Ross Mixer?

[El Barto]

Anyone heard of a Ross mixer? A friend of mine out of state bought a 16 channel Ross mixer for $150. Never heard of this brand, so I assume it can't be that great...am I right or wrong here?

 

[bvaleria]

Mediocre, unexceptional, functional, usable.... kinda like Peavey.... that about sums it up!

Bruce Valeriani
Blue Bear Sound

[Edited by bvaleria on 11-27-2000 at 17:48]

 

[El Barto]

Gotcha...funny thing is I think they have a Peavy PA system...oh well, that band kicks major ass though.

 

[bball jones]

I would rate Ross below a Peavey though, they started out copying mxr phasors and distortion+'s, then started rippin off Earth or Tour or tapco mixers, always bottom of the barrel stuff - and always cheap. Hey, if it works for your friend, that is all that matters.

 

[MISTERQCUE]

You mean to tell me that their are cheaper mixers than
Behringer? Which in your opinion is the worst of the 2?

 

[Gidge]

i have an old Ross 4 track. I was using it b4 I got my J-Station as a preamp for bass guitar. Pretty damn noisy piece of shit....adds quite a few db noise to the signal...as far as their mixers i would guess they r shitty too....

 

[dkelley]

You mean to tell me that their are cheaper mixers than
Behringer? Which in your opinion is the worst of the 2?

speaking from the point of view of mixers only, and the brands I mention here are only my personal opinion, and despite what I write here I use Tascam gear for a lot of my work so don't take any of this too seriously....

there are lots that are cheaper than behringers, and LOTS and LOTS that are crappier than behringers. Companies with crappy quality that may be equal to or worse than behringer include Tascam, Peavey, Alto, and more (that's just quality control I'm talking about). Those that don't sound as good as behringer can (depending on your taste) include mackie, ross, peavey, yamaha (depending on model and type of eq tone you like), alto, and plenty of others.

I like new berry sound better than many other makes of "american" sounding boards, but I just wouldn't want to bet a lot of cash on it's reliability in a working environment. A ross might be more reliable, but I mean, come on, the design is seriously screwed (more about Ross at bottom of this post).

However if you take the older behringer models (which dont' sound as good as later models) and combine that with the crappy build quality (you have a higher death rate among 1 year old berry mixers than many (but not all) other brands), you end up with that famous "behringer sucks" situation. If they all sounded amazing it would be a more popular brand, but you have to be picky about the model and feature set to get a good deal in berry mixers and you also have to have a good warranty and some good luck on your side that it won't start dying after a few months of even gentle use.

Newer behringer stuff is very good but you still take your chances with quality. I'd take a BIG berry mixing desk over a yammy these days since I just really like the EQ section and the newer preamps are clean enough for serious use. But for most of my mixing I prefer things like studiomaster boards that color the sound in a neve-like way. I like that tone for all styles of music I record including rock, pop, and classical. But with older boards like that you have more maintenance than you do with new berry stuff (most of the time), and with any tascam gear you have to watch that there aren't design flaws that will blow up your mixer right under your hands (depending on model), so you know, the name brand isn't absolutely everything.

I would avoid Ross mixers for anything other than headphone mix setups for your studio tracking phones for bands though. Nasty little things with unflat undefeatable eq sections - stupid stupid oversight on the part of Ross.

oh yeah, all that being said, there are even some nice alto boards out there now days, and they seem to be more reliable than berry from what I've been told, but heaven knows if that's true. again, shows that you can't go by name alone. I used a ross once, sounded great, but I think it would have sounded way better with a better board (that was for a live mixing situation, not for recording, so I couldn't go back after to listen again and say for sure if it was any good, but live it worked great).