Kinda thinking about pulling the trigger on one of the variants of digital mixers out there and I just had an epiphany…wait a minute - I have a Tascam US16x08. That unit has a mixing software so perhaps I can disable the DAW portion and run that. It has pretty decent options for a rehearsal mixer, especially for the mic channels:
Perhaps I can even bring the DAW into work and just bring in a reverb effect channel where latency won’t be an issue. Plus having that wired all the time and ready to record might be a good thing for us to be more creative.
So does anyone have this unit? Do you think this will work? I also have an older analog mixer that is basic, running one reverb rack unit on the Aux section and that’s what I am using at the moment. It works, but none of these fancy options.
Back to the Tascam US16x08…
One thing that is weird - I saw they updated the firmware with a “mixer true bypass” with very cryptic explanation: "Both the US-16x08 and US-20x20 have also been updated with enhanced routing options and a Mixer True Bypass mode, with precise input and output matching when bypassing the Mixer signal. "
If the unit has the channel count and physical I/O you need, then it should do the job. This may be more of “Can I work with this?” rather than “Will it work in this workflow.” Some times a piece of gear is such a PITA that you’d rather take a different approach, but I don’t think that’s the case here.
As to the Mixer True Bypass, it should be a simple case of the less processing you do, the less it harms the signal. You see this sort of option in both hardware and software. This idea is, the fewer summing (mixing) steps you take, the cleaner the signal will be, with lower noise and distortion. Adding or mixing mutiple signals together makes the final output louder and LOUDER. So, summing nodes require a hefty amount of negative gain staging where each input signal is padded down significantly to maintain headroom at the output. Will you hear a difference in your setup is something only you can answer by testing.
That’s so crazy. I traveled with this thing on my live keyboard rig for years, but I only never used the inputs, I just used it to split the outputs for the mainstage patches. I’m sure it’d work just fine though… can’t see why it wouldn’t.
Yeah, the Tascam 16x08 does work as long as you power a PC and run the software, unfortunately they didn’t put reverb on that unit or it would’ve been great in that capacity. Too cumbersome to power up the PC every practice as I have to put it back in and reconnect, now we just turn on a shoddy old Behringer mixer but it’s just me wishing more control
Decided to try another approach…got a PreSonus StudioLive 16.0.2…I thought it only records one way but it turns out it can fully integrate with Studio One so we’ll see. Might decide to keep it if the latency is OK. If I am lucky I’ll have a chance to record a drummer with it soon.
