{"id":474,"date":"2006-08-03T00:11:24","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T16:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2006\/08\/2006_08_03_0011.php"},"modified":"2006-08-03T00:11:24","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T16:11:24","slug":"as-promised-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/08\/03\/as-promised-2","title":{"rendered":"As promised"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, not that anyone cares, but I did<\/em> say that I was compelled to justify my earlier purchase<\/a> of a certain mixer, so just skip this post if you ain’t interested.<\/p>\n\n

Choices<\/h2>\n

My initial purpose was to get a phantom power box for my microphones, but then thought why not just spend extra and get the phantom power as well as<\/em> mixing capabilities. Then I pushed my luck in justifying getting an affordable mixer that was also a control surface.<\/p>\n

For those who don’t know, a mixer in uber-laymans terms is that board which has those knobs and faders – where you can put mics, instruments, etc. and easily control them in one place. I mention this because a control surface<\/em> is similar in a sense, but was meant to interact with software. There are digital consoles that are both mixers and control surfaces. A perfect example would be Digidesign’s Control24<\/em><\/a> series.<\/p>\n

To cut a long story short, I had to scrap that idea because the cheapest console that’s both a mixer\/control surface would probably be M-Audio’s ProjectMix I\/O<\/em><\/a> – there’s also the Mackie Control Universal<\/em><\/a> which I have no idea how much is. I was eventually left with the need for a simple analog mixer with phantom power (which is pretty standard).<\/p>\n

The Brands<\/h2>\n

My conditions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 4 or more tracks – I usually just record voice and guitar, so two would do, but the prospect of how useful the mixer on a live scenario would be, I felt it would be safe to up the tracks a bit to accomodate future “upgrades.”<\/li>\n
  2. Faders – almost all mixers with less than 6-8 tracks are all knob-based. Having a fader is very useful<\/li>\n
  3. Small – something that can fit in a bag in case you have to bring it somewhere<\/li>\n
  4. Phantom power – some don’t have this so it would be prudent to make sure.<\/li>\n
  5. Per-track mute buttons – you’d be surprised, when you start going down to 6 tracks or less, a lot of mixers lose these useful buttons.<\/li>\n
  6. Fit my budget – obviously<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I only considered 3 brands. Mackie, Behringer,<\/strong> and M-Audio.<\/strong>Basically because these were probably the only brands that had consumer lines that were somewhat affordable 1 <\/sup><\/a>Other brands usually have mixers with too many tracks that what I need for the moment – and understandably their prices are quite hefty as they usually start with 16-24 tracks already.<\/span><\/span>