Studio Mixers... Recommendations..?
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  1. #1
    DJTT Moderator bloke Karlos Santos's Avatar
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    Default Studio Mixers... Recommendations..?

    Ok guys what are you using.

    I have various setups that i want to have going through my monitiors and im sick of pulling xlrs and rcas out or my Zero 4 and plugging others in.

    12, 16, 18 channel Mixer in the sub £350 /$550 price range.
    Needs 3 or 4 stereo channels and preferably USB but not essential.

    Ive been looking at:

    Mackie Pro FX range (not yet in UK)
    Behringer Xenyx range (heavily featured, cheap, good enough?)
    Allen & Heath Zed range (why all the Aux ins/outs, 4 per channel?)
    Soundcraft (good quality but bloody ugly)

    Any others, any that you guys use.
    Please stick to the price range as im moving house at the moment so i need to buy curtains and cushions and all the other shit that girlfriends make you buy... apparently a cooker is a necessity... who knew?

    Over to the knowledgable.

  2. #2
    Tech Mentor Rokku's Avatar
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    I have a Behringer with built in FX and I've used for studio and live applications and I love it. One of my friends made fun of it when I told him what I had (makes me sound like i'm 16), but it's held up for 2 years now and I've been pretty rough on it. All metal case, phantom power, great mic pre's...it's a good board.
    A little bit of gold and a pager.

  3. #3
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    What are you planning to use the mixer for exactly? Are you going to be recording multiple musicians live? A few more details would go a long way toward suggesting what kind of mixer to get.

  4. #4
    Tech Mentor jimbob5000's Avatar
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    Behringers have a bad reputation for their build and sound quality. However, I cannot confirm that. I really dig the bang for the buck, never had a quality problem even after spilling a huge cup of coffee into one of them, a MX 2004a. The mic preamps are relatively noisy though. So if you don't need mic preamps, go for a behringer. If you do, the Mackies are probably the better choice.
    Can't say anything about The Allen&Heath and Soundcraft ones, never owned something from them. Aren't they in an entirely different price range?

  5. #5
    Tech Mentor Rokku's Avatar
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    I don't get any residual noise from my mic pre's.
    A little bit of gold and a pager.

  6. #6
    DJTT Moderator bloke Karlos Santos's Avatar
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    Ok yeah, what im intending to do is hook up:
    Korg Zero 4 DVS (TSP) in one stereo channel 1 (laptop 1)
    My controller setup VCI100/Kontrol S4 into another stereo channel 2 (laptop 2)
    Maschine to the USB input on another stereo channel 3 (laptop 3)
    Guitar Rig in stereo channel 4 (if theres 4)(laptop 4)
    PC music library via USB channel.
    CD player maybe on 2 mono channels.

    All coming out of my KRK monitors.

    Wont be recording anything just yet (or at all?) Certainly not musicians. I played in bands for 15 years i aint doing that again for a while...
    This is purely for home use.

    Jimbob, interesting to hear about the Behringer. I had the same reservations but a guy at NI has recomended them as well.


    These are some of the current options but im totally open to your opinions.

    http://www.inta-audio.com/computer-m...sb-mixer-p3822

    http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipmen...terface--71180

    http://www.musicmatter.co.uk/mackie-...live-usb-mixer

    http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/produc..._campaign=base

  7. #7
    Tech Mentor jimbob5000's Avatar
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    Found an old review on the bigger brother of the Xenyx x1222 on Soundonsound:
    http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun0...cles/xenyx.htm

    I've heard some good things about the allen&heath mixer, and to be honest, I'd prefer it just because the layout is less crowded. Plus I never used built-in FX on a PA mixer, especially in that price range they just don't cut it.

    Do you need a subgroup? If you do, the A&H is not an option.

    If it was my choice, I'd probably check my wallet and see if I have the money for the A&H, and if not, go for the Behringer 1222. But don't take my word for it :-)
    Last edited by jimbob5000; 09-29-2010 at 03:12 PM.

  8. #8
    DJTT Infectious Moderator photojojo's Avatar
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    I'm going to say A&H for the same uncluttered reason. You don't really need some of the features the others might offer and you know the A&H sound quality will be up to par which I think should be your biggest concern.
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  9. #9
    Tech Guru djproben's Avatar
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    I'd avoid Behringer for the sound quality issues but like others here my evidence is all hearsay -- no question they are a great deal financially for what you get.

    In a similar price range take a look at Alesis -- we've got a iMultiMix 8 USB at work and it works great for what we use it for. Sound quality is a lot better than what I expected for the price, and it doubles as an audio interface with the USB connection. Coolest feature it has is an ipod dock, you can play music off the ipod when you don't want to fiddle with your computers (4 laptops?!), but better yet, it supports recording TO the ipod right on the mixer so you can record whatever you're doing without re-routing cables to a (fifth?) laptop. The interface on the 8 is pretty basic and it's all knobs, no sliders, so if that makes a difference you might want to take note of it. The 16 channel version has sliders though, obviously it costs a bit more too. We got the 8 for under $200; I think the 16 goes for about twice that.

    If firewire is an option for you, you should look into the Mackie Onyx line. They're about $400 for the 8 channel and 500 for the 12, and they also double as computer audio interface but they work via firewire. They have a 16 channel too but it's like $1500.

    One thing you might want to consider is outputs as well. Do you want more than one output? I like having the option of sending my output to speakers in the living room that are connected to my home stereo once in a while -- if that's something you might want to do, make sure there's more than one output. I actually use a Mackie "Big Knob" for this purpose but it probably doesn't have enough inputs for you -- http://www.mackie.com/products/bigknob/ -- if that would work though it's a far simpler solution than a big mixer with dozens of little knobs. But if you actually want to mix together different inputs and not just switch between them, yeah you want a studio mixer....

  10. #10
    DJTT Moderator bloke Karlos Santos's Avatar
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    Awesome, cheers guys. Will digest properly when I get home.

    I hear ya about the behringers, they do seem to offer a lot for little money and I don't need the fx .
    I do want to send outputs to other speakers about the house so I guess thats were th sub-groups come in ?

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