Mixers that accept program change messages?

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

I’ve been window shopping for a mixer to pair with my A4MKII and external effects for some time now.

The 1010 Bluebox, with 6 stereo inputs and 3 stereo outputs, per channel 4-band EQ, as well as a master compressor and global effects, is quite a nice package. With the Bluebox, I could connect all 4 of the A4’s track outputs and use the remaining 2 stereo inputs for other instruments or to set up 1 or 2 stereo effect send/return chains. However, to my knowledge, the Bluebox does not yet support presets, but rather settings are saved as project files. This is disappointing since it would be nice to change the mix and send levels with each A4 pattern.

Does anyone know of a mixer that accepts program change messages, has more than a handful of preset slots, and can change between programs without a delay or gap in the audio?

#2

The Octatrack? :upside_down_face:

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#3

Think the Allen and Heath Qu line does that but quite pricey - it will be cool when advanced digital mixers/interfaces come down in price over the next decade or so.

But the first thing that came to mind is the octatrack: A4 in stereo plus two mono effects or one stereo effect, or A4 in mono will give you 3 mono inputs to work with, plus onboard OT effects and throw in a small submixer if necessary.

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#4

Yes, the A&H Qu series supports scene recall (100 slots) via USB midi program change messages. (As does the B X32 - believe that most digital live mixers would do this.)

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#5

All the soundtracs ones do

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#6

Thanks, all. Do you know if the output is gapless when switching between scenes/presets on these options?

#7

Used to work on an old Yamaha 01V (not even 96) and that was possible in 1999 :joy:
Used to send “scene” changes through a MIDI controller (Kenton) and it was working flawlessly :slight_smile:

Edit: do you mean scene change by program change though?

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#8

Hi, I just ran a test with a simple mix on my Qu Pac and found that scene recall (on the mixer itself) works immediately and without clicks. (I did not change things such as phantom power in my scenes, though, which should better not be switched on the fly.) By the way, scenes also contain parameters for the internal fx.

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#9

The Keith McMillen K-Mix accepts PCs, but I suspect there is some gap. There are 12 presets.

Another option is to use an audio interface connected to an iPad, and do all your mixing in AUM. Then you could use something like Mozaic to do the mixing control. It’d require a fair bit of lifting on your part. There might be another option in iOS as well.

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#10

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions!

Using a large auto interface and mixing in the box may be a good alternative. I think it should be possible to configure a track in Ableton to respond to program change messages and change the mix settings using automation, thereby creating mix scenes. I’ll give that a try now.

I hadn’t heard of Mozaic, but that seems like it could work. I don’t have an iPad but I could get by with my iPhone for testing.

I wish I could use Overbridge instead of an interface, but last time I checked the track inputs were mono only (or dual mono, I can’t recall), at least on the Mac version of Overbridge. I regularly use panning with both LFOs and p-locks so it’s quite important to me. I’m currently running Big Sur on my Mac so I’ll have to wait for the next update to test again.

#11

Can I append “pops” to that list? I’ve been looking for quite sometime, and all I’ve found is u-he’s CVilization module.