Firewire mixers, who's got one?

  • Thread starter Thread starter rustyshed
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rustyshed

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Hi everybody,

I would be grateful to hear from anyone who uses or has used Alesis, Behringer or Phonic firewire mixers.

I would be interested to know how you found the mixers for recording quality, ease of use, etc. Also and especially if you have had one for a while and how they perform after alot of use.

Now I know theres other firewire options out there but I am on a limited budget and so have to look at one of these cheaper options.

Please do not use this thread as an excuse to blast the manufacture of these mixers. It will be more valuable if you could give me as much detail as possible on how users of these mixers found them to be.


Thank you for listening, I look forward to any replys.
 
Well I don"t know how much help I can be but I can give you a small bit of Insight....

A Friend of mine got an "Alesis MultiMix 16 FW Mixer" about 1 month ago and from the little I have heard it seems like a Pretty Good unit....

The recordings I have heard are quite good and he says it works without any problems in his recording software and the Drivers are fairly stable...It has fairly good quality 24bit converters and 8 pretty clean Pre amps and 8 1/4 inputs.....

The one he has Can record from all 16 inputs at the same time, so that is 16 Tracks of recording which is more tham most poeple would ever use for serious recording unless they were doing an orchestra but even then they would track each instrument seperately.....

I wouldn"t go for a USB Mixer as they are usually pretty limited in the number of tracks they can record and they have bandwidth and driver issues....

Actually I believe that the Alesis MultiMix FW16" is probably the best bang of the buch deal on a Firewire mixer as it has 16 inputs and is about $600 were something like the "Presonus FirePod" only has 8 and is about the same pricePluss you can use it like it were a regular 16 Channel mixer for mixing sound for live shows or other analogue mixing opperations......


Well anyways....Good Luck!!! :)
 
Check out the Feb 2006 issue of SoundonSound. They do a review of the Alesis Multimix
 
I bought the Multimix Firewire 8 mixer and promptly returned it after struggling through dropouts and latency issues. I then bought the Mackie Onyx 1220 with the Firewire card thrown in for free at GC.

It is leaps and bounds better than the Alesis in terms of sound quality.
 
Thanks guys for your replies if anyone would like to add any info please feel free.

Many thanks
 
brzilian said:
I bought the Multimix Firewire 8 mixer and promptly returned it after struggling through dropouts and latency issues. I then bought the Mackie Onyx 1220 with the Firewire card thrown in for free at GC.

It is leaps and bounds better than the Alesis in terms of sound quality.
Click to expand...

Hi! I have a question... If u connect the 1220 with the firewire card to the computer, do u still need a soundcard or can i just connect my monitors to the onyx to hear music from the computer?
 
Firewire Mixers

I have the Alesis Firewire 8. I am a musician, but new to digital mixing. I absolutely love the thing. It's a nice little stand-alone mixer, records well directly to my Pentium III laptop using the software packaged with the mixer, and was fairly easy for a newbie like me to learn. It has 100 packaged effects that sound pretty darn good. I hear people talking about how much better the quality of the preamps are in other equipment, and I find myself wondering what they're doing wrong. I get very good recordings with mine, and I barely know what I'm doing. :)
 
JuliánFernández said:
Hi! I have a question... If u connect the 1220 with the firewire card to the computer, do u still need a soundcard or can i just connect my monitors to the onyx to hear music from the computer?
Click to expand...

Yes you can do that and dont need another soundcard. the onyx becomes your soundcard.
 
Firewire mixers, whos got one?

Some great input from people, anyone got anything else to say about these firewire mixers. I am looking maybe at the Phonic Helix 24.

Whos had any experience with these mixers?
 
The Onyx 1220 looks like a good mixer. The only issue I would have with it is that is has no MAIN INSERTS. It has channel inserts. I always use the main inserts on my mixers. But if you are only recording one thing at a time, the channel inserts will work.
 
I've come to the conclusion that while the 1220, and the whole series, is really nice, it's just too darn expensive to get it to where I could use it comfortably.

1220 - 530.00
post-fade mod - 200.00
firewire card - 400.00

1,130.00 bucks. No thanks.
 
I've come to the conclusion that while the 1220, and the whole series, is really nice, it's just too darn expensive to get it to where I could use it comfortably.

1220 - 530.00
post-fade mod - 200.00
firewire card - 400.00

1,130.00 bucks. No thanks.
Click to expand...

$400 firewire card?!?!

I'm about 99.999999999999% sure I'm getting an Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire when I start my studio. I wanted to read the review in SoundonSound but had to be a member or something.
Click to expand...

Yep, IMO they priced this thing right out off being affordable considering the competition.

Higher than giraffe balls.... http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Mackie-Mixer-FireWire-IO-Card?sku=634269
Click to expand...

My 1220 was $499 total. GC threw in the Firewire card for free.
 
brzilian said:
I bought the Multimix Firewire 8 mixer and promptly returned it after struggling through dropouts and latency issues. I then bought the Mackie Onyx 1220 with the Firewire card thrown in for free at GC.

It is leaps and bounds better than the Alesis in terms of sound quality.
Click to expand...

is it really that much better sound quality?? hmm..
 
i figured it would be somewhat better, but i didnt think it would be considerably more.

im using the digi 002, and i have no plans of replacing it, but my brother is up and coming into the world of recording and i thought something like that would be good for him..

so whats the downsides to the alesis?? the pre's? converters? the onyx pres are obviously better, but that much?
 
i got a MOTU mkII (firewire version) off of ebay for $500 canadian, and its great. Doesn't look like a mixer in the traditional sense, but the recording quality is awesome and the mixer functions are just what i need, and compact which is nice. I added the behringer ada800 preamps. they are not great but for miking drums and backup vocals (for PA purposes) they are pretty cool.
 
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