Decent low budget mixer

G

Ghnomia

New member
Hi All,
this is my first post in this forum, I'm looking for advices on a low budget mixer. I tried to dig around but maybe not enough, so sorry in advance if I'm going to ask information already spread somewhere else in the forum.

We are a bunch of friends playing and jamming together (calling ourselves a band seems a bit ambitious at the moment), and we would like to move to headphone mode to try and practise more easily even at home/flat.
I'm the loud one, the drummer, but I own both an acoustic kit and a nice Roland td9kx2, so what we need really is just an affordable mixer to play around.

I'm absolutely noob with mixing, so please forgive me if anything I say doesn't quite make sense, but let me know and I'll try to learn and understand a bit more.
That's what I would like to be able to have:

  • instruments to plug in: edrums, bass guitar, 2 guitars, keyboard, 2mics
  • I'd love to be able to easily record to usb or ipod
  • Input from usb as well for playing along with tracks
  • budget: < £250


Analog or digital, no idea, I guess the recording feature is available on digital mixers, and I like the idea to record my settings, but I understand that for low budget I may get lower quality with perceivable delays (or not? you can tell me maybe).

A friend of mine owns an iMultiMix 8 USB

He used it just with a keyboard, never used other inputs, so not sure it's a complete and reliable review. Ideally price and recording feature would be ok, but it is discontinued, which scares me a bit, and I'm not actually sure I'll be able to find it anywhere (assuming it's a good option).

That's pretty much all the information I can give you, if you need to know anything else please ask me.


Ghnomia/Serena
 
Hey, thanks for the reply, I've just had a look; for my purpose apparently I would need at least the GreenRoom model, which is about £400, so quite over budget :(

Will I make it any easier if I take the recording feature out of my requirements?

Thanks
 
That sounds very interesting, thanks, I'll do some research around the headphone amp for 6 and let you know.

Cheers,
Ghnomia/Serena
 
I got the Soundcraft EPM8 last year for approximately the same purpose - it's completely analog. It has been good so far, and I think it's inside your budget.
 
Consider getting something that has channel inserts, which all but the smallest/cheapest ones do. People tend to need to hear themselves louder than everybody else, but you're not going to get that many separate mixes from a small mixer. Inserts can be used for "more me" outputs which really makes sharing headphone mixes more convenient. Combine that with one or two headphone distribution amps (the Behringer HA4700 has "more me" inputs) and you've got a pretty nice little silent rehearsal setup.

You'll need to build up some mono/unbalanced cables with TRS at both ends (shorting tip to ring in each plug), and maybe one stereo "more me" for your drums (Y-cable, two TRS with shorted tip and ring on one end to a single stereo TRS on the other end).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top