Need small mixer to replace large one.

  • Thread starter Thread starter MichiganMan
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MichiganMan

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Hello,
I have a Mackie 24x8 mixer that I use in my small home studio. I use Sonar on a laptop and use an Edirol FA-101 firewire to go in and out of the laptop. I am moving and will be in a corporate apartment for about 6 months and need a small mixer. The 24x8 is HUGE. I have some mic pres that I use and then go directly into the Edirol. I then need this mixer to control the volume going into the powered Mackie 824 monitors.

I have a synth and several mics that I will use going into the mixer before the Edirol. Any suggestions what I can use?

Thank you,
Michael
 
Since you seem to be a Mackie guy, how about one of their smaller boards? I've used several of them (in live situations) and they all seem pretty solid.
 
I like the idea of the ATTY. But for $100 I could buy a third of a decent mixer. Something I could always travel with. But, I suspect the ATTY has very clean electronics.
 
Alexbt said:
Since you seem to be a Mackie guy, how about one of their smaller boards? I've used several of them (in live situations) and they all seem pretty solid.
Click to expand...

I could certainly go the Mackie route. Has anyone used the Soundcraft E6 or Soundcraft Compact 10?

I also need a little education. On my big Mackie board I route the return of the computer into 2 channels and output them to the monitors. Meanwhile all my other inputs on the board go into the the computer without having to hear them directly through the monitors. What is this type of output called? This is what I need with a small mixer. I can't use a small mixer that cannot do this.
Thank you,
Michael
 
MichiganMan said:
I could certainly go the Mackie route. Has anyone used the Soundcraft E6 or Soundcraft Compact 10?

I also need a little education. On my big Mackie board I route the return of the computer into 2 channels and output them to the monitors. Meanwhile all my other inputs on the board go into the the computer without having to hear them directly through the monitors. What is this type of output called? This is what I need with a small mixer. I can't use a small mixer that cannot do this.
Thank you,
Michael
Click to expand...
The higher-shelf Soundcraft lines are pretty good, but (IMHO, YMMV, LSMFT) the econo-Soundcrafts are inferior to the Mackies in my experience. A keyboard player I know upgraded from a Soundcraft E8 (if I remember the model number correctly) to a Mackie 1604VLZPro about 9 months ago, and it was the old cliche of a veil being lifted off the sound. Everything sounded so much crisper and discrete than with the Soundcraft.

You are not going to find much in the way of high bus numbers in physically small mixers, but what you can find if you look judiciously enough, are ones with a large number of direct outs on the channel strips. Again the 1604 is very nice for that with direct outs on 8 of it's 16 channel strips. Add inserts on all 16 strips and 4 output busses and you have plenty of I/O flexibility.

G.
 
Mackie 1604VLZPro vs. Yamaha MG12/4

The Mackie has 16 channels and the Yamaha has 12. 12 is great for me and the smaller the better. They both have 4 busses and the Mackie is about $600 more. Will the Yamaha do the job for me, or are there "quality of sound" issues that I need to know about.

Thank you all.
Michael
 
MichiganMan said:
Hello,
I have a Mackie 24x8 mixer that I use in my small home studio. I use Sonar on a laptop and use an Edirol FA-101 firewire to go in and out of the laptop. I am moving and will be in a corporate apartment for about 6 months and need a small mixer. The 24x8 is HUGE. I have some mic pres that I use and then go directly into the Edirol. I then need this mixer to control the volume going into the powered Mackie 824 monitors.

I have a synth and several mics that I will use going into the mixer before the Edirol. Any suggestions what I can use?
Click to expand...

Not sure how many channels you're talking about, but I've been impressed by the quality of the pres in the Peavey PV8. It basically has four mic/line ins and two stereo line inputs. It has punch-ins for the four mic channels. Oh, and it's a little over a hundred bucks.
 
It needs to be a 4 bus mixer

I can get away with a 10 channel mixer, but I do need it to be 4 bus. I also don't want any coloration of tone. Thank you.
 
You are kind of asking for something that doesn't exist in a really low budget range.
 
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