Just thought I’d post this here, it’s an amazing live set from Wata Igarashi, looks like he’s using Ableton, a Cwejman S1, Tr909 , acidlab Miami and a few other bits and pieces, worth a watch
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To those of you who are playing a mixer as an instrument:
Do you have experience playing using a digital mixer like the Qu-16 or maybe Presonus StudioLive?
I’ve been keeping my eyes out for a “playable” digital mixer for about 20 years. Had a Yamaha O1v back in early 2000s, was great as a studio mixer (for its time) but useless as a playable live instrument. I still haven’t found any digital mixer that gets anywhere near the ergonomics of a traditional, one knob per function, analogue mixer.
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Main problem with digital mixers is clipping. They’re not forgiving of ‘going in the red’ at all, it’s pure digital distortion and clipping. Also you’d need a midi controller to control them ‘like a mixer’, or you’d need the full desks which are quite bulky
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Out of curiosity. What mixer would you recommend?
Isn’t that DB4 supposed to be a good mixer to use live? Dave Mech has done a few videos on that, and he makes it look like an excellent choice for live use.
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I’m using an Allen & Heath Mixwizard at the moment, only issue from a playability point of view is the knobs are a bit close together for my fingers. It’s also getting old so I’m looking around for something else. A&H GL series or Soundcraft Delta most likely.
Always fancied one of those but would take up my entire desk!
Mine too. Still, a bit more manageable than my dream console. At 195kg it looses a point for portability.
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Haha yes you could hardly chuck that in a backpack! Looks amazing though.
Little off topic but - loving all this “playable desk” talk…stayed up late last night just recording “playable desk feedback loops”, sending a channel of my YAMAHA N12 to the record out back into a channel that goes back into the record out…then just messing with the eq so the tone of the desk “howling in pain” changes… and breaks up nicely when it clips…sounds very giant swan when you add a beat…
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Depends on how much you wanna run through it. Xone:96 is great, pretty flexible and very easily ‘played’. The problem with standard desks is having the filters on two channels for stereo so for quick EQing you need to use two knobs at once.
If you’re using lots of gear though that’s not an option.
Going against what I originally said -
I do sometimes use an X32 for recording/live set ups, and use the iPad as the controller. It’s not satisfying in the same way but definitely super flexible and has side chain compression that you can put on buses, FX, etc. So in some senses it is ‘playable’ but I spent a lot of time setting up a controller to use OSC messages to have knobs controlling things like tap tempo, compression threshold etc, and it took ages and sometimes just didn’t work. Big faff, not fun. Maybe you’d have more luck!
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Yeah I used to have the Xone:96, and loved it. Might just buy it again. Was a bit put off by the lack of channels, and that send 2 didn’t have a pre-fader button. But I guess you can’t have everything, better just work with your limitations 
And yes it was playable!
I don’t have much experience with digital mixers in that context, mostly just running the board on sound hire gigs.
As for playable mixers; for dirty techno mackies are classics. CR series and to a lesser extent early vlz series. Any of them with faders do the trick nicely, 1402, 1604, 1640, etc Lots of routing options and they break up/ saturate beautifully when pushed. You can force channels to duck. I’m not too familiar with their newer offerings so I can’t speak to those.
I recently scored a Midas Venice 16 channel on the cheap and it’s also great and playable. Unlike the old mackies it’s pretty clean, way more headroom, nice eq, etc. However it’s also way bigger and unless you vulture hover for years for a killer deal like I did you’ll end up paying a lot more too.
Really any mixer with a good tactile interface will do. The more sends/ aux outs/ sub outs/ group outs/ inserts/ etc the better. After that it’s all about where you want it to fall on the scale between transparent and dirty.
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i did do this btw just now thought its probably not quality to uplaod anywhere as its 100% live each track
Ah yeah the MC303 was my first device to create Techno, regret a little that I sold it three years ago.
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I had the MC 505!
Exactly the 505 was also a beautiful thing. But I was in education at the time and did not have the necessary money. A dream for me was the MC909 but somehow it never came to a purchase. I was from 1996-2010 more as a DJ on the road and always needed the money for new records.
I made this track with my MC303 before I sold it. It was an interaction with the MC303 and the TB3 from Roland.
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Are you speaking about the Genelec’s green leds ?
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