UPDATE : The alto dissected ...
Despite
the ALTO L-16 having a ton a features at a great price , it does not fit my requirements. Read the following review.
Build quality:- Sliders feel ok , they do not have a linear resistance though when being pushed, they tighten up in the middle. The slider Knobs were all crooked when it was removed from the box and despite my best attempt to straighten them, they are still crooked. The slider knobs are 1/4 inch away from the face plate which is too much. A sideways swipe on the slider will put alot of stress on it possibly breaking it off. The mixer is pretty heavy and is steel construction with plastic side pieces. OK in a studio or home but not good for the road ( sides feel brittle and will get chipped/broken being moved around ) the steel case is thin chinese steel sheet (.6mm) it is easy to distort it by pressing on it.
The knobs have a decent feel when turned, a reasuring indent in the middle position when being swept, However once again the gap between the faceplate and the knob base varied from knob to knob making it look on close examination like they were all slightly different heights. This is also evident on the pushbuttons for the subchannel selections . Its impossible to tell from looking at the buttons whether they are up or down which is a real pain in the ass.
The jacks along the top and the rear were ok , I had one that did NOT give a really good connection (left in on channel 14) and had to be fiddled with to make it work properly.
The sliders on the 9 band equalizer are cheap and not nice to use , May just be me but i found them stiff to slide , they didnt exactly glide.
Inside the box :-
This unit has an internal PSU which I do prefere but the PSU section does not have a toroidal transformer , it has a regular one. This is a huge corner to cut. Any musical instrument or associated equipment should without a doubt use toroidal transformers as they produce close to no noise. regular transformers are by their nature very noisy.
The PCB is made from 1mm board. For electrical circuits using frequency ranges that audio equipment uses this is another cut corner not worth taking. A thin PCB means that signal cross talk and unwanted capacitance between the tracks either side of the board can colour sound and cause circuits to operate out of their required specifications.
The board itself was not supported by many PCB mounts , on a 1mm board I would expect to see a board support at least every 3 inches , this was the case , in fact it wasn`t even close. This will over time lead to board warp or even crack and fracture if it is subjected to much movement during its life.
The internal wires were fairly decent gauge and the soldering on the terminals was very good quality but was regular tin lead , i would have prefered silver solder for less electrical resistance and a stronger joint but thats just being picky.
Performance:-
powering up the mixer with all channels muted with nothing connected and my fluke 199b oscilloscope connected to the main out i started to check out the signal output, the signal was pretty clean until the mainmix slider went above about 2db, at which point there was a very minor but noticable clipped saw tooth wave of about 22 hz, I would put this down to a faulty capacitor (or maybe board capacitance ) somewhere near the output stage of the mixer. It may be possible that it was inductance from the PSU transformer but the frequency was wrong for this. At this frequency it would be all but inaudiable , but that fact remains that it was there.
Unmuting the channels one by one and sliding the slider pots didnt give the same added signal BUT the sliders did create alot of noise themselves as they were being moved, 3 of the sliders were especially bad and none were perfect, one of them was so bad you could hear it in the headphones as the slider was being moved.
Next I routed a sine wave through channel 1 using a tone generator ( used for tv repair many moons ago
), and checked out the results on the scope, when superimposed over the input channel the output was approximately .02MS delayed as it was being processed through the mixer, with all sliders and pots at a null position there was about a 3% signal loss through the mixer as a whole. This is actually not bad considering how complicated the equipment has become over the years.
Problems came when boosting high frequencies using the eq section on channel 1 and manifested itself in a large amount of high pitched noise. While I would expect to hear this when these frequencies are boosted to some extent, it was alarming to hear how much hiss with such a small amount of boost. This could be attenuated in the mixer circuit by introducing a carefully designed filter to progressively ditch signals over 55k. But that would add more cost to the mixer
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Next I plugged in my v-synth and ms2000b and setup the mixer for recording into the MR-8HD , at this point the mixer had a noticable hiss AND hum, the hum being unmistakablely 115v AC hum
. I couldnt figure out why this would happen so i plugged my headphones into the v-synth and head the same hum ( but not hiss) so i assumed my patch cables sucked (yorkvilles) , so i replaced them with gold plated planet waves but the hum persisted in the mixer and the phones output on the synth. disconnected the patch cable from the synth and all was well in the synth but not the mixer ( still hum).
After about an hour of jerking around with its controls , trying different channels and reading the manual I never overcame this. the hum only stopped when all inputs to the mixer were removed
I can only assume it was a signal feedback though the AC line that all my gear is plugged into.
At this point it was obvious that using it for a recording platform was not happening so I called the store , did some research and am taking it back for a soundcraft spirit FX , its about an extra $200 but I think it`ll be worth it.
I can see the alto being great for live or stage usage, but NOT for good quality home recording and definately not good for studio recording.
Don`t get me wrong its not a really bad product , it just didnt live up to my expectations, this is only my opinion and i understand not everyone is going to take their mixer apart . I did this to hopefully show that low budget gear can be decent quality , but I cant honestly say that is true with this mixer. Also this isnt a completely fair review because I didnt test the mic preamps and never bothered getting to try the effects. At the stage I was at I already decided to replace it.
It does offer a huge amount of features for the cash and the warrenty with it is really good (2 years no fault even if you break it). Taking this into consideration I will say it is good value for money but only if you have a very limited budget.
Other than that you should draw your own conclusions.
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