Just bought an Ecler Nuo 4.0 to get more control over my 4 track live jamming/looping setup on the MPC 2500…
This thing sounds sooooo good! All those guys in the internet are right!
Nice.
I’m a big fan of solid DJ mixers for performance purposes.
I use a Vestax VMC-180 and it is so quick and easy to get a great live mix out of 3 Elektrons.
Been eyeballing the Nuo 3.0 for its smaller foot print.
I see the Nuo 2.0 has a third channel as well.
I remember that you have 15+ years of DJing experience, right? Using a DJ mixer will be your second nature then… Most people that do electronic music without having a DJ background (including me) seem to underestimate the power of DJ mixers!
On this mixer, in particular, the EQ’s sound so smooth! Subjectively, I even think that the mixer improves the sound of my kicks, more defined kicks even with not so good room acoustics, but not sure if this can really be the case? In any case, it’s easy to quickly adapt the shape of kicks, for instance, to make a chest hitter more soft and subby, or to cut instruments out of the mix.
The amount of headroom provided is just unbelievable. When running the mixer so hot that the LED’s are completely filled and not moving any longer, the mixer still doesn’t sound bad but rather adds some rather comfortable distortion, much much nicer than what you get in usual PA mixers (that’s not what I’m going to use the mixer for, but still good to know).
If you think an Ecler sounds good, wait till you graduate to the real high end DJ mixers! Old Bozaks and Ureis are just marvelous or if you want modern stuff, the E&S’s, Alpha Recording Systems and some of the more expensive Ranes (2016 is great, and the new 2015 is supposedly very good despite being digital).
They do come with quite hefty price tags though…
It’s not about graduation, I think these mixers would be overkill, as would be a Moog Voyager, and maybe even inappropriate for my setup. I even sold my Moog Minitaur and replaced it with bass samples.
Yeah, they ain’t everyone’s cup of tea. Spending 2000+ euros on a DJ mixer is not something most people do. Those things sound just lovely though…
Hey MK7,
despite the sound you mentioned, how exactly do you use the mixer in your setup?
I don´t have DJ background as well, I´m a Jazz Piano Player who plays live with Nord Stage, OT and some synths, and lately I thought about a DJ Mixer as well.
By the way: you´re from Munich right? Do you know Benni Brachtel aka Berthellow, the guy from SVS (Selbstversorgersound)?
Greetings from Innsbruck
Hey Andajazz,
My current setup works as follows: live jamming on the MPC, no prerecorded sequences whatsoever, I just have a lot of drum kits available. Start off on track 1 on the MPC, assigned to track 1 on the mixer, with a drum kit. Need some chords? Switch to track 2 on the MPC, assigned to track 2 on the mixer, and load a chord kit. The kick on track 1 gets annoying, let’s replace it with a different type of kick on track 3. Load a different drum kit on track 3. Now the mixer comes in: Kill the low end on either track 1 or track 3 while recording the new kick, then blend the two kicks together to taste. Uh, the new kick hits too hard, quickly reduce the mids. Let’s filter down the chords a bit by reducing the highs. Now let’s turn track 1 into a percussions track, remove all highs and lows, increase the mids, turn the delay send on, enter some more stuff, etc etc. It’s all about thinking about ‘what could we need next’, freeing up a track and jamming around.
This workflow also works when using just the MPC without a mixer, but the DJ mixer makes this workflow much more fluid, because you can quickly remove lows, mids, highs on each channel. It’s very much different to mixing on a conventional mixer, which just dampens a certain frequency but is not able to completely remove frequency bands. You can even have three full-fledged drum grooves playing on three tracks and just take the lows from one track, mids from the second and highs from the third. That’s basically what DJ mixers are designed for, right? 
Yes, I’m from Munich, but never heard of your friend or his group… What’s their style?
Greets back 