colleya Posted April 22, 2018 Share Posted April 22, 2018 Having tried to switch to a digital mixer (soundcraft UI12) the band and I are ready to go back to analogue to avoid WiFi drop outs and the faff associated with not being able to just press a physical mute button/adjust a fader. We need: 8 XLR inputs minimum. 3 aux outs for various monitors/in ears - these need to be individually mixable and preferably XLR rather than 1/4 jack. Some form of built in FX/eq - nothing ground breaking but enough to properly eq a kick drum etc. Budget is hopefully around £500 -600 but I honestly don't know if we can get what we want for that so please throw your advice, opinions & recommendations my way. Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grandad Posted April 22, 2018 Share Posted April 22, 2018 Do you want a powered mixer or not? In either case I would look at the Yamaha range, I've used them for years and never had a problem. The only thing is wanting 3 aux, most will have 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colleya Posted April 23, 2018 Author Share Posted April 23, 2018 Good point. We don't need power and thanks for the tip. Might be willing to consider the Mackie 806 or 1606 as a halfway house that cuts out the WiFi problem, does anyone have any experience of using one? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EBS_freak Posted April 23, 2018 Share Posted April 23, 2018 2 hours ago, colleya said: Good point. We don't need power and thanks for the tip. Might be willing to consider the Mackie 806 or 1606 as a halfway house that cuts out the WiFi problem, does anyone have any experience of using one? I've gigged regularly with a band that uses the DL1608. They are a very straight forward mixer to operate with decent processing and decent enough fx for what you'd want. The compressors and EQ shaping on the pres are great and obviously the aux count in a small package is a big plus. I actually tend to operate a pair of DL32Rs (one for FOH, one as a dedicated monitoring desk) over a GLD80 based on my experience of using the DL1608. When docked, there are obviously no dropout problems with the 1608 - but having said that, I have never really suffered with wifi drop out problems when using an Airport Extreme router. Alot of problems with wifi usually comes down to a units inbuilt router not being up to the job (Behringer XRXX I'm really looking at you here) or the external router in use being placed badly or again, not really being up to the job. Also, having the iPad docked also opens up a direct connection to Spotify etc, if you want to use that. In todays age, I would always recommend using a digital desk over an analogue desk. They are smaller than the analogue equivalent (especially if you take into account the racks and racks of outboard gear it would take to replicate the onboard DSP of the digital desk) - and the processing is unbelievably powerful. You have the FX engines, but also you have compression, EQ, and a gate on every channel... and a 31 band EQ (for getting rid of problematic feedback frequencies) on each output (so thats EQ for your FOH and every wedge). The other thing to consider, is that if you are using an iPad on your UI12, you should be able to hardwire an ipad to it using an Ethernet cable, one of these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01DGDNL2G and one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00486070K Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colleya Posted April 24, 2018 Author Share Posted April 24, 2018 Cheers EBS_Freak. We've had a few dropouts at recent gigs and there's a general groundswell of opinion that having physical faders provides quicker and more reliable access for between song adjustments (our guitarist sings a few songs so needs his volume adjusting up and down accordingly). We don't have the luxury of running with a dedicated sound person so any adjustments have to be done on the fly, usually by me. I'm going to hang on to the UI12 but get an analogue desk to see if we find that the loss of more granular eq and effects is offset by ease of operation at gigs. We've got Alto speakers and I've been very impressed for the money (unfortunately the budget won't stretch to RCF/QSC) so I think I'm going to give their 1604 live desk a go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adethefade Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 The Mackie DL1608 works really well for our band. It has six auxes and you can 'pair' them for three stereo mixes. Stereo IEMs are a joy to work with and well worth the extra cabling/expense. The router of choice for me (with any digital console) is the 5th gen Apple Airport Extreme. They're small, reliable, great coverage, and about £40 on eBay. As well as a bass player I'm also a FOH engineer. I wouldn't think of using a console without physical controls for my usual work, but for a band that has a consistent setup from gig to gig, it's not a problem. My other choice for a low-priced digi console would be the Allen & Heath QU, but they're a lot more expensive than the Mackie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EBS_freak Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 (edited) The Allen and Heath QU is a great mixer! Big fan of A&H - as you can probably tell with the GLD80 mention (it's just a bit big to carry around with all the external stage boxes for smaller gigs) Anyway - the Alto gear is great, especially for the money. Having looked at the Alto 1604, I see that it has inserts available to you... there's nothing stopping you cabling out to the UI12 and using the auxes and main outs as fx processors (with hard pans on the outs of the mains) - this will certainly supercharge your Alto with kit you already own. (Kind of the same software based fx processing approach as using Waves multirack I guess). Talking of which - and I don't know how much of a gear head that you are - if you have a multi input sound card and a decent computer, you could run some processing via Live Professor... so you have the simplicity of faders but with the additional functionality of some heavyweight processing plugins. Anyway... I guess it's got to that point where I'm geeking out again with regards to all the above... But its a shame you didn't go the Behringer route because you could have added some physical faders with the X Touch. Just looking at your initial post though, I do think you may be going backwards going analogue - for example, to properly EQ a kick drum, you'd want a minimum of EQ, compression and most importantly, a gate. Edited April 25, 2018 by EBS_freak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike257 Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 (edited) I've had hideous reliability issues with the UI range and don't recommend it to anyone. It's great on paper and has a brilliant feature set and I really wanted to be impressed by it but had show-stopping issues that have completely put me off. You'll probably have better results using an external router with it, but even with one of those I was still experiencing complete control lockouts often enough to make me swear off using them. If you are dead set on going back to analogue, I'd suggest looking at an Allen & Heath MixWizard. 16 mic channels, six aux sends, effects on board and fits in a 19" rack mount width. It's the most grown up of the small analogue mixers and will be sonically way better than the Behringer/Alto etc cheap efforts. Edited April 25, 2018 by mike257 Autocorrect making a fool of me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 The Mackie DL1604 is an analogue mixer with 6 Auxes, which should give you enough for your monitors and some left over to send out effects to an external processor unit or maybe your ul112. I looked at these but eventually bought a Yamaha MG206C, which has up to 3 auxes for pre-eq (for monitors) and a 4th which is set to post-fade for effects. Neither this or the Mackie has built-in effects. The smaller version of the Yamaha does, but has only 2 auxes. The Auxes on Yamaha and Mackie are Jack, but you could use adaptor tails if long runs are an issue. I used to run them on a 25m snake/stage box with no discernible ill-effects. I went for the 206C because it had more microphone pre-amps and we needed to get a lot of drum mikes onto the main mixer as well as vocals, keys and all the other usual stuff. You can also use an insert to get compression and gate from an external processor for kick-drum mikes if you want to follow EBS Freak's suggestion. The Alto looks like amazing value for money. Only 2 of the 4 aux mixes have pre/post switches: if the other two are set to post that might be an issue for one of the monitor mixes. It also doesn't have any group busses - I found it handy to assign 6 drum mikes to a group bus to adjust the overall drum kit volume, but if you don't need that it's not an issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colleya Posted April 25, 2018 Author Share Posted April 25, 2018 2 hours ago, EBS_freak said: Anyway - the Alto gear is great, especially for the money Yep, I *may* have taken the opportunity to upgrade our tops to the new TS312 with a lot more headroom and a bigger voice coil I'll report back. I know what you mean about losing eq and FX controls but it's an interesting idea about using the UI12 as a sort of FX processor - cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colleya Posted April 25, 2018 Author Share Posted April 25, 2018 1 hour ago, mike257 said: really wanted to be impressed by it but had show-stopping issues that have completely put me off This is what happened to us, our guitarist is getting more and more frustrated by it. Guess I won't be selling it on the boards here! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colleya Posted April 25, 2018 Author Share Posted April 25, 2018 1 hour ago, pete.young said: that might be an issue for one of the monitor mixes I'll give the drummer that one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubster Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 We HAD a UI 12 with the problems you mentioned and went back to analogue - soundcraft 20 channel (previously) on sale for around £899 which we picked up for £249 brand new!! Fabulous desk with 12 channels more than we need but who cares?! Keep,an eye on Gear4Music as that is where we got it. They get great deals from time to time. However, mixer only has 2 auxes but we can manage. Many on here singing the praises of digital but we have soured on it after our negative experience - give it a few more generations IMO. . Every time UI is mentioned, there is discussion of a fix by using external boxes of one sort or another but who needs that?. We, like you, want 100% reliability. We can’t afford to be farting around with digital glitches. loved the UI when it worked. Believe tha the 24r is a much more robust unit. Like the look of the ZOOM l12 - big surprise! Live recordings - yes please. Good luck with your return to analogue and very interested to hear what you end up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tubster Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 We HAD a UI 12 with the problems you mentioned and went back to analogue - soundcraft 20 channel (previously) on sale for around £899 which we picked up for £249 brand new!! Fabulous desk with 12 channels more than we need but who cares?! Keep,an eye on Gear4Music as that is where we got it. They get great deals from time to time. However, mixer only has 2 auxes but we can manage. Many on here singing the praises of digital but we have soured on it after our negative experience - give it a few more generations IMO. . Every time UI is mentioned, there is discussion of a fix by using external boxes of one sort or another but who needs that?. We, like you, want 100% reliability. We can’t afford to be farting around with digital glitches. loved the UI when it worked. Believe tha the 24r is a much more robust unit. Like the look of the ZOOM l12 - could ld this be what you need - has 5 independent headphone mixes https://www.thomann.de/gb/zoom_livetrak_l_12.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EBS_freak Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 I think the problem with entry level digital is that manufacturers are trying to deliver something at a cut price. Look at the XR12. Incredibly feature rich and unbelievably cheap. It has a built in router. Now given that a typical quality router would cost nearly half the selling price of the xr12 you can see where the savings have been made. Prosumer desks haven't even got routers built in. It's merely a means of getting people going. Of course people can expect too much. Sometimes I think it would be better if routers didn't come bolted onto mixers out the box full stop! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike257 Posted April 25, 2018 Share Posted April 25, 2018 2 hours ago, EBS_freak said: Prosumer desks haven't even got routers built in. It's merely a means of getting people going. Of course people can expect too much. Sometimes I think it would be better if routers didn't come bolted onto mixers out the box full stop! Completely agree here. I don't know of a single WiFi-driven desk where "use an external router" isn't a recommended course of action. There's a reason pro kit just has a hole to plug one in! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bertbass Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 We've just started using an RCF M18 which has both 2.4 & 5 ghz modems built in. Done a few gigs with it and it's been rock solid, wonderful bit of gear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
irvined Posted April 26, 2018 Share Posted April 26, 2018 We had a UI16 and have replaced with a UI24R. I connected both into an external wireless router and have never had any connectivity problems. For around £30 it might be worth investigation? Regards, Doug Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xzodar Posted April 27, 2018 Share Posted April 27, 2018 I’m using an A&H QU-SB with an Apple Airport Express as the router which has been completely fine. As a backup though, I have the Apple Camera connection kit plus a USB Ethernet dongle. This allows a wired connection to the desk if required. In fact I have a small hub in the back of the rack so that I can have a wireless connection and a wired connection at the same time (with 2 different iPads). You can even just connect straight into the QU via the wired Ethernet dongle if needed. I’ve never had to use it, but it’s nice knowing that it’s there and available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EBS_freak Posted April 27, 2018 Share Posted April 27, 2018 (edited) 16 hours ago, xzodar said: I’m using an A&H QU-SB with an Apple Airport Express as the router which has been completely fine. As a backup though, I have the Apple Camera connection kit plus a USB Ethernet dongle. This allows a wired connection to the desk if required. In fact I have a small hub in the back of the rack so that I can have a wireless connection and a wired connection at the same time (with 2 different iPads). You can even just connect straight into the QU via the wired Ethernet dongle if needed. I’ve never had to use it, but it’s nice knowing that it’s there and available. Agreed - the wired connection is always something that should be available to you. Get out of jail card for that time you know stuff is going to go wrong. Links to Amazon posted above in my earlier post if anybody looking to hardwire! Edited April 28, 2018 by EBS_freak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodinblack Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 I had a xr16, now an x18, and for ages just used the internal wireless, even though the forums just say to use an external router. Eventually one day I hit the problem that people have. So I bought a £15 wireless n mini router and never had a problem since. Couldn't go back to a wired router, love the X18. If it ever was a problem I would just use an ethernet lead from the ipad but not had that problem since. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colleya Posted April 28, 2018 Author Share Posted April 28, 2018 The analogue and budget arguments won out and so we gone for the Alto live 1604. I also took the chance to upgrade the tops from the older Alto TS112a to the new 312a with a lot more headroom. Have to wait a week or two to test the desk at rehearsal but I'll report back with an amateur perspective! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodinblack Posted April 28, 2018 Share Posted April 28, 2018 1 hour ago, colleya said: The analogue and budget arguments won out and so we gone for the Alto live 1604. Not a bad mixer at all, we used to use one of those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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