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Looking to get a nice mixer with my Studer 807. I want quality and can spend up to $2000. It would be nice to have at least 8 nice pre-amps.

Any suggestions?

I recommend this one:

http://vintec-audio.de/vintec/c3_pic_E.htm
http://vintec-audio.de/vintec/index_E.htm

Somehow I doubt that's around $2000.

I've been reading the posts throughout this morning on EA, some have suggested Soundcraft as a fairly good board.

I would hope I could get something really good that was no bigger than 24 ins for my price range ($2000). It's hard to tell in the technical specs at least why Mackie gets crapped on.

Over 40 views of this thread and no one has endorsed a mixer save Humphrey Bear who suggested a Godzilla mixer worth way over $2000.

???

http://cgi.ebay.com/SOUNDCRAFT-600-MIXI ... dZViewItem

i have this same model, with different ic's and lots of tlc. this has served me very well. you may want to have skills with a soldering iron, it is getting of the age to re-cap, etc.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Soundcraft-600-24-C ... dZViewItem

Hm... Well, for what it's worth, I just got a Tascam DM-3200, but I suspect you may not be after a digital board.

I upgraded from the Mackie 1604VLZ-PRO. The Mackie's preamps don't sound THAT bad, but when you do a whole record with them things sound very grainy and there's just a kind of buzzy quality to the sound which is not flattering. Can you work around it? Sure, I did for 5 years. But I think the thing is with a Mackie is that, even if you don't necessarily hear the shittiness right away, you will eventually, and you'll want to upgrade it to something better.

The new ONYX preamps are supposed to sound a lot better. So, maybe an ONYX series mixer? That'd be under your budget. But it's still Mackie. Bleh.

I got the Tascam board because:

1. I wanted a control surface for use with Cubase SX. At least 16 faders. The other serious option was a Mackie Control Universal plus an extender.
2. I wanted preamps that were at least marginally better than the ones in my Mackie board. Eventually I'll get some outboard preamps and just use the Tascam for monitoring. So far I like them.
3. I wanted more channels WITH DIRECT OUTS. The mackie board only had 8 true direct outs, I had to have cables half-inserted into the insert jacks on the other channels. Not a HUGE deal, but I didn't have the flexibility to patch an effect in an insert on channel 12, for example. Also, it made trying to use an outboard patchbay pointless because you'd constantly have to be in the back of the rack pushing things in or out of the Mackie.
4. It wasn't THAT expensive for a 32-channel board. $3k.
5. I had just gotten the Mackie fixed (3 dead channels) and I wanted to sell it before the fkn fragile ribbon cable breaks again. Apparently that's a big problem on these boards.

So, yeah. Basically the Mackie was really limited for me, and I replaced it. Sound quality wasn't great. It lasted a good 4 years before I had any problems, though.

I think there's a 24-channel Soundcraft Ghost that you may want to look into. Never used one, just heard positive reviews, here and elsewhere. Same with the Neotek boards. Although both are probably a bit out of the price range you stated, the quality will be a lot better with either one of those boards than Mackie/Behringer/etc.

you might be able to find a used Soundcraft Ghost for around 2-3 grand. I like the EQ's on those things. The pre's aren't too bad for what they are either. That Soundcraft 600 looks intresting though...

the soundstracs topaz is a good board. you can find them on ebay for around 1-2 G's

A very underated board is the Studiomaster mixdown Classic. Also pretty cheap.

Ive heard that although a little noisy, the Soundcraft 200Bs are good sounding. And I think they are modular. or not.

these are all in the same "quality family" as the Soundcraft Ghost thing.

mike

I got my Soundcraft 800B (16 in, 8 aux, 8 subs) for like $650ish on eBay a couple years ago.

I heart it. I have no interest in any other mixer, or any outboard pre's.