Mixer question.

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guitarmonkus

guitarmonkus

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Hey guys. I'm needing a mixer to work as my audio interface. I'm not a drummer, and it's just myself doing recordings, so I don't need very many inputs. Does anybody have any experience with this product? It's an Alesis Multimix USB mixer. I was searching around ebay and it seems to fit my needs. Any thoughts? :confused:
 
If I were you I would look at the Firewire version as there are Many problems with USB Audio interfaces the least of which is Latency...

The Firewire version is more expensive but it also lets you record 8 seperate and induvidual tracks were the USB version just sends a stereo mix of all 8 channels so if you were recording say Bass and two Guitars and after recording you noticed that the Bass wasn"t loud enough you could not adjust the level of the Bass without it affecting the Guitar so you would have to record the tracks again....

Firewire is the way to go if you want to be able to utilize all 8 channels of the Mixer....


Cheers
 
Good advice, but I don't have a firewire port on my laptop. I only have a USB, so my choices are limited. Latency is a problem I have with my interface right now (m-audio fastrack), and actually it's causing me to be frustrated to the point of not wanting to record much these days. I don't know if I have any options of firewire without buying a new computer. eh.

Thanks for responding Minion. :)
 
Seeing as though know one has asked it yet. Why a mixer? Why not a rack interface or something. You can get some decent 2 channel USB interfaces and the firewire interfaces would blow them out of the water.
 
You can also get a PCMIA Firewire adapter for a Laptop as long as your Laptop has a PCMIA Slot which most should.....


Cheers
 
KamikazeKyle said:
Seeing as though know one has asked it yet. Why a mixer? Why not a rack interface or something. You can get some decent 2 channel USB interfaces and the firewire interfaces would blow them out of the water.
Click to expand...

The problem I'm having (and by the way i don't know if my mixer solution will solve it) is that I'm getting terrible gain from my interface. No matter how high the settings go on my interface (m-audio fasttrack), I'm not getting a hot enough signal. There aren't options for me to tweak with this interface, so I'm just going to scrap this entire idea and try my luck with a mixer. I run through a Behringer Vamp Pro, and even that isn't enough boost to get my meter near the top. I've posted a few questions on this in the forum, but no one really has answers, and I can't find any myself.

I just thought the mixer would give me better control of my output. Should I be looking somewhere else to fix the problem?
 
Minion said:
You can also get a PCMIA Firewire adapter for a Laptop as long as your Laptop has a PCMIA Slot which most should.....


Cheers
Click to expand...

My system does have a PCMIA slot. That is great news. Thanks Minion. I will look into that immediately.
 
The PCMIA cards cost roughly 60 dollars and are well worth it. I use one with a Mackie Onyx 400F for locational recordings. As for getting a mixer over an interface I don't think that would be quite a great idea. I would recomend instead to upgrade your interface. Whats you're spending budget?
 
If latency is an issue with recording one channel off the Fasttrack (I used to have one of those), you might want to make sure that your laptop's specs (processor, ram, etc.) are up to par with any firewire interface you might want to use. Also did you try changing the latency settings in your DAW, and are you sure you're using the correct driver?
I have a Mackie Onyx 1220 mixer with the firewire card, and though I love my Mackie (good pres and converters) like KamikazeKyle, fair warning to anyone who is considering them-- they have a lot of compatibility issues (processors, chipsets) in their firewire line.
 
as to the FW isssuses... i have a fw1884 and they are known not to work well with via chip sets wonder if yours are not the same... the suggestion has been to make sure the fw controller is a TI chip...
 
I have ordered a PCMCIA card with Firewire capabilities. Now I'm looking into a new audio interface with Firewire. I have a budget of around 300 or so. Which ones should I be comparing?
 
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