MOTUnation.com

wonder wrote:

musicman691 wrote:Heard some good things (surprisingly) about the Behringer X-Touch - maybe they've turned the corner on their QA issues?

In the last few years, Behringer, IMO, has gone from Ford Pinto to Honda Civic. Once used to be a snicker when you mention Behringer but now, i'm seeing some really cool gear and great reviews.

I was looking at the new PowerPlay Headphone setup they have. Looks cool.

This is true. You can still find some of their crap from earlier years, still in their catalog, but if you look for the newer stuff, it's usually built like a tank, well-thought-out, and works great. No need to ask for a brown paper bag when you buy Behringer anymore.

What I like is that the workflow design on some of their stuff has been as if their engineer was listening to me, personally, and making it just the way I want it. Some of the big brands like Roland don't even get that close. My only advice is to study the material and reviews before you buy. Usually you can tell which ones are the good ones, and which are still from their seedy past.

Shoosh

I'm thinking of ditching the Tascam DM24 altogether and either going "mixer-less" and using some sort of monitoring system (a la BIG KNOB, or CONTROL1USB) ...

OR

just using a control surface.

Anyone here thats gone that route and miss the mixer?

I dumped an Alesis 32 mixer and got an 828-3 several years back with a TC Pilot to control monitor levels. For a little while it felt weird not to have the faders in front of me but that went away quick. Just about every interface comes with some sort of soft mixer so there was really nothing lost when I removed the hardware mixer.

I agonised over this decision for several years, eventually ditching my beloved O2R, which in the end saw no mixing action whatsoever, a great pity given that I'd used a ProMix and Mackie CR-1604 for demos perviously and would have enjoyed a great step up with it.

I've no control surface now, but it's no big deal to me. When writing using my MIDI gear levels are barely touched, and although I haven't arrived at proper mixing yet, or adding audio for that matter, I expect it'll be much the same. That is to say that there'll be a tweak here, a nudge there and not much "flying-fader" action to be had.

It's way less of a big deal than I thought it would be. The main thing, IMHO, is to make sure you have a fader or knob of some sort you can access easily for overall monitor-level adjustment, such as a Big Knob or monitor pot on a mini mixer. After all, this is the single control one's most likely to return to time and again, at least, in my experience. I'm running a non-digital (unexpanded) original Mackie Onyx 1620, a 2-bus desk, for bringing the Mac, DP's stereo bus and CueMix streams together, as well as for latency-free monitoring of mic and guitar inputs. Technically it's all theory at this point as I'm not working yet (still saving and buying stuff), but in concept at least, this approach should work just fine should you choose to take it.