Best Mixer for Analog

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jjloomis

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Hi all. Great board--I'm glad I joined.

I was hoping I could get some opinions on the best 8 + channel mixers on the market today in the area of 700 dollars or less. Or, even better, older model mixers that may now be found in that price range. I would be using it with an Otari mx5050mkIII 8-track.



Jeffrey
 
If you can find one, I really love and use myself, a TASCAM M312B which is a 12x12x4x2x1 balanced/unbalanced mixer from TASCAM's golden era of analog back in the late 80's.

It offers phantom power, dual sweep parametric & shelving eq, 4 aux sends plus effects sends, separate 8x2 tape submix system that when combined, acts as a 22 channel at mixdown desk.

It's very clean, very musical and originally retailed for $3400.00 when new and now commonly sells on Ebay for about $350.00 plus shipping.

I actually own two of them!! :cool:

Cheers! :)
 
Balancing act

Hey thanks for the quick reply Ghost.

Are balanced outs more of a modern thing? It seems like all the vintage stuff has either unbalanced RCA or 1/4" outs. Nowadays most stuff seems to have balanced/unbalanced TRS outs (I'm thinking of some Mackie models in particular). I'm currently of the opinion that balanced XLRs are ideal for everything--ins, outs--everything. The thing is, I don't know of any mixers that have balanced XLR outs for every channel. Am I barking up the wrong tree? Should my real concern be matching unbalanced to unbalanced and balanced to balanced?


Jeffrey
 
Are balanced outs more of a modern thing?
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It's not so much a modern thing as it is a professional thing in that normal XLR/Cannon connectors are the traditional balanced connection method.

Companies like Mackie use the 1/4", TRS plugs because they are cheaper to manufacture and take up less space on the jack panel of their mixers. As you were looking for a great mixer choice and not an average one, I did not suggest buying a Mackie. :cool:

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Should my real concern be matching unbalanced to unbalanced and balanced to balanced?
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That depends on what the connectivity of your other gear is and how far apart they are positioned in your studio.

Balanced lines were designed out of absolute necessity due to hum and RF interference on cable runs of 30 ft or longer where normal unbalanced, 2 wire cables would be susceptible to those issues but, in a home studio, where most setups see the gear being reasonable close to each other, unbalanced lines are perfectly clean and problem free and are less expensive to buy and manufacture.

Cheers! :)
 
I think in one of my tascam board manuals tascam claims that unbalanced is a better signal and cleaner than balanced as long as its a short run like you would have in a home studio.
 
Thanks guys.

I'll probably just stick with the Tascam M-35 for the time being. I was under the impression that it wasn't a very good mixer and had concerns about the RCA outs.
 
jjloomis said:
Thanks guys.

I'll probably just stick with the Tascam M-35 for the time being. I was under the impression that it wasn't a very good mixer and had concerns about the RCA outs.
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I used to have an M-35 mixer and personally I thought it was pretty good mixer. It's got good parametric eq's on it and is quiet. Though it's old and maybe not the best board, it's still a good home recording board. I think.
 
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