Yeah, and it’s not just the feedback. I think the overdrive on each channel sounds really good too. I’m moving things around to have the Analog Heat on the end of the chain, because I used to have it on a pair of aux channels, but with the bestie that’s enough heat before. Is that where you’re thinking of putting the Boum, at the end of the chain?
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Yeah Boum at end of chain as a compressor to tame everything a bit. Maybe add a little more saturation but that probably would be overkill.
I like to run the Boum at 100% mix and send my master bus out of it now, then saturate the mix, compress and then work the filter while recording the output. So the Bestie would allow me to drive my mixes harder, add more crunch and distortion and then compress that a bit and ride the filter like before.
At least that is my plan, I won’t know until it shows up but thats what I want to do with it as a summing mixer. But the cool thing is I can also use it to record synths and drum machines and really mess with the sounds and then sample them. That is my other idea - drums through it sound amazing from the vids I have seen but I can’t help but wonder how my Nord lead would sound through it for example.
Another idea I have is to send my old MPC 8 outs into my Boss BX800 mixer and then sending that output into the Bestie. That could be amazing or just too much. It’s all an experiment but having 3 different pieces of hardware that distort and saturate really well gives me a lot of sound design options.
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I haven’t tested them next to each other, but as far as sound quality is concerned, they both sound similarly clean. The Bestie is able to boost a signal a lot higher though and when you do it starts to saturate/distort it in a really nice way.
I bought the Bestie, mainly because it’s battery powered, but the addition of saturation, the feedback channel, and the send output are all bonuses. The one thing that I wish it had was a master volume, mainly so that I could hone in the decibels when I’m using the feedback channel, so I’ll probably be incorporating the Moukey when I want mess with feedback.
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I’ve been playing with mine a bit with usb power and not had any noticable noise, you can patch the main out into something like channel 4 and I find you get very subtly different flavor of feedback, dial in a little of the main out and channel 3s built in feedback there seems to be some space to play with before it goes completely crazy.
I was playing with it as a sub mixer for eurorack and it seems to play perfectly fine with euro levels, if you use a mono patch cable out all the stereo channels function happily with mono ins. I know I could also use my dude mixer here but this is much more robust and playable feeling.
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Me neither…
It’s indeed quite good for this, I’ve been using it as a “flying headphone amp” in my last modular teaching session for some of the systems that do not have headphones out and it worked great.
Very handy little thing !
My Bestie has been arrived yesterday and I’m totaly in love with it. Such an awesome and musical mixer, with many sweetspots arround the feedback/Sat FX… my digitakt sounds more powerfull with more punch and clarity. Also the volca sample is reactivated now as a crazy distorted sampler. The manual of the bestie recommends to connect a chorus before the mixer to have other exciting sounds.
Do you use the headphone out for listening to the whole mix on boxes, because of having a master volume?
Best Knut
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Hey, just to fully wrap up this noise topic: I found the source of my noise, and it was not the Bestie – it was a different USB-powered device in the vicinity of the Bestie that was interfering! I can even run the Bestie off a powered USB hub with no noise at all!
The noise was in fact coming from the Bestie, but it was not the culprit, so I wanted to let people know the Bestie is noise-free and for me it will be getting studio use, not just experimental crunchy, noisy shit 
Man, this thing is awesome. I’ve been running all sorts of stuff through it. I need to start recording.
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Awesome! I think mine shows up tomorrow. I am pumped. Trying to flesh out an idea tonight so I can run it through the bestie when it arrives.
pray tell , the name of the true culprit?
It was little a DIY opamp distortion box. Let’s call him Frank.
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Sounds like Frank needs shielding.
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If Frank is small enough, Frank may just need Pringles.
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Got mine, going to run some stuff through it in a bit. First impressions are this is a beautifully built mixer and it is even smaller than I expected. i was expecting it to be around 60-70% bigger. Just awesome.
Ok after running stems through this thing and into the Boum I think I have found a beastly setup for gluing/saturating/driving/compressing and filtering a DAW mix.
Good news - no added noise. Just that low console hiss from the Boum that I get even with it on it’s own.
The feedback of the Bestie is amazing. damn. I am pushing my stems around 1pm on volume and then driving the feedback to around 11 AM. I go into the Boum and find I can still saturate the mix even more (just a touch) and it sounds great. Compression stays around 9 o clock and I control the gain coming in with the input.
It’s a lethal combo, anyone with the Boum needs to try this.
Side note - Not sure what the pre/post knob does, it does not seem to make a difference when I press it.
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pre post lets you hear the muted tracks on the headphone output, useful in a live situation where you are dialing in a sequence or sound before pushing it out
Makes sense thanks. Well this device is very easy to figure out then. I will saw that the feedback channel really does some magic to the sound but if one prefers a cleaner, tamer sound with some nice warm and rounded off saturation then just driving the channels a touch with no feedback easily gets you there. Very versatile mixer for summing, im really happy with it.
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I arrived at a very similar place regarding feedback and gain levels. Instead of Boum, I’m running through the saturation circuit on the Analog Heat and I absolutely love it
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