By Various
I recently read Mike Senior's review
of the Alesis Multimix 16, and he listed as one of the cons the lack of
a high‑impedance instrument input. I agree with him, but have been
searching for ages for a small mixer with this kind of input and can't
find one anywhere. Is there one? The mixer isn't actually for me, but for
a musician friend who still records to eight‑track cassette via an old PA
and various pedals and outboard. He plays bass pedals and has an ancient drum
machines, plus he sings and plays guitar and banjo. The outboard and the PA
mixer are noisy, and as I transfer his tapes and mix them I spend far
too much time on noise reduction and not enough on mixing and production. He is
not technically savvy, and getting him to use several of the eight‑track inputs
is not a option, so I am looking for a mixer he can plug his
instruments into and get a clean relatively noise‑free signal from, to
feed the eight‑track.
SOS Forum post
Not
as many small mixers as you would imagine come with high-impedance instrument
inputs. Soundcraft's Compact 10 is one of them.
SOS contributor Mike Senior replies: High‑impedance inputs aren't tremendously common on
traditional small‑format mixers, and it was only really because the Alesis
Multimix 16 also offered USB audio interfacing for recording purposes that
I felt that this omission was a significant missed opportunity.
Unlike mixers, a lot of audio interfaces do have instrument inputs built
in, and these products inevitably compete to a certain extent with the
Multimix for the punter's pound. However, if you root around a bit you can
still find a few products that might fit the bill.
For example, Mackie's latest 402 and
802 VLZ3 mini‑mixers both have two line inputs that are switchable for
high‑impedance operation, and also have the company's renowned XDR2 mic
preamps, so those would probably be well worth looking at. I can see their
relative operational simplicity being a big part of the appeal here too.
The same company's newly announced U420 four‑channel mixer/interface also has
a high‑impedance input, but I don't think you really need that
unit's Firewire interfacing, so it wouldn't represent good value for you in
this case.
Another option might be the
Soundcraft Compact 4 or Compact 10, with one and two high‑impedance inputs
respectively, and these should also be pretty easy to drive. Edirol's M16DX and
M10DX digital mixers also have high‑impedance inputs, but I'd probably steer
clear of those in this situation, simply because the potential benefits of
their built‑in digital processing will almost certainly be lost on someone
dealing primarily with analogue gear and not particularly technically minded.
Other than those models, there doesn't appear to be much else out there with an
instrument input built in, but I think we're going to see that changing,
to be honest, as the line between 'mixer' and 'audio interface' becomes ever
more blurred.
Published
February
2009
Published February 2009
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