Small Mixer

TheDrumster

Senior Member
I am currently recording my band with a Zoom R16 and micing my drums using four mics. Since we can only record eight tracks simultaneously, and I am using four of those, I am looking for a solution to reduce my four mics to two, via a small mixer of some sort.

Any suggestions?
 
Mic the kit using the mixer. Send all the signals to the same sub group and send that one sub/out to one input on you recording unit, or just use the main outs. Or record all four straight to the recording unit, mix them, then ping pong the four tracks over to another track and then erase the original four.
 
Get the highest quality mic pre amps you can afford and you need at least four on whichever board you end up getting. The quality of the pre amps is really important. Behringer boards have a lot routing and effects but their pre amps are pretty bad. Mackie VLZ pre amps are way better, but they cost more. Mackie Onyx if you can.
 
After a little more thinking, I guess I'm looking for recommendations for:

4-6 channel mixer, with compression, that would take a line from the main board for my monitor mix (and feed in-ears or headphone)

Doesn't need phantom power.

Any suggestions??
 
Not a mixer but the tascam us1800 should do the trick. You can record everyone at the same time and mix/edit/compress after with cubase le5
 
Here's what I would do (I'm assuming you're not recording into a computer, right?):

Get yourself a used Mackie 1604VLZ. This console has 8 direct outs, and also 4 sub groups (with their own dedicated outputs).

You can keep your drums mic'ed up the way they are, plug your mics into any of the channels from 8-16 and then assign all your mics to one of the sub-groups, and send that output to the R16 - so you can even send all your drums mono and free up seven channels on the R16! The rest of the band can use the other channels on the Mackie (1-8), and you can either group some, or take a direct out to a corresponding channel on the R16. Voila - now you're mixing the entire band into the 8-tracks of your Zoom.

Pretty nifty, eh?
 
One last alternative:

Have another member buy their own R16 and link them.

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