Edirol M-16DX

I purchased the Edirol M-16DX mixer as an upgrade for my aging almost 10 year old Tascam US-224 computer interface/soundcard.
The Edirol is a surprisingly small (!) desktop unit about the size of the average glossy magazine. Among what I feel are several innovations on this unit, is that the mixer is comprised of two pieces; the mixer itself, and a similarly sized interface for all your inputs and outputs.

The unit gives you 16 mixer channels, plus a USB Monitor channel for your computer, plus an extra stereo input which operates something like a tape in ( could be used as a input for an iPod, with a level control for playing music over the house, or for jamming with). The mixer is fully digital, and incorporates 16 presets for you to save all your settings (very handy!). There is a very bright, but smallish OLED display that instantly gives you feedback on any knob or button that you touch. There are several innovative effects sections built in (more on those later).

The unit at first appears to be made of metal, but on closer inspection it's some kind of very dense plastic. I wouldn't worry about this - I'm sure the only kind of impact that would crack or destroy it wouldn't come from any sane person who buys music gear like this...

Everything about it exudes quality. The knobs and buttons all have a very techie, solid feel with no slip or wiggling around. Most of the pushbuttons light up bright red to indicate their condition.

It's small, but hefty. Feels very pro and sturdy over all. Has a "high end" shiny black and silver look to it - much more so than several other competitor mixers I've seen in its price range. Even though it's smallish, once you get used to the layout it's very intuitive and easy to get around on. As a plus - there are virtually no menus to wade through. Everything is touch and play, and the handy display always lets you know where you are.

It's onboard DSP unit can act as a stand alone for the mixer output, or can be routed into the computer USB stream. There is a single reverb unit, a single insert fx that shares channels one and two (?), a 16 band graphic equalizer, and an overall multiband finalizer section. All of the effects have several different very useful presets that can be edited and stored by the user.

Sound quality goes up to 24bit/96 khz. This is a USB 2.0 device, that continuously streams 16 independent channels to your computer (!) while allowing you to monitor a separate two channel bus back in from the computer, and can give you a separate sub-mix at the same time either through phones, or a separate studio output. As a very pleasant surprise, the drivers were very well done for the Edirol. There is almost no noticeable latency, and I have never once experienced any dropouts or glitches in any of the multi-channels streaming back and forth over USB! Everything about this mixer just works.

1 USB 2.0. output port. No MIDI ports, but all the controls appear to be able to transmit control data thru USB.

An non-wall-wart AC adapter is included.

Product comes with two parts: the Mixer, and the breakout box. The two are connected by a single standard SVGA (I think) cable. Neither one can be used alone.

For me this was an amazing innovation. I have a small home studio, and I despise cord clutter is much as dust. I am so happy to be able to plug everything in and out to a neat black breakout box, that's super easy to get to get sits hidden away behind the controllers in my studio. This also allows you to use the mixer as a cabled remote unit. It's easy to move it around and use it in your lap when needed, or just set it on top a keyboard. NO CLUTTER!

As a dedicated analog kind of guy, I was very wary about the preamps/overall sound quality in a digital 16 channel mixer, that's priced about the same as a decent guitar pedal. Who wouldn't be? I am used to working with several Mackie mixers that typically have a very clean sound with lots of headroom. The Edirol pretty much blew me away the first time I used it. The sound is absolutely pristine. When used properly, there is absolutely no hiss or distortion detectable, even at hi gain. The unit just has an absolutely clean airy sound quality to it without sounding digital or cold. Each channel has a three band EQ with sweepable mid. Huge amounts of headroom through each stage, without any clipping. The first two channels also share a digital insert effect which includes additional EQ targeted for different purposes such as vocals, bass, or clean acoustic instrument. There is no COSM amp modeling, but you get a noise gate, a very usable Tube preamp model, and a natural sounding compressor that doesn't overly color or squash your sound into plastic. There are several mike inputs with switchable phantom power, and the first two channels can be switched to HI-Z for direct connection of a guitar or bass. This was another thing that really surprised me. The input is so hot and clean on this thing, that I was able to plug in my bass, and along with the effects and EQ, easily obtain a sound that rivaled my beloved Tech 21 Bass DI box! No mixer has ever done that for me before.

Even though the mixer is totally digital, they also give you several external send and return options. Several, including the headphone jack are also included on the mixer itself. Most of the connections are on the breakout box, but the ones you would need on the portable mixer itself are thoughtfully there.

You can set up a separate Alt/Cue mix, and there are separate outputs on both the mixer and breakout box.

Ac adapter included. Not powered by USB.

24 bit, 16, 48, and 96 khz switchable.
Drivers for Mac and most version of Windows. No problem at all with the drivers. Nearly Zero latency, and the pop up software panel allows a wide range of latency settings. Set everything to about zero for recording, then if needed, crank the latency all the way for extra CPU headroom during mixdown. I have not experianced a single crash from the driver. In fact my whole system has been nearly crash-free since switching over from my older Tascam interface.

Another pleasant find: You can direct monitor thru the device, and no matter what your latency settings, high or low, the mixer always self-compensates to keep everything totally synced even when you change settings mid session! I can't begin to say what a plus this is. Also, anything coming in the mixer is always monitered direct with zero latency.

One of the innovations on the Edirol that I found surprisingly useful was the new "Room Acoustic Auto Control" feature. Just touch the button and the mixer spits out a bit of quiet white noise, and quickly analyzes your room and speakers. Everything is then compensated for to give you as flat a starting space as possible for you to create your mix in. Of course, I was extremely skeptical about any real-world uses for this (a marketing gimmick?), but I was pleasantly surprised. The unit does a very good job. In fact after trying it, it seemed as though a previously never noticed wool blanket was lifted from my speakers. I'm pretty embarrassed about admitting that in a gear review, but it's the truth. The compensation is easily switched in or out, plus it offers you a variety of curves, amounts, or the option to just filter everything with 16 bands manually from scratch. With some quick tweaking the Edirol had matched the sound of my not so expensive monitor speakers pretty close to the pristine quality of my Sony MDR-V6 headsets. Pretty amazing!

Overall, in the short week I've had it, the Edirol M-16 DX has proven to be above and beyond my expectations. The pristine sound quality is simply amazing. I can't imagine anyone in the under $2000 price range faulting it in any way. The price/performance ratio in this unit is simply astounding. For me it's like the start of a new era of what's possible for extremely low-cost, yet extremely professional multichannel recording with a computer system. The bar has been raised - there is NOTHING like this out there anywhere near this price point. I can't imagine why this mixer isn't more popular.

If it were destroyed or stolen, I would definitely plan to get another immediately.

A little background on my previous home studio set up (just for songwriting, one stereo input at a time): I wanted clean quality, but with the simplest approach possible so that I could stay concentrated on the process of songwriting, and save the production end of things for later when mixing down in Cubase 4. My signal path mostly consisted of going straight into an older Mackie 12 channel analog mixer into an Alessis 3630 compressor/noise gate. The stereo output then went into a Tascam US-224 USB two channel interface that I left at 24 bits/48khz. I used quality monster cable type cords on everything, and kept the lengths short and away from any AC power supplies.

My setup which had served me for several years, gave me what I thought was pretty decent sound quality, and just as important to me, a very fast and flexible way to record my voice and a variety of instruments. I really liked this. Everything was set up at the board; if I wanted my vocal mic, all I had to do was raise the Mackie's mic channel knob to 12:00. Same for everything else, I just made sure anything I wasn't using had the volume turned to zero. I had the Alessis compressor set for just a very nominal limiting, so that I could pretty much set one volume level in Cubase, and forget about it while I continued recording. This actually worked out pretty well..... until.....ahhh..... I decided I was overdue for an upgrade, and after a lot of online feature-searching, found the Edirol M-16 DX. Anyways, my point here is that what I thought was a very clean sounding system, instantly became a relic of the Stone Age as soon as I tried the Edirol. I now hear details in my recordings that I never noticed before. Everything, especially acoustic instruments and my voice has an airy transparent quality . I've also discovered I'm using far less post EQ, and compression in my mixes.

Is there anything about the Edirol that I don't like, or wish they had done differently? Well, there are a few weirdnesses going on in there: I explained my previous recording setup so that you can understand what I needed in a signal path. I wanted the Edirol to work the same as I was doing before, with everything in the mixer being boiled down to two output tracks that went into the computer, while being able to monitor a two track cue mix back into my headphones at the same time. Hmmm.... things KIND OF work that way.... but not. It seems the Edirol is two different personalities or purposes at the same time, and at first this threw me off quite a bit.

Basically, its main purpose is to be a 16 channel live mixer. Think of mixing down a live band in a club. Simultaneously there are also ALWAYS 16 channels of direct feed streaming out its USB port at full volume, despite any of your mixer settings. The channels exit the mixer just after the Low Cut Switch, Trim, 3 band EQ, and the Insert FX. So, your computer DAW is always receiving a 16 channel direct-feed. You have to control the rest of the input paths to your computer through the software you are using. This could be either good or bad depending on how you are used to working. To me this was totally frustrating at first, and I nearly decided not to keep the unit. However, once I got used to the workflow of the Edirol, I