Phonic Helix Board 24 FireWire MKII

Can be rackmounted or sit on a desk. Has built FX that are ok, e.g if you want to hear some reverb on vocals through your headphones while you record a dry signal.

Connects to firewire port.

Preamps seem very good. no dedicated guitar in, but its easy to go through a DI box if you have one. Has spdif optical. no midi. the headphone out level uses the same pot as control room level- a bit of a pain. theres a lot of routing options really.

phontom power is a global switch for all channels.

up to 24 bit/ 96 khz recording. its great.

also has a sub-wooker out with level knob & frequency cutoff knob. Comes with a track limited DAW.

this really is a great board. i have had mine for 2 years with virtually no problems. (occasionally when opening a DAW program it doesnt recognise the mixer. solved by turning mixers hardware & software on & off. takes less than 10 seconds & then it runs fine for the rest of the day. not sure if this is the mixers fault or DAW or just my computer).
I would buy 1 again if mine was stolen.

I have owned this board for over a year, and use it regularly in a rack. It is the primary mixer for our band, and replaced an Allen and Heath MixWizard 16:2 with which it favorably compares. It only has 4 (actual) Aux sends, so the drummer and bass player share a monitor mix. It does have four independent group channels, so sending out submixes is possible. There are TONS of routing options, even though the arrangement of the master section is somewhat baffling, and takes some time to get familiar with. It's not intuitive at all - but once you figure it out, you can send any given signal nearly anywhere you like. A feature I find odd is the "channel enable' switch instead of a mute switch - also strange is the sharing of the volume control between the control room out and the headphone jack. Despite some of these oddities, the control section of the board is like every other mixer you've ever used. Other items of Note: Digital FX (don't use them), Swept mids, Rumble filters on all the channels, Subwoofer (mono) out with X-over (nice feature for live use). Global Phantom power. There are 16 channels with XLR preamps (which to my ear, are transparent). I think the first 6 or 8 channels have direct-outs too. The 24 comes from: 16 primary channels, stereo L/R out and back (total of 4) and 4 aux returns. Let's see...yep, 24.

Two Firewire connections as well as S/PDIF. There's no MIDI, which would be nice, but I guess this board was targeted to hobbyists, and recording novices. Too bad too, because there are plenty of people paying Mackie Onyx prices just to get the signals from here (board) to there (computer) - and for that, the Helix board excels. The drivers worked first time (there are now new drivers on the Phonic site, so check) with Windows boxes, including a laptop. 1 GB (min) of memory seems to be the key. I've recorded and mixed down no less than 50 arrangements for my group, and have even hired out my services doing demos for local performers as well. I record up to 16 tracks simultaneously, in the same room (drums are Roland V-drums), so the only "acoustic" instrument is the singer. Scratch track with the rest of the band, and then soloed. Works great. As far as I know, the signal is unaffected by anything other than the gain knob. There may be an option to bring the faders into play, but I've never looked into that. There is no noticable bleed between the channels, and no noticable latency during playback. For my purposes, the only thing I wanted was to get the dry signal into my DAW software where I could manipulate it from there, and for this, the Helix board is perfect.

To my ear, the preamps are transparent. Like on any I/O device, don't send in a junk signal and expect miracles. I send in clean signals (using passive DI Boxes), and get no better or worse than I expect (that's what I consider transparent). You can hook up an ADAT to the S/PDIF and get a stereo signal if that's to your liking & of course you can go really Old School and record to analog tape through the RCA outs. No MIDI, sorry.

This is a non-powered mixer(that is to say, there is no internal amplification) that uses a standard computer-style grounded cord. Phantom power is global. (The original version of this board had individual DIP switches for +48 on each channel- what a shame they discontinued that.)

Uses Windows ASIO drivers. 96kHz supported through FireWire. Works with Windows XP boxes for sure (good drivers), supposedly plug and play with Mac's (but I've never tried). Do go to www.phonic.com and make sure you have the most recent drivers (this includs some of the other Helix boards as well, I have the first generation Helix Board 18 FW, and the updated driver works with it too).

The recording software is some lite version of ProTools or the like. It's worthless though, since it limits you to recording on a few channels at a time, and you can get an excellent multitrack recording program called Reaper (by Cockos) which is free during the lengthy trial period, and very reasonable after that. Try it out, if you don't like it, it won't cost you a dime.

I have owned three phonic boards. They are all still in operation, the oldest being at least 15 years old. They get the B*hringer rap, but I've never had anything but good luck with Phonic. I've heard that they make OEM products for other manufacturers as well (do a google search). They've been around for awhile, and I'm not scared. We use the old phonic as our back-up mixer when we're live (but we've never been unlucky enough to actually pull it out). For my money - this board is a beast. It does what it does without complaint or hiccup. Every blue moon, you'll have to reboot the board or the computer, but those times are rare. (hint: use a dedicated computer for recording without all the junk apps running in the background).

I'd love to have 6 separate AUX's for more monitor mixes, and separate volume controls for the Headphones/Control Room outs.
I could not live without a Helix board of some type, so if it were
stolen, I would buy another one immediately.