Come on, think a bit more before saying it's stupid. FX would add to the cost quite a bit. there is a million time I've seen these or similar in use, Never been to a reception where music was playing during dinner and someone took a mic to do a speech? Weddings, work related event, small scale award nights, restaurants. Basically any time someone will speak into a microphone... If it's the only use case you can think of really you must go out more.
And the functional equivalent sells for $50 more.
As always thank you for these tests.
Most modern dynamic mics won't get damaged from phantom power and someone who buys this probably doesn't own any vintage ribbon mics.
Come on, Soundcraft is trading on their rep to make a cheap piece of garbage just to sell it. They certainly could make something better and for not much more money. They are grabbing the cash and obviously care a bare minimum about quality. The care is for the cash.Voted “fine” from me - I used to sell lots of very similar small format mixers bundled with active PA cabs for singers who were on a budget. The audio interface part of these devices is generally is an afterthought - but if it gives musicians on a tight budget some way of getting a signal into a DAW and does a half decent job for a demo recording or something, then fine. A bad DAC isn’t worrying me too much here. Always on phantom power makes it less than ideal for pro studio use, but that’s not the intended market.
What I’d be more curious about is how the analogue circuitry performs in comparison to similar devices. Soundcraft have always been well regarded, but is this Notepad worth the extra money over say, a Behringer Xenyx…
But how do you know that? Do you have any measurement results about their mixers that supports your words?
Yeah. It's a bit like testing vacuum cleaners only for suction. Even handheld devices would be rated against a Zamboni.
Or you only need a mixer as this device is!
Just connect analog out with analog in and run a THD test with free REW. This so called loopback test gives you the combined distortion of ADC and DAC. If distortion is high you don't know whether its the ADC or the DAC or both, but if it's low you're good to use it for both signal paths.
You can test it yourself, see my posting #72 above. I'd love to see it!
Can the rental of (equivalent) equipment - while/if being tested - be an option for you?
Could be, I'll consider that...
Yes I could but Amir's review would be more considered and authoritative...
Yes. One of the common problems it solves is that laptops and phones can only use one USB audio input device at a time. Yet with podcasting, it is common to need two mics or a mic and a phone/instrument simultaneously with appropriate monitoring. Yeah, you could use ProTools and a bunch of I/O, but you don't need all that. You simply need something like this to mix and convert and monitor. For a podcast, you don't need DC-to-light frequency response or 96+ dB SINAD.
That's true but one simple loopback measurement tells us more than zero full reviews ...
This seems to be an opportune time for the story of Little Mikey.
We have results for this mixer. And they have to be trading on their name because the poor I/O, lack of useful effects or EQ and boneheaded always on phantom power look incompetent. Are their big mixers better, don't know, but hope so. Can this one have some benefit, well it could, but the design and feature decisions aren't good. My comments were in regard to this mixer that is the subject of this review in case that is not clear.
