AlphaTheta Euphonia 4-Channel Rotary Mixer

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

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colour me suprirsed!

neve transformer on the output + really nice digital i/o + serato/rekordbox integration + that extremely nice screen has me tempted

A lil pricey, and curse them for putting gloss plastic on such an expensive device. Looks really good, wish i could justify it

block diagram:

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official link from pioneerdj/alphatheta:

from the manual:

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looks like the line inputs/phono inputs must pass throgh adc stage and dac stage to hit outputs. ehhh not really analog now, i’m sure there’s some built in phase correction going on to get everything to line up but that’s a big turn off for me personally

that’s a lot of dacs and adc’s if each block represents a different chip. No wonder it costs so much. Feels like the neve output transformer is more of just a distraction from what is a weird actually far more digital rotary mixer than it seems from the outside.

Makes sense why the visualizer is so feature rich, there’s a tap for the signal on every input and output going through some kind of conversion, of course unless you feed it purely digital signal (even which a hardware insert forces you to go through another stage of conversion lmao)

7 Likes
#2

so sessy it looks like a plugin at first glance!

that price tho :fearful:

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#3

Thanks for sharing, nice to see a rotary from a non-boutique brand. I don’t mind ADC for phono preamps per se (I love my Parks Audio Puffin preamp in my hifi listening setup) but in the past I always preferred the way A&H preamps sound over DJMs.

2 Likes
#4

feels like the strength of this lies more in running it from your dj software or piping out 4 stereo stems over AES/spdif from your DAW/interface or from CDJs

That being said it has 32 bit ESS converter chips, so it can handle distortion/clipping and stuff fairly well (probably at the expense of headroom it does have only 107 db signal to noise ratio as per the spec sheet)

at first i thought this might be a potential replacement for my model 1.4, but as purely analog device there’s absolutely no phase coherence issues or digital processes going on + dsub connectors vs phono etc etc.

I guess the one + side for this is that you could potentially change the isolator circuit to achieve different things via software/switch up fx etc easily. It’s a very beautiful piece of kit aside from the nerdy stuff

more money, but this unit still kicks its ass if you want something like the urei joints

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4 Likes
#5

Weird product, not sure who the target audience is supposed to be. If I were to spend that kind of money on a DJ mixer I‘d clearly go for sonething like a Mastersounds Valve 4 or an Isonoe or so on…

But I’m not interested in the digital shennanigans they put into the thing. And I‘ve also never particularly liked Pioneer mixers.

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#6

I’m a huge Neve fan so I was immediately interested in this. The videos I checked out last night all sound great, no doubt this will put a ton of sheen and make a DJ’s tracks really pop. I mean, imagine getting to a club and plugging in to this, it would be such a treat - depending, of course, on whether the room was treated nicely, the source material wasn’t some MP3 shit ripped from YouTube, and if anybody on the dance floor could tell the difference.

I think it was Rick Wakeman who said “audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music, they use your music to listen to their equipment”

7 Likes
#7

I went once into a club in Düsseldorf Germany which had at least some room treatment, sounded dope, but it was the only one i can remember which actually had this. (Dont remember the name of the Venue, it was a small one.)

Mixer with transformer sounds intresting.

Hmm, looks absolutly nice and well thought out, should be a fun mixer

2 Likes
#8

Looks like the Iso EQ is still analog… I suppose the most important thing is it looks pretty incredible to use and I am sure it still sounds great despite running everything through converters. The visualizer does truly look amazing.

I have my eye on the Elra.4 from union audio though if I ever upgrade from my master sounds. Seems to be somewhere between the the Model 1.4 and master sounds stuff of his design.

Then there is also the Alpha Recording Systems stuff if you are going into the rack mixer world… that stuff all looks amazing.

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#9

this totally looks like something for audiophiles/deep collectors who want the utmost quality to spin their vinyl

i don’t think in a club that anyone will notice if its this or an ipad running algoriddim tbh lol

it does look really fun for mixing though, in my head in a nice studio more than in a club

1 Like
#10

Yeah! I would love to play with this thing. I just can’t imagine a club trusting their booth with it (and DJs spilling their drinks on it… :open_mouth: ) - or imagine a vinyl DJ lugging their vinyl and this to play their set. No doubt in my mind this sounds great. There will undoubtedly be some very high end clubs with something like this in there too.

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#11

Now just Elektron please bless us with something like this but with overbridge streaming from our favourite swedish boxes

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#12

What about youtube djs with luxury studios and vinyl collections? :smiley:

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#13

if anyone is thinking of buying, most places have alphatheta stuff excluded from promotions. this place doesn’t. It’s a reputable store but YMMV, so do your own due diligence and call before making an order. My recommendation would be to use this as a price match for a local retailer if you’re in Canada.

they’ve had stuff like the MPC X SE, and other machines that are typically excluded work with their coupon codes so it’s a decent place to check.

#14

I’ve only been in a nice intimate concert venue where the FOH engineer had a nice digital desk routing to 610, various 1176, other racks. It sounds great and better than the artist’s album, but that’s the an edge case. At this price point if you need a studio workhorse just buy the 5254.

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#15

Well its not this mixer, but he is killing it! Would love to try one myself. Also one of the best Force sets i heard. Sounds top. Looked it up, the Omnitronic is very cheap in comparison, the 422 also has 2x xlr mono in.

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#16

Moog Audio in Montreal, Quebec, has the same price.

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#17

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#18

Ah ok, you’re saying that Red One is the only one to give coupons across Canada? I’m wondering what « Found a better price » would mean at Moog Audio.

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#19

yea as far as i know, it seems like it’s exempt from any promotions everywhere else (including moog)
usually all pioneer dj stuff is fairly fixed price unless discounted from mfg, but stuff slips i imagine and they usually honour it

so good, i did something a tiny bit similar but not as fleshed out or complete as Alex but with the individual outs from my mpc X. It’s far easier to do this with 2 separate boxes to keep things tidy, got an mpc keys 37 and have been experimenting, it’s very powerful and with headphones i’m cool with running them with no midi sync

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#20

He had ethernet cables, so i assume abelton link between both, seems to work also with loadin new projects inbetween, i tried to sync abelton with mpc, but that wasnt effective.

I thought of running xdj700 parallel to my elektron setup, but force looks totally doable also, from a performance point, much better than the mpc.

1 Like