How does this compare in sound quality to the A&H Z’s? It’s just that I can see a few floating about 2nd hand for less the price of my AH and Gear4Music pissed me off be sending me something b-stock after spending a good few £ with them recently and the AH is still within 30 days…
After much deliberation I think I’m going to stick to my little crappy mixer (Behringer 802), grab an interface for the iPad, and buy other music related toys.
I also have a Mackie 1202 and an old 2 in 2 out audio interface.
The mackie is almost like a patch bay
I would like to buy an M4 seems very easy to use and sound very good too
I’m always surprised to see that the Zoom Livetrak series are never mentioned. I had quite a few mixers / audio interfaces, and I must say that I stick with Zoom for a while. At the moment I will replace my L-12 with a L-20, so this kind of shows my appreciation, I guess.
They’ve been on my own radar for some time.
Ok, not often mentioned 
And then a Presonus AR8 popped up for cheap so I grabbed that. Maybe not the best mixer or the best interface, but should do me fine for a while (it’s not like my music even deserves a top class interface - haha!)
Another higher end analog option soon with the relaunch of APB Dynasonics.
Fwd to 9:06 for the 16ch Prorack House.
Just saw a almost new Soundcraft 8EFX-k for £100. I grabbed it, will compare sound to the AH Z10. It does have 8 mono, 2 stereo and one aux bus, it’s the same chip as the more recent Lexicon boxes, the Digitech chip, so it can’t be that bad.
I can’t imagine much difference in sound at around this price.
To me the Zed14 was quite a step up from my old Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro. The Mackie always sounded kinda crunchy in the highs, not necessarily bad, it just was there. I liked the distortion when channels were driven hard.
The Zed14 is more clean and to me, also sounds better.
The dual stereo inputs on Allen&Heath mixers are quite nice.
Theres a switch to send both to the channel or send one stereo input pair directly to the main out (like you’d use in a normal send/return configuration).
I usually use one of the dual stereo inputs for two stereo send effects.
On some models they feature 2x L/R 1/4" jack, on the Zed series they are cinch and 1/4" jack.
I have no idea why, but using cinch kinda feels weird to me…with a quality cinch cable quality shouldn’t be an issue, though.
So the Soundcraft came, pretty quick. It sounds a bit muddy, on the lower mids compared to the AH. It doesn’t sound quite as warm overall. Pre-amps are defo not as good, seems to have less headroom but I didn’t make a careful comparison. Eq’s not quite as good either.
The ‘Lexicon’ chip, is not bad, not bad at all, for something built in, defo useable. The peak lights are nice, the high mids high sound a bit, hmmm, almost brittle, but not bad, very clear.
I think i’ll hang on to both and use the Soundcraft as a sub mixer for the MPC. It’ll be quite handy for that, because as soon as you route to anything but the master out, you loose the mpc fx
But if anyone was deciding between the two, A&H without any doubt.
Can’t believe I got this for such a steal, and while there are much better ones on the market this seems to be doing what I want for now, mixing and also acting as a multi-in interface (for the price of a basic 2x2 interface) so I figure I’m winning and I like it so far 
Presonus AR8
The rack box in the right of the picture is custom made?
All the other stuff is custom made but that is actually a drawer organiser I flipped on it’s side and drilled holes in so I can put all the power boards and shit in there. And I rigged up some black ribbon that kinda covers the opening so it looks even less crap. (Not closed in the pic). All the other stuff is cheaply made custom stuff
oh, got it, thanks, Initially thought it’s a 3U Rack.
Would be pretty easy to make!
Model 1, used, but in very good condition… Still quite pricey, yet hard to resist for about half the price of a new one… (from a rental company selling off part of their equipement due to Covid19)
I am using a DSub multicore to input four of the six balanced stereo channels (from AR, A4, OT, Lyra), and another one for sending out three stereo Aux busses (to AH, OT-AB, OT-CD) as well as the main mix for recording. Very flexible routing, allowing to use the AH as a send effect, and OT as an fx bank and for live sampling.
Perfect crossover between studio mixer and performance mixer… I can’t afford it but I found a cheap DJ mixer does the trick too.
So I should have a z14 coming in addition to my old folio.
The guy is taking a while to send it though and I see a few mackie vlz1’s up for sale. What’s the deal with them? Afaik they distort nicely, I see they have direct outs and other such goodness.
I have the gear now to route DT out via Ob and then back in again, largely pointless, but amusing though it might come in handy further down the road.
Question about noise - I’m learning a lot about gainstaging and noise accumulation by using my GS-1 to mix my tracks. One issue I have though is electrical noise from my computer (hackintosh) affecting the signals passing through the mixer.
I get a lot of interference when the computer is on. How can I isolate this noise? Any ideas would be super helpful!
