which mixing desk for $6000

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frequency_

New member
Hello guys, so i m looking for a 24ch. analogue mixing desk to go with my apple, where i ll be mixing. I can afford round $6000. So far i ve found the Soundcraft ghost, the Trident series 8T-24 and the Toft ATB-24. Although i ve not worked with any of these mixing desks, i ve heard many good things about the ghost's EQs and pre-amps, although i know it produces a bit of noise. Can you guys help me get to a desision? what console would you buy with that money? Just dont want to spend it like a fool cause i ve been saving it for ages now...Thanks in advance!
 
I slao posted in your other similar thread. The good news here is that in either of the scenarios you list, you should end up with a pretty solid desk. If it were me, I would not want to spend that much on a Ghost. For me personally, the decision would be between the Toft and the Trident. The Trident definately offers more features, but I would not necessarily consider to be the same heritage as the actual Tridents that people usually refer to (A range and Series 80). If you do want an actual Trident, you could probably get into a used but well cared for and/or restored Series 65, 24, or maybe even 70 or 75. None of these however quite match the Series 80 which you probably will not find for your budget. If you do find one in your price range there is a good chance it will need about $5k worth of TLC in recapping and power supply mods etc...

If I had to choose between the Toft and the Oram version, I would place my trust in the Toft for being a little closer to the actual Trident Heritage, but I have no doubts that the Oram is still a good sounding desk. In either event, a step up from the Ghost, which is certainly not a bad console, just in a different league. The Toft looks like it has similar features to the Ghost with a better layout, but the Oram is definately the most full featured of them. The first thing I would do is make sure that the features on the Toft meets your requirements for functions and features. If so, then I would do my best to spend an hour on each one if at all possible to see if one of them has a feel or layout or sound that you prefer over the other. If after trying them both and you feel equally happy with each and the price is similar enough, I would probably go with the Oram version for all of the extra features. My gut tells me that the Toft will sound better. Maybe not necessarily better, but have more of that Trident vibe that I personally love. When I bought my console that I currently have, I was very close to buying a Series 80, but the D&R I ended up with has many more features and is much larger. In any event however, I htink you really are in a win win situation. If you do opt to go with the Ghost, you might want to consider spending half of that $6k on a used Ghost and put the rest into at least 4 decent preamp channels. 2 flavored, and 2 neutral or clean channels.
 
I am going to ask the same question that the first responder did: what is your current setup?

I haven't read your other thread, whichever it is that xstatic is referring to, but I also found this thread of yours in the mic forum:

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=249908

It regards upgrading from AKG C1000's to MXL 603's.

I am not bashing these mics, I am just pointing out that you are using some very inexpensive gear considering how much money you are looking to spend on a mixing console. My recommendation would be to upgrade the mic and preamp locker, and perhaps get a decent set of converters before you ever look into investing in an outboard mixing console.

Adding an analog desk to a digital recording setup isn't going to do a thing if you are recording with mediocre mics and preamps. Plus, you would have to invest a good deal of money in converters to get 24 channels of I/O worthy of getting any sort of benefit out of recording digital and then mixing in the analog realm.

Just my 2 cents :)
 
Cusebassman, keep in mind that adding a GOOD analog console is an upgrade in the preamp and EQ departments. There are a lot of people on here that are used to not using a console as much of a console and as a result can not appreciate just how advantageous having a good console can be.
 
xstatic said:
Cusebassman, keep in mind that adding a GOOD analog console is an upgrade in the preamp and EQ departments. There are a lot of people on here that are used to not using a console as much of a console and as a result can not appreciate just how advantageous having a good console can be.
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sorry, but i'd disagree here slightly. If he's going to spend 6k on a board, he should go digital. Tascam has a digital board around $3k. And yes, cubaseman, you're right. He should spend less on the board, and more on the preamps and mics. A good set of preamps and mics, onto a tascam DM-3200 -http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Tascam-DM3200-Digital-Mixer?sku=630519

will do you wonders. You'll have digital control, and some very nice sounds. Everyone I know of uses external mic preamps, not the ones on the board. But of course it does matter the preamps on the board, but remember, to get better quality, it's the preamps and mics you need to upgrade.

get a dm-3200, and some good preamps and a nice mic or two. you'll be in quality heaven

end rant:p

ps - if you disagree with this, please say it nicely.
 
I'm gonna go ahead and be "that guy" here... what kind of space are you recording in? :D If you're spending $6,000 on a mixing board, I assume you've got a pretty full mic locker, a killer room, some stellar monitors, and some decent pre-amps?
 
ok here s the story... i own the ground floor, underneath a small music school, and decided to turn it into a recording studio, i closed two rooms (control room and a live room) and now i need to treat it acousticaly, rerecently bought a power mac with HD2 and digi 192I/O with its expansion card, so at the moment i need a mixing desk, monitors and a few mics to start working it. the rest of the equipment i ll buy slowly in time...
 
frequency_ said:
ok here s the story... i own the ground floor, underneath a small music school, and decided to turn it into a recording studio, i closed two rooms (control room and a live room) and now i need to treat it acousticaly, rerecently bought a power mac with HD2 and digi 192I/O with its expansion card, so at the moment i need a mixing desk and a few mics to start working it. the rest of the equipment i ll buy slowly in time...
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uuhhh, so you're starting fresh???? :|
 
yoyo, I am not sure what the logic in your post is. If you were to go out and buy a Tascam digital board you would still have Tascam quality preamps and EQ's. When comparing against the Toft and the Trident in question here the Tascam is a pretty severe drop in quality and in many ways features as well. It sounds to me like you have never used a true inline studio console. With the exception of adding the digital effects and comps etc... a true inline console will often be much more usable. It sounds to me like you have not used a quality console before. If you had you would realize that the quality of the preamps can come surprisingly close to preamps in the $1k and up range. Add to that quality EQ which rivals virtually any plug in out there and certainly smokes the Tascam EQ and all of a sudden the value of the Tascam does not look so hot and the console starts to sound much better....literally.

In the end, I certainly do not disagree with making sure the system is well rounded including mics, preamps, monitors, treatment, converters etc... However, if you were to take 6k and spread that around between all of those things you would end up with a well balanced system of low quality. Sometimes it is important to focus on one section and make that as strong as you can before moving on.
 
xstatic said:
yoyo, I am not sure what the logic in your post is. If you were to go out and buy a Tascam digital board you would still have Tascam quality preamps and EQ's. When comparing against the Toft and the Trident in question here the Tascam is a pretty severe drop in quality and in many ways features as well. It sounds to me like you have never used a true inline studio console. With the exception of adding the digital effects and comps etc... a true inline console will often be much more usable. It sounds to me like you have not used a quality console before. If you had you would realize that the quality of the preamps can come surprisingly close to preamps in the $1k and up range. Add to that quality EQ which rivals virtually any plug in out there and certainly smokes the Tascam EQ and all of a sudden the value of the Tascam does not look so hot and the console starts to sound much better....literally.

In the end, I certainly do not disagree with making sure the system is well rounded including mics, preamps, monitors, treatment, converters etc... However, if you were to take 6k and spread that around between all of those things you would end up with a well balanced system of low quality. Sometimes it is important to focus on one section and make that as strong as you can before moving on.
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ok, i guess i see your point. I have worked (not too much) with high quality consoles, including a $20k yahama console. but i still think digital would be the way to go for that much $$, don't you?
 
frequency_ said:
ok here s the story... i own the ground floor, underneath a small music school, and decided to turn it into a recording studio, i closed two rooms (control room and a live room) and now i need to treat it acousticaly, rerecently bought a power mac with HD2 and digi 192I/O with its expansion card, so at the moment i need a mixing desk, monitors and a few mics to start working it. the rest of the equipment i ll buy slowly in time...
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I'm not entirely familiar with the Digi I/O stuff, but if you have 24 channels of dedicated I/O, then a desk might be the way to go, if you get something that has very good pre's and EQ. Use the pre's for going in, and mix in analog, with the board's EQ and summing, but I suppose with ProTools running the plugins and such.

I also hope you have budget beyond the 6k for mics, simply because this seems like a waste of money if you can't afford good mics to be running into it :)
 
For $2000 or so I think that digital is not a bad route. However once you decide to spend more money, I think digital is NOT the way to go. Unless you spend an awful lot of money, which for an analog console $6k is not, digital just won't sound that great. On the other hand, until you spend enough money analog just won't sound that great. In the new market, the original poster has decided to spend enough money to where he/she can get into a console where the quality starts to get better. If we were talking about an Allen Hetah MixWiz or a Soundcraft M series or something I would certainly agree with looking at digital. To me, digital is mostly about features where analog is often about sound quality. Personally, I would probably prefer the sound of the Trdient or Toft console to that of a Yamaha Pm1D which costs up to 20 times the proposed budget here. Of course the yamaha will have more options and features, but a lot of that is not necessary or redundant in todays world of software applications.

In the end I am certainly not against digital consoles. I have a couple of 01V's kicking around my shop and they get a lot of use. Will they ever replace my Midas Verona or the Allen Heath ML5000? Not a chance. Both of those analog desks sound better. They are easier and quicker to use and take less work to get what you want. Where the 01V's shine though is being able to do smaller sized events with less set-up and less equipment. They also have a MUCH smaller footprint. It is nice for theatrical stuff as well where you may want to program some recall for scenes and such. In the studio however, the only feature that it really offers to its benefit is the moving faders and ability to control my software. This however could easily be done with a control surface instead.

Some people talk about how studios now don't even have consoles but just have outboard gear. There are certainly some studios like this. The bulk of the professional studios however are not. Having an analog console at the heart of the studio actually simplifies things greatly. Much of what you need to do is in front of you and having a good sounding console greatly increases your sonic options. I don't know if I could ever get rid of my console. If nothing else, when you sit down in front of a ten foot wide 104 input console, you just feel good. When a client sees that they automatically give you a certain amount of trust. Is it right? Maybe not. Is it real? Certainly. Even more important than all of that though is how my console sounds when I use it, which is very frequently. It sounds great. The preamps and EQ's easily eat up the RNP's and Platinum Focusrites and Presonus stuff out there. When you start factoring that kind of quality in, the investment itself starts to look like a no brainer.

Once again though, I definately agree that the rest of the setup should be paid attention to. Having good mics and monitors is still very important. However, if this means stepping back down to a Mackie or a Behringer or even a Tascam or Yamaha Digital console, I would probably get the real desk first while I had the money. If Frequency is at all like me, this may be the only chance. I never seem to be able to save up $6k for one peice of equipment because every time I get to $1k or $2k there are just too many things out there that I can justify picking up and end up with those instead;)
 
Hey xstatic, are you only making points for using an analog desk with a digital backbone - i.e. a digital recording system that takes input from the console, and runs back out to it, or are you talking about fully analog, tape-based studio systems?
 
I couldn't agree with xstatic more. If you are going to spend in the 6k range, definitely go with an analog board. DAW's have mixers in software, oftentimes more fully featured and flexible than what you can do with a hardware digital board.

So if you want to mix digital, then just get some good multichannel AD/DA converters and use your DAW. Otherwise, use your DAW as a tape deck and then mix analog.
 
ok, one thing i have never understood is: I'd PREFER an analog mixer, just because digitals are way too complicated, and i like analog mixers, but how do most analog mixers attach to the computer for recording? as far as i know, the ghost doesn't haev firewire or ADAT out... please help here! i'd be greatly relieved to know this piece of info. I want to be able to record 20 channels at once in my studio in the future, so no, firewire interfaces are NOT an option. lol
 
Cuse, I am talking about in either scenario. A QUALITY analog console offers usable preamps and EQ's whether they be for tracking or mixdown. It also offers insert points for other outboard gear in addition to metering in the analog domain. It aslso offers the ability to truly do latency free monitoring which outboard only can be very lacking.

Yoyo, even a digital console will not interface with your computer without external hardware (converters, sound card etc...). If a digital console does integrate with a computer than it likely uses a firewire or USB port. Also, firewire will allow for plenty of tracks once you start stacking them. Most digital consoles offer conversion (which is usually not bad, but certainly not great either) but spit out the digital signals in a format that once again still requires an interface. It sounds like you are missing some very basic knowledge in the siognal flow department. That is OK, but may you should not go throwing reccomendations out until you fully understand these basic things. ADAT outputs will not do anything for you until you have an ADAT capable interface. I do agree that digital gets you a package product with more function up front, but that same principle often limits the quality.
 
yoyo said:
ok, one thing i have never understood is: I'd PREFER an analog mixer, just because digitals are way too complicated, and i like analog mixers, but how do most analog mixers attach to the computer for recording? as far as i know, the ghost doesn't haev firewire or ADAT out... please help here! i'd be greatly relieved to know this piece of info. I want to be able to record 20 channels at once in my studio in the future, so no, firewire interfaces are NOT an option. lol
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Umm... dude, it's A N A L O G. As in, not digital. Instead of being a dick about it, I'll do my best to explain this to you in a way that will hopefully make everything clear to anyone from a complete n00b to someone who kind of knows what they're talking about, but isn't quite sure:

Purely analog mixers are analog all the way through, meaning at no point is the audio signal from the microphone/pre-amp converted to a digital signal (1's and 0's). It passes signals through fluctuating voltage in wires.

In order to pass audio into the computer, at some point you need to convert the Analog signal to a Digital signal. When you hear about people talking about 'interfaces' or 'A/D converters', this is what they're talking about. Some interfaces (like, for instance, the Digi002) have pre-amps, converters, and a digital mixing console all built into one unit!

So, if you have a nice big analog console, and you want to use it with your computer, you need to purchase some sort of converter (Apogee makes some extremely nice ones, M-Audio has a decent inexpensive one called the Delta 1010) to convert the audio from analog to digital, and/or from digital to analog. Think of the converter as a translator between your mixer's language (analog) and your computer's language (digital). If you want either of them to be able to 'talk' to eachother, you need a 'translator' (converter).

Does that help? :)


*edit: Firewire is a digital communication method, used for connecting things like external Hard Drives, interfaces, digital consoles, etc. It has a limit on the amount of digital data it can pass, but it's much higher than ADAT is capable of. 'ADAT' (an optical connection, also called 'Lightpipe') is another digital communication method which audio equipment uses between themselves to pass digital data as well, although it's mostly limited to 8 channels of data (depending on the device, I believe the max is 8 channels of 24bit/48khz). Originally used with ADAT machines (tape-based digital recorders), it's primarily used as a digital transfer method in a digital recording studio, either to communicate with external gear, or to add channels of pre-amps to your interface (I use it to connect an 8-channel Pre to my Digi002, to get me 12 preamped channels of I/O).


*edit2: it took me a while to post this, so xstatic's post wasn't there when I started typing :p


*edit3: Also also, I wouldn't go boasting about using a $20k yamaha console: many of the people in here have worked on $100k-1mil. + consoles at one point or another :p Look for names like SSL, Trident, and Neve and you'll see what I mean :p
 
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steve.h said:
Umm... dude, it's A N A L O G. As in, not digital. Instead of being a dick about it, I'll do my best to explain this to you in a way that will hopefully make everything clear to anyone from a complete n00b to someone who kind of knows what they're talking about, but isn't quite sure:

Purely analog mixers are analog all the way through, meaning at no point is the audio signal from the microphone/pre-amp converted to a digital signal (1's and 0's). It passes signals through fluctuating voltage in wires.

In order to pass audio into the computer, at some point you need to convert the Analog signal to a Digital signal. When you hear about people talking about 'interfaces' or 'A/D converters', this is what they're talking about. Some interfaces (like, for instance, the Digi002) have pre-amps, converters, and a digital mixing console all built into one unit!

So, if you have a nice big analog console, and you want to use it with your computer, you need to purchase some sort of converter (Apogee makes some extremely nice ones, M-Audio has a decent inexpensive one called the Delta 1010) to convert the audio from analog to digital, and/or from digital to analog. Think of the converter as a translator between your mixer's language (analog) and your computer's language (digital). If you want either of them to be able to 'talk' to eachother, you need a 'translator' (converter).

Does that help? :)


*edit: Firewire is a digital communication method, used for connecting things like external Hard Drives, interfaces, digital consoles, etc. It has a limit on the amount of digital data it can pass, but it's much higher than ADAT is capable of. 'ADAT' (an optical connection, also called 'Lightpipe') is another digital communication method which audio equipment uses between themselves to pass digital data as well, although it's mostly limited to 8 channels of data (depending on the device, I believe the max is 8 channels of 24bit/48khz). Originally used with ADAT machines (tape-based digital recorders), it's primarily used as a digital transfer method in a digital recording studio, either to communicate with external gear, or to add channels of pre-amps to your interface (I use it to connect an 8-channel Pre to my Digi002, to get me 12 preamped channels of I/O).


*edit2: it took me a while to post this, so xstatic's post wasn't there when I started typing :p


*edit3: Also also, I wouldn't go boasting about using a $20k yamaha console: many of the people in here have worked on $100k-1mil. + consoles at one point or another :p Look for names like SSL, Trident, and Neve and you'll see what I mean :p
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OK, i knew everything you told me there...... i know what a digital signal is, and what a analog signal is. how they work yada yada.

i know about interfaces and converters and wat they do. as well as firewire and usb

i'm just frustrated that i can't get a cheaper analog mixing console that connects straight to the pc. I pretty much want a more basic version of the big consoles. something that has 32 or 48 channels, that connects to the pc, and each channel is recognized SEPARATELY. that's mainly what i want. i have converters and stuff already.... i'm just sick of not being able to record 16 tracks at once and not having to spend $$$$$$ on a really expensive piece of gear.

thanks for clearing this up, i've been searching around for a while, and i just wanted to clear this up.
 
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