Are ANY low-end mixers OK?

[DCMaguire]

OK -- so the message here seems to be stay away from Behringer (hard to do for a small home studio, since the prices are so nice).

Are there ANY choices for a low-end home studio mixer? How is the NADY stuff? What about the low-end Mackie mixers?

IS there anything in between the price of Behringers and, say, the Soundcraft stuff?

 

[Track Rat]

Behringer would be better than the Nady. Mackie is as low as I'd go. Soundcraft would be better than the Mackie.

 

[Gunther]

There is nothing wrong with using a Behringer mixer. All the evil spoken about Behringer is over dramatized...

I am using a Behringer mixer and the sound quality is fine. I am sure the soundcraft is better, probably much better… but right now the limiting factor is my performance ability and mixing ability, not my Behringer mixer. It’s a placeholder… I bought it planning to upgrade… but I definitely got my 75 bucks worth out of it over the years I have been using it.

With that said… I am planning on upgrading to this in the near future….

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7...87/search/g=rec/s=mixers/detail/base_id/54336


So if your just learning and just getting started, don’t be afraid to get a Behringer mixer and then get a real mixer later on down the road when you can afford it. I would rather throw away a sucky $70 Behringer mixer than a sucky $300 Mackie. Yeah, there are things that suck about my Behringer mixer (like the somewhat noisy pre’s) but it’s a usable piece of gear… it gets the job done.

Just my opinion though… I have had good experiences with my Behringer gear. Nothing touches it for the money.

 

[charger]

I think Behringer's stuff is all right. A friend of mine just got the MX9000? something like that. A 24-channel, 8-bus Behringer board for about 1300 bucks. Not the way I would have gone, I would have bought something used for that money, but he wanted knew and has had good experiences with Behringer stuff. Anyway, it sounds pretty good. Nothing earth-shattering, but the pres are clear, and the eq is pretty horrible, but thankfully switchable, so you don't need it on.

The one thing about the board that really sucks is the manual. It has to be the worst manual I have ever read. It covers about 1/20 of the features on the board, and it has no index. We spent about an hour trying to figure out how to solo a track in the control room without fucking up the mix the musicians were hearing in the studio, and never got it figured out. Solo was covered in one really brief, really poorly worded section hidden in the middle of the manual. Anyway, since I'm a technical writer myself, this just irritated the hell out of me. Incidentally, we never figured the problem out, and we probably never will.

So I give Behringer a B for the equipment (good pres, good channel strip layout, and nice metering, but shoddy eq and a confusing master section)... and an F for documentation.

 

[Gunther]

I dont know if I would spend big money on behringer gear... 75 - 150$ is one thing... but for 1300, man... I want quality for that money.

I guess I cant knock a board I have never used... but it better feel and sound many, many times better than my MX802a for that kinda cash.

 

[esactun]

Yeah, Behringers can be OK for what they are (IF you get a non-defective unit and IF you get one with relatively noiseless pres--I got lucky), but I'll freely admit that I'd have gotten something else if I had more than $100 to blow on a preamp that day at Guitar Center. And heck, anything would have been better than what I had been using...

...cuz even the infamous and equally-reviled ART Tube Studio preamp, dark lil' thing that it is, on roughly 85% of the sources I've used both types of pre on--SMOKES the Behringer's ass. Yeah, the Beh is cleaner-sounding, but with my room that can be a drawback ...

...and I sure wouldn't spend over a grand on Beh stuff. With that kind of cash I'd be out of the Beh market, so to speak...

...but a working nondefective Behringer is quite alright for a low-dough quick way to go-- especially if the engineer is still the weakest link in the signal chain ... hence I own one

And yes, the manuals suck. You get this big-ass book that looks like a nice fat manual only to find that it's a skinny-ass manual translated into about eight other languages. Not like my mixer has all that many features, but still.

I haven't noticed the EQs being as terrible as many say, but 1) those saying so probably know their shit, whereas I simply may be talkin' shit and 2) I never use it more than a twinge unless I really want to trash something, in which case lousy sound was the point of the exercise .

[/ramble]

 

[charger]

Yeah, I would not have paid 1300 for it. Although I have thought about getting one of those tiny little behringers for about $130 to use around the studio. I was pushing him towards used Soundcraft, a Soundtracs Topaz, a used A&H, or a used Mackie. BSut he wanted new, and he's happy with all the Behringer stuff he has, so he just went for it.

As far as the eq, I always like to try some really radical eq on a desk when I sit down at it, to get a feel for the range and sound of the eq. Usually I tweak the hell out of whatever simple mix is handy, some guitars, snare/kick/oh, and a bass, not to really fix the mix, but just to see how the eq sounds. For example, my Soundtracs Topaz sounds pretty musical except for about the last 2 notches of the range. The polar opposite is a Mackie (VLZ--I haven't tried VLZ Pro), which sounds to my ears very much the way I imagine circuitry sounding. I've had good and bad experiences with other consoles, shaped an ear for what I like, which may not be what someone else likes... I would say the Behrigner EQ is fine when used minimally, but on the whole, I was glad that it was switchable... I couldn't use it heavily with pleasant results.