Al Krow

That is super kind of you to sort me out on this - thank you! Now you say stop buying mixers? Hmmm...I'm kinda thinking the opposite i.e. why has it taken me so long to dive into these?! I'm a little gobsmacked at the feature set and EQ options available on my circa £400 Soundcraft Signature 12MTK 12 multi-track recording --> Motu M4 up for sale 3 band EQ with semi para mids with a f-range from 140Hz to 3KHz, and bass EQ centred at a very sensible 60 Hz --> do I really need an EQ pedal any more? Hi Z inputs --> DI no longer required and don't need to stress about balanced outputs not being available on certain multi-fxs Dbx limiter with hard-knee compression --> Nice! Not going to miss my Keeley Bassist HPF starting at 100Hz with 18dB / octave cut. Engage that and maybe add a little bass boost and off we go for non-flubby low end --> Thumpinator now also redundant? I mean, this thing has just paid for itself! And I'm sure @dave_bass5 has got a similar feature set on his Behringer which is sub £300.

Just looked into the QSC TM16. Yes, what a fabulous piece of kit and super compact too!!! But at £1,385 it's one for the future for us, and I suspect my band will balk at spending £1,000 over the Soundcraft Signature we've just got.

This was a good shout btw - works fine (as does using two of the Aux Out) using a 2 into 1 lead to combine. I was just keen for ease of use to see if I could get the output to both my desktop monitors from a single aux out so I can get an idea of what will be being pumped when we're playing live - but @Woodinblackhas very kindly offered to sort me out with a single adaptor to enable me to do that.

Here's a picture of the desk, if it helps folk trying to follow this part of the thread!

Yes I think so. But I would like the ability to hear what's coming out of my aux outs via both my desktop monitors rather than one of them. And I'm wondering if there's an adaptor that will enable that? But I agree that the Group 1-2 outputs do look interesting in what they are bringing to the party!

But not possible to have a single mono aux out --> adaptor --> stereo aux in and drive both desktop speakers?

Thanks for the suggestions which make good sense for a pair of headphones. The other thing I'd be wanting to use one for is to connect the mono aux-out to my desktop stereo active monitors, which have a shared single 3.5mm aux-in on the powered speaker. Is there something short of a £50 Behrigner P2 adaptor for that, so that I can have the aux out mono signal going to both rather than one of the desktop speakers?

Not a bad shout! Anything that's just an adaptor costing < £10?

Thanks. I need something that will feed a mono output from an aux-out on a desk to both ears of a stereo headset, and not to just one ear. If your suggestions do that, I'll check them out.

Btw any recommendations for a suitable adaptors for use with 3.5mm and 1/4" headphone jacks to use with the aux outs?

Yeah true, and actually I'm still within the 14 day return period. But if this is a common issue for all aux out then replacing the desk isn't going to help. Besides we have a work around for stereo IEM users who can just set their IEMs to mono.

Thanks Dave - I can just use normal headphones into the headphone out rather than the aux-out, and most stereo IEMs have a mono setting as I understand, so seems we're all good.

That's really useful to know. So it turns out that our IEM's (Xvive U4) being purely mono are perfectly suited to a standard aux-out then. The Zoom Livetrack L-8 I had dealt with this issue by providing all the ancillary outputs as headphone-out rather than aux-out. Shame it was unshielded / noisy with our U4s. Looks like there's no fault / design flaw with the Soundcraft Signature 12MTK desk I've just got then, and I won't have an excuse for returning it. Although I must admit I'm starting to develop an unhealthy interest in desks in the same way as I had in different make/models of bass guitar, amps and cabs a few years back! Maybe that's my own design flaw 😁

So...my desk saga continues! I picked up a Zoom Livetrack L-8 and was actually quite impressed at its feature-set and portability, particularly for the money. Unfortunately I found the model I had wasn't particularly well shielded and ended up with a high pitched hum with the IEMs we'd got for the band, which we weren't getting with other speakers. The Zoom had 4 headphone outs which was ideal for my 4 piece, so I've looked for something similar in a budget mixer and ended up getting the desk from the make I actually mentioned in the OP of this thread - in my case a Soundcraft Signature 12MTK. However having spent a bit of time with it, I've found an unhelpful issue in using the unit: The output from all three aux outputs is directed to just one of a pair of stereo speakers or to just one ear on a pair of headphones. This is irrespective of whether it is a TS (mono) input from an ¼” instrument jack or a TRS stereo input eg from headphone out of a phone playing Spotify into both the left and right stereo inputs of the desk. A dual-speaker or headphone stereo output is, however, available from the dedicated headphone out. Is this to be expected with the aux-outs? If it was going to a monitor it would be a non-issue, but going to headphones (other than ironically the Xvive U4 IEMs a couple of our band have got as they are mono rather than stereo) this isn't going to be great.

Thanks for that. But if you follow through the posts the high pitched hum issue we were having was only there with a particular digital mixer I was using and not with another mixer I tested with @dave_bass5with 3 separate U4s. I don't think there's any fault with the three U4s we tested and I've not had the whine with an Allen & Heath mixer we've subsequently used live. So the issue, in general terms, seems to simply be the interaction of the U4s with the lack of shielding on some mixers. But it's good to know that you are yet another contended U4 user!

Congrats - that sounds really positive! I'm still tempted by one of these! What other digital multis have you previously had?

FWIW - I understand the Soundcraft Signature 12MTK is also fully analogue. However, they've added a multi-track recording option to enhance the capability of the unit as compared to the non-MTK version. There's a £110 price-hike for this added capability, but given a latency of 3.5ms vs a latency of around 2ms for a high-end audio interface such as a Focusrite, that's still pretty decent. And I'm not sure there are too many decent audio interfaces offering 12 multi-track recording, certainly for £110?

Ah ok. But is that because your mixer does not permit multitrack recording? If so, I can see the benefit. If you had something like Soundcraft Signature12 MTK would that dispense of the need for a separate audio interface?

Yeah - had one, my notes on it attached fyi. It's ok but I didn't find anything too much I personally could use live. Bananana Matryoshka.pdf

What scenarios require both? It seems that a decent mixing desk can provide everything that an audio interface typically can?

If we have a decent mixing desk with USB connectivity, which increasingly many of us have, do we actually need to have a separate audio interface? What's the BC wisdom / consensus on this?

I think the G2 FourX is going head to head with the Nux MG 30. Not convinced it's going to trump it though.

Ah, Zoom B1-4 (but with a G). Good shout and amazing value. The B1-4 has been my EEP of choice for 2.5 years now, although can't say I've not been tempted by alternative EEPs and if Line 6 finally bring out a replacement for their aging (orig. 2015) Helix range this year, I suspect I'll be succumbing!

Very sensible approach! What EEP have you gone for?

@dswluthier Congrats on the new pedal. Have to fess I've ended up with 3 of the little buggers 😅 With only 5 effects slots per patch and a budget (but amazing value) mulit-fx such as this, the way I would do it is use your amp-speaker patch as the key basic ingredient in all your patches and then add the particular fx that you want so that e.g. your B7K drive becomes a combo of [B7K + amp-speaker patch] and you can then scroll through as needed over the 50 patch choices you have. If you have either the Zoom or better still the ToneLib editing softare (link available on the OP) then it's a doddle to copy and paste.