Mixer setups

General
#1

Hey guys,

So I’ve got an opz, a few POs and just picked up an arturia microfreak, don’t know much about mixers but looking for something compact and not too expensive to run these all these instruments together
Can anyone recommend a mixer for this kind of set-up? I was looking at the volca mix but not sure if there are much better options I should be looking at.

Thanks!

#2

I see the maker heart loop mixer a lot. Its a 5 ch stereo mixer. Would probably work well for your po’s and opz since they all stereo.

#3

I have a Volca mix… I would definitely NOT recommend Volca Mix for your application. Yeah any small platform stereo mixer would work.

#4

Thanks for the suggestions guys, some of the effects on the volca did look cool though, what would make this bad a bad choice for my use case?

#5

I have a Volca Mix on my wish list as well. Also wondering why this would be a bad choice.

It looks like there are several features that could be useful such as the sync mechanism for POs, stereo input for the OP-Z and send out/aux in for effect pedal or adding in guitar. I am not sure if I will use the speakers much but they are probably better than the OP-Z and PO speakers. At this time I will not be using the power distribution because I do not have any other Volcas.

When I look at other things to get this set of features you are probably looking at $70 for a good mixer and at least $40 for a sync solution that has a display so $130 seems good for the Volca Mix.

Overall it seems to have a pretty good set of features so I am not sure why this gets a bad review.

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#6

I actually really like the Volca mix for certain applications… The only reason I said I would not recommend for your setup is because the volca mix only offers (2) mono inputs and (1) stereo. So trying to connect an OP-Z a few POs and a microfreak might be tough. But by all means if you like it and think it will fit into your workflow grab it!!! The sync feature will only work if you plan on running the volca mix as your master as it only sends sync and does not receive or have a thru port. The send for each channel is a cool feature you do not usually see on mixers of this size.

Please let us know what you decide to do, and how it works out for you.

Good luck!!!

#7

I have the volca mix, and you can get pretty far with it.

If you are worried about the lack of inputs - this is fixable with relatively cheap passive mixers. All the cables, from right to left:

  1. Power.
  2. Direct mono signal from a synth.
  3. PO through a 1-to-5 mono multiplier.
  4. OP-Z through a passive 5-way stereo mixer.
  5. A laptop via an aux in (this is where the effects are normally plugged in).
  6. Headphones.

IMG_0519
IMG_05193423×2567 2.35 MB

Although this setup works, it’s only there for the photo :smiley: I never used it this way for longer times, and the mickxer (the red splitter on the photo) seems to butcher the signal substantially. Until now I was sure that the blue thing is a mono mixer. It actually does the opposite: multiplies the signal – which might help to sync multiple POs.

I like volca mix, but it feels it does better with volcas than the other gear. The DC slot is thinner, so I wasn’t able to power any other hardware so far, i.e. the keystep. The filter knobs are annoying and seem to flatten the sound a bit. And I barely used the tempo knob so far: it really lacks a sync in.

If not the Volca, I would go for the maker heart loop because it’s cheaper and smaller. But I couldn’t get one easily, and Volca’s power hub seemed promising at that time.

Also, for the same money you can get a cheap 4-channel audio interface, which is nice for recording.

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#8

Thanks for the in depth responses all! I’m having a bit more of a think about what I’ll get. Appreciate the input. Probably will go for something other than the volca, if it was at a lower price point it might be worthwhile it seems.