Topic: Fave budget mixers

[RebelRebel]

I know a couple of big time location guys that could use anything they want to use for preamps, but use the mackie VLZs. One of which is Marc Aubort, who is a legendary classical location guy..

next time you see him tell him to lay off the crack.   

matt

[Chuck]

That sounds very strange to me. Someone that, I assume, has access to most anything he wants would pick the Mackie VLZ.

[RebelRebel]

That sounds very strange to me. Someone that, I assume, has access to most anything he wants would pick the Mackie VLZ.

Yep. One of the guys is a head engineer at DENON, and Marc Aubort is the other. The denon guy says they sound good, are portable, and cheap. A good engineer can get great results out of most gear. I found it strange too, but also smiled a little at the fact that some people think that gear upgrades will automatically make everything better.

[mmmatt]

maybe he does a rebuild on the preamps, or has a pair of Grace 801's in front of the sucker, or has a severe earwax problem... or like you say, maybe he gets off on making things sound good with minimal help from gear.  Kinda like the pleasure of riding a $50 moped around the world or something.   

matt

[RebelRebel]

maybe he does a rebuild on the preamps, or has a pair of Grace 801's in front of the sucker, or has a severe earwax problem... or like you say, maybe he gets off on making things sound good with minimal help from gear.  Kinda like the pleasure of riding a $50 moped around the world or something.   

matt

Yep, that reminds me of Kavi Alexander. He has abandoned all his tube recording gear, and now runs a considerably cheaper true systems pre>>>sd 722. His recordings have lost nothing. Great gear is just the icing on the cake when you are those guys.

[esteyes]

Anyone ever used a Soundcraft Spirit Notepad? They look pretty nice. Maybe not the monitor capabilities of the Compact4 but it's amazingly small for all they cram into it. http://www.soundcraft.com/product_sheet.asp?product_id=1

i used its predessor the Spirit Folio Lite for a long time. then moved to a Shure FP33 (3ch), and then 6 mo's later to the Sony DMX-P01 (4ch). the only drawback to the Folio is that the wall wart is a bi-polar supply, ie +/- 15v. back when i bought mine, there were few DC-DC convertors available unlike today. so i used a Zapco PX power supply (i was big into car audio back then, well much bigger than now) and i mounted a Switchcraft miniGQ connector to the mixer and an On/Off switch right next to the factory input connector. Wired the +15v to the pos rail right after rectifier and the -15v to the neg rail after the rect.and the ground to the board's bipolar ground. ran the whole thing off a 10AH 12v SLA and never ran out at a show.

i liked it a lot and made some great tapes with it. it did not have true +48v phantom but it did have a nice loud headphones out. looks like the Compact4 is pretty cool and if they did actually step up to a true +48pp, then maybe the unit has a fully bipolar power supply as well - that would make a difference to me - +/-15 = 30v peak-to-peak swing vs only 12volts from a single ended 12v supply... bummer that it is only 2mic in...

anyway...
my two cents
nism