Sounds like a mackie 1640i is the perfect answer for you.
I love mine.
16 ins and outs, 6 aux sends, 4 aux buses,
a real analog mixer with 4 band parametric eq but all tied together with
a nice firewire interface, and 100 percent accessible as to the routing.
Now the only down side is that the old mackie firewire cards used to be
100 percent accessible, now the software isn't accessible anymore, but
the only reason you need to get in there is to adjust your latency,
and or if you plan to agregate two of these things together to get 32
channels and such.
I was fortunate enough to get the older fw card, the new models are the
same board but with the new fw chip.
So if you can live with that, you are golden, otherwise it's down to
digging around in these inaccessible pain in the ass interfaces, yes
there is some hsc support for some of the focus rite stuff,
but how thorough it is and you know about work flow, nothing like
grabbing a knob when you got someone in the studio and they want more
headphone blah, blah, blah.
So if 15 hundred bucks isn't too much, this will future proof you for a
long time,
and don't cheap out and get the lesser mackies, they have plenty of
in-puts but where the price drop is you don't get all the returns back
from the daw, only one stereo pair.
For me, having 16 returns from the daw is worth it,
and you have fantom power separate on each channel, and inserts,
and a direct box on channels one and two, and be good to yourself and go
get one for Christmas.
You'll love it.
On 12/17/2014 4:18 PM, Florian Beijers wrote:
Hi,
Mainly, I want it to be slightly future-proof. I mean to record
multiple signals into my DAW of choice, that could either be Sonar or
Reaper. Therefore, controlling my DAW won't really enter into it, I
want enough inputs and outputs as well as the flexibility to mix these
into a variety of configurations, for example recording multiple
instruments but also routing a vocal track through an external
hardware effect and getting the processed signal back etc.
Things like FX on the console itself aren't really necessary, nice
gimmick if there but not a requirement by a long shot.
I currently use a Scarlett 2i4 as an audio interface, I plan to send
the main outs of whatever mixing console through that into my pc. If
you are of the opinion that taking out hte middle man and just getting
an interface with more ins and outs coupled with software-based mixing
is a better alternative, I am willing to look into that. I just
assumed doing this on the hardware level would be slightly more
accessible and would still work if a script suddenly decides to go
wonky for whatever reason.
Florian
2014-12-17 22:33 GMT+01:00, Cameron Strife <cameron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Could you outline what you plan to use it for exactly? Live sound?
Recording? Mixing? Controlling a computer based daw package like
sonar, pro tools, or logic etc?
On 12/17/14, Florian Beijers <florianbeijers@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hello,
I am considering purchasing a mixer, however I do have a few questions
that pertain to accessibility.
- Is there a digital mixer you guys have found that is reasonably
accessible or at least reasonably enough documented so a blind user
can use it?
- When it comes to analog mixers, what mixers have you tried and how
logical did you find the control layout?
I'm not looking for a 5000 dollar 64-channel mixer, something with 8
to 12 channels will be more than enough for my needs.
Thanks,
Florian
