Music is about community building and finding yourself in the process (quote by bian eno)
If it fits you to write and process all on a timeline, do that and find your flow
If it fits you to play and twist knobs, do that and find your flow
Flow helps you to make hours and create your workflow and skills 
It’s a great mixer with a lot of flexibility. But I’ve only really scratched the surface of using it with gear, it lives with my turntables and just did a few experiments two or three years ago with routing out of my MPC Live through it.
At the time, I thought it worked really well. Iirc routed at least 4 and possibly five stereo tracks over usb out from the MPC, then hooked up my El Capitan to a send as well as internal effects. I have seen people saying that later 2.0 versions affected how the MPC works with external audio interfaces, but like I say it’s been a while. I’ve also seen people saying 3.0 has issues with external interfaces in general, plus for me it’s lost a lot of what made it good for setting up performance overall so haven’t tested. ymmv
Think I also tried a configuration with my Digitakt going in over audio alongside the MPC over usb, just using jack to RCA adaptors, don’t remember having any problems with that.
One thing I’ve found is that I always had to turn the trims way down to avoid clipping, this applies especially for digital signals, but also vinyl depending on what stylus I’m using. But tonnes of potential, I’d been considering getting a rotary for my decks and moving the A&H into the studio, been kinda waiting for Push 3 to get audio over usb to give me the … push … I need to actually do this. Although at this stage I’m also considering leaving it where it is and getting a Jellymix for the studio instead.
Interested to hear how you get on with it.
Tonight I am left feeling a bit deflated, maybe this dawless ‘mixer’ idea was completely unnecessary, mainly because the effects situation has really bummed me out and my A&H Zed R16 in my stuidio has 4 sends and so many routing options… but it also 6 times as big. I have yet to explore the extensive PX5 computer side of it and to bring it all together.
Now resigned to external effects for performance, I now have just one send. I need to get the MPC wired up next, get some loops going and also get DJing with Ableton.
Early days.
Well, I borrowed a mate’s PX5 and I have to say, I’m impressed. I’m using it as an interface for the Maschine+, streaming four stereo tracks out to the PX5 channels and into my interface. It’s exactly what I was looking for, and it sounds so good. I actually really like the effects in moderation, and appreciate how the blend can be sent to the crossfader. It’s a mixer full of lovely little touches and attention to detail.
I had similar feelings about the DB4 effects. They didn’t have what I was looking for but I lack the words to describe the issue exactly.
On the other hand, everything I played through the mixer sounded incredible. I became a true believer in the hype around A&H.
I’m not even sure if the DB4 is analog at all. Still sounds amazing… I’m in the market for a Xone 43 now… The effects send is prominent and I’m keen to do some feedback looping / signal EQing by returning FX back into one of the channels
Well I have been using the PX5 now for a week and I have to say I am really enjoying it a lot. It really bridges the gap between the A&H Zed R16 mixer I already own and something a lot more performance orientated. I am actually thinking of sending the R16 outs to a stereo channel on the PX5.
I have rigged it up with Ableton sending Midi Clock to the PX5 > Perkons > Kaoss Pad KP3.
I have had the Perkons in CH 1/2, I have Ableton Returns set up with reverb effects being sent to CH 3/4, top loops going to CH 5/6. I then use CH 9/10 to record the jams I have made from patterns on the Perkons back into Ableton.
Latency is really low. The transport stop start works perfectly. I have all the effects sends to DUAL so I can send the channels to the mixer effects as well and the results are fantastic.
I also built a DJ set last night in Ableton Live for the first time in a long time. Everything was rock solid and I have been thoroughly enjoying the experience.
There are lots of onboard effects I don’t like, but the filter delay and clean plate are two favourites.
I am struggling with some of the digital routing in Ableton - does anyone know if you can use the channel SEND for sending to Ableton effects? The Youtube Videos from A&H are a little confusing.
DB4 is very digital 
I never used effects other than the delay and reverbs and had a couple that I used which I thought were actually rather good if you compare it to other mixer’s effects. But yeah great mixer it is indeed !
Yeap that’s what the send channel is for. You can choose to either send the main or the send to the computer.
Can you explain how I setup Ableton / PX5 to do this? I tried following an A&H tutorial but I couldn’t adapt it and kept getting insane feedback.
EDIT - I sorted it - thank you Perplexity AI
Glad you go it sorted - iirc I found it pretty straightforward following the A&H guides, nice feature to have. Guess you’d got the send also turned up on the return channel coming from Ableton? Sometimes you’d want that for e.g. dub delays, but needs to be handled with care.
I didn’t use Ableton for that, but did try it out with my El Capitan and worked pretty well. The relative shortage of tracks meant that I pretty quickly ended up using it as a send and working its own feedback control instead though.
Don’t really have much of an opinion on the internal effects, like I say I mainly use it for playing records and don’t much use FX in that context. But they seemed fine for just having an alternative for reverbs and delays, using the external effects with El Cap / Zoia to do most of the heavy lifting.
