I have a little bit of spare play money and looking at a bigger purchase to shake up my setup a bit (might end up going with an instrument but who knows) and make things a bit more streamlined.
I’m mostly using stereo sources into a Samson SM10 mixer in combo with a patchbay. This gives me 10 stereo inputs but although a great rack line mixer it’s pretty basic and I find it a bit fiddly using its sends. Better hands on control from the Xone 96 is pretty appealing, and I could live with having 2 fewer input channels.
The dual USB on it as well seems pretty useful. There’s not many more affordable mixers out there that have lots of stereo channels and an interface built in, let alone two.
I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around exactly how USB is implemented on this mixer though.
Both USB cards are active at the same time, yeah? So I could have PC on 1 and iPad on 2 and use them as inputs on the channels provided the correct input selected? The PC and iPad just need to have whatever sound is playing routed to the matching usb channel for the mixer channel - i.e., the DAW output would need to be set to USB 5-6 for it to show up on channel 3 of the Xone?
Going out of the desk to USB is where I’m a bit more confused.
Hardware inputs on channels 1-4 go to usb by default, and Guessing this is pre-eq? But can you have channel 1 input set to USB1 and record that directly as a sound source to a device on USB2? I’m thinking not.
To do that I believe I would need to record those channels either as sends or via the master? Which I think is also what I’d need to do to record any synth plugged into Channels A-D anyway.
Thanks in advance as there doesn’t seem to be a heap of info or discussion out there on the USB side of things for non-DJ use.
C and D would just be via the button that swaps the USB output from send 2 to master?
I think I’ve figured it out now. Basically anything plugged in can be recorded via usb in some combo of direct channel, send or master, just obviously not all at the same time. So suitable for limited multitracking but generally pretty flexible for some way to record any source one at a time.
Yeah correct. The master will of course record the entire mix but if you turn on only C then you can record that through the master :).
It’s indeed fairly flexible. The one thing that I really missed was the ability to record from and back to DAW through a single channel. Something that the DB4 was capable of and the SSL big six as well that’s why I use the latter in my studio.
Fair enough but not really something I need. Big Six is appealing as well but a bit rich for my needs, and a regular mixer feels like a lot of wasted channels when I only need one or two mono and a heap of stereo channels.
Yeah can see that would be a good approach but if I can cut down on the number of devices needed to manage signals I think I’ll be happier. Between a patchbay, 1ru rack mixer, adat expander and an audio interface I just find it very fiddly.
I have an SM10 too, and it’s one of those devices that is worth keeping hold of because of its convenience/functionality.
When I got my Xone 96 I was thinking of running the SM10 into one of the channels and having a bunch of devices going through it that I wouldn’t want to give a dedicated Xone 96 channel… especially true of my Elektron devices that can be recorded via Overbridge and can be easily mixed/balanced from themselves (so less need for the fiddly SM10 controls).
Worth keeping in mind.
Also, the Xone 96 does run hot, but not enough to present any issue.
Can someone help me out with this, please? It will be much appreciated!
Just realized that L-R polarity is reversed when playing things back over usb1 or usb2 out of ableton.
Anyone else having this problem? Can it be fixed? Can’t find anything in the manual…
Already switched usb-cable, but that didn’t help, so…
Never experienced this. Are you sure that your cabling is OK ? as I do not know of any circumstance where the USB polarity is wrong … more likely the analog connections
Yeah, when I pan on DN,DT or m:c, left is left and right is right, but when I pan in ableton when playing recorded stuff back over usb, left is right and right is left
Ok…… have you checked you haven’t doubled up the wrong connections, so the electrons are going in wrong polarity and then your monitor setup is also wrong polarity, meaning it would seem correct, but actually monitor setup is wrong ?
You may already have checked this, but has caught me out before …
I would more likely trust the Ableton output is correct, and setup up monitoring based on that, and then check L/R input config afterwards
Might be worth checking with another usb device as well, like an iPad or iPhone … that way you can confirm the above
Hey, just did a double check on everything and all connections are fine…and I might have found the cause…
It turns out it’s a plugin (Waves AR TG mastering) that seems to be causing the problem…
But it’s really strange!
When I pan the master in ableton or pan on the plugin itself, everything is fine , but when I pan on the tracks it’s reversed.
I’ve used this plugin on every recording in the past year. It’s a preset I use a lot as a starting point and this never happened before…
I really have no explanation for it…but kind of a relief it’s not the mixer
This is HUGE! About using an iPad additionally to other instruments.
So, all my synths, Nord Drum included, are plugged into the Xone. I also plug my iPad to it, and use a track to play what the iPad plays. Already beautiful and anti-gas for me. I get sync with Link and Live is also part of the setup.
Now, I was wondering about using sequencers on the iPad, such as Patterning or Fugue Machine, to control my synth. I thought about the fact that there is a MIDI out on the Xone. So I connected it to an input of my MIDI HUB and… it works!!
So in the iPad I select Xone 96 as the MIDI output, and the Xone passes the MIDI data to its output and the MIDI HUB routes it to my instrument of choice. Beautiful!
Did anyone try the MPC One 2.11.8 with the Xone 96 , 2.11.7 was working according to MPC forums. (They fixed USB driver stuff… not sure about the update.) (Well i think there is a rollback available.)
Miracles of Electricity — LEDs flashing when the mixer is powered off
Noticed the following: When my Xone:96 is powered off, there are still random glitches of LEDs flashing every now and then. The only solution to this has been to entirely disconnect the mixer from power.
Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon, or is my internal PSU faulty?
Sounds to me like the power button is touching the ON side somehow a little bit. Best to contact support of A&H about this. Either an easy fix or fixable by a tech.
except that C and D are not possible through the sends
