Ableton Forum

My old keyboard mixer bit the dust, I am looking for a new one to funnel my hardware synths into Live. Since I haven't used half of the knobs on my old mixer (because Live does nearly everything from EQ through panning to solo) I wonder if anyone ever built a "minimalist" mixer for Live users - like, 24 or so input channels, volume LEDs on each channel (to catch overload) a master out to speakers, a stereo group out to Live's input, and nothing else. (No EQ, or aux channels, or effects, or convoluted routing options...)

Does such a minimalist mixer exist on the market? If not, what's the closest unit to it?

24 inputs is not exactly minimal!

In my experience mixers with that number of channels would likely be fully featured, and anything really basic would only have a handful of channels.

How much cash can you afford to throw at this? I'm thinking you might need to have something custom made.

[LATER] For starters how about the Behringer RX1602?

If what you really want is the ability to attach a bunch of hardware devices to Live, then I think you'd be better with an audio interface with lots of inputs than you would with a mixer. Because if you have a multi-channel audio interface, you can record each synth to a separate track within Live, and then change the mix after the fact.

audio interface and patchbay

Otherwise you get things like DIN racks where you can plug some units into like the Ecler Enviro, but for that kind of money you can buy half the Behringer company.

The mixer that died on me was a Behringer, too; a MX3242X. Looking over the Net, it seems their units have a relatively common power supply issue. Hence my hesitation to get another Behringer mixer.

Over the time I owned the MX, I realized that I only use 24 inputs (hooray for their LEDs!), the master out, and two group outs for Live's input. Nothing else from the whole mixer: not the EQs, not the AUXes, not the digital effects, not the extra group channels beyond stereo, etc, etc... - all that extra stuff just complicated mixer operation, hence my search for simplicity.

I would consider an audio card with 24 physical inputs if it had the ability to mix 8 simultaneous inputs - 4 stereo keyboards is the max I sometimes layer for a take. Hmm, the CPU requirements of such an advanced card might be just the item that will force me to migrate to my i7 Mac, after all... there's so much stuff on my G5, I compose on it to this very day, instead. (Path of least resistance, I guess...

Maybe you'd like this: Speck Electronics X.Sum. High quality sound. 16 stereo/mono channels. 2 stereo output busses.
http://www.speck.com/xsum/xsum.shtml

i'm not so sure the OP was willing to spend $1700 on a summing mixer but i could be wrong.

...well you did say minimal

McQ714 wrote:i'm not so sure the OP was willing to spend $1700 on a summing mixer but i could be wrong.

i will give him this though.. if someone has enough hardware to want 24 channels they may be able to actually afford that

roland m240r

hard to find but around 300.- (sometimes.. nobody likes to sell them for the behringer style rates so people keep it.. allways a good sign when certain equipment dont gets to the second hand market)

Struth, that's a beast!

+1 for the audio interface idea. I chose a 8x8 interface for this very reason, I wanted to let Live be the mixer.

If you need more than 8 analog inputs, many Firewire interfaces allow you to expand using digital connections (ADAT lightpipe is common). Of course, that many inputs won't be cheap because you need to buy multiple boxes.

I was looking at the Roland mixer line already but the tangle is, there's no meter bridge or meter bridge retrofit... it helps a lot to see which input channel is in the red when something starts to sound distorted...

One of the things I'm just looking into is the possibility of using one of these rack-mount multitracks as a rack mixer, since they have good front panel metering. Alas the first few I looked into, the Tascam MX 2424 below, and the Mackie HDR/SDR/MDR line have only individual track outputs... so much for mixing anything. If any of these now-old multitracks sported a master and monitor out, I'd be in business...



Another alternative is if any orphaned meter bridge sold on ebay could be tweaked to work with a rack mixer like the Roland m240r... hmmm.

Something that's BOTH an interface and a multitrack with mixing (so that everyone is correct) ... I just heard of a thingy called Zoom R24.

Might work, it looks quite minimalish . I'm still reading the specs, though.