Compact *recallable* synth mixer for live situations

The Lounge General Discussion
21

What’s your experience with the 5 headphone outs? some sources say they are very low volume and not suitable for things like effects sends?

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i still love my allen and heath qu-pac.

it’s not small but it is hella compact for what it is. …recallable everything…

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23

Here’s another perspective on the bluebox:
Has such potential, sounds good enough, well priced. Midi sync is awesome!
But it’s one of the most frustrating pieces of a gear I’ve implemented. Reasons?
Here’s a couple:

  1. Eq sounds great (practically a performance filter) but the implementation of switches bands and curves is horrid- it forces you to pass other bands to each the one you want, and the way the q works, let’s just say one band has normal q/gain, another one can be maxed out, literally dangerous to sound systems. The overall behavior of the eq is strange and hard to flatten on some bands.

  2. Compressor is potentially good, and it’s very deep with its settings buuuuuut NO GAIN REDUCTION METERING. At all. You’re on stage, and you have no idea how hard that comp is hitting. It makes it completely unusable in a real live environment where compression is tricky. It makes the digitakt gain reduction meter on its comp seem like a godsend lol. WHY THO?

  3. Great compatibility with midi controllers but no bidirectional midi feedback. Actually the midi out only passes clock…nothing else. It makes using midi controllers very limited. And it doesn’t have to be! It would be amazing if it could send its current state, even just on project load…alas.

There is more but I’ll stop there.

But yeah, very frustrating bc besides these glaring issues for live performance, it’s a unique and awesome bit of kit. I waited forever for these things to be fixed via firmware, but eventually had to sell. Maybe I’ll buy it back if 1010 addresses these issues.

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24

Thanks for the great review. These are important things!

That is the flipside of these cottage/boutique micro-manufacturers which our present day allows; sometimes there actually aren’t ENOUGH cooks in the kitchen to really make sure all the bases are covered, feature-wise, on a product.

Elektron is/was a good blend because you had live performers, sound designers, coders, gamers, etc making sure there weren’t too many blaring omissions.

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