version.
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