Alesis MultiMix

This is the firewire 12 channel unit. Before this I bought the 8 channel mixer and it was disaster.Good to better sound mixer when compared to the Behringer pro series. However, the reverb literally blasted a horrendous feedback that left me deaf for a few seconds.When I went to return it.The sales person at the Guitar center said "Junk". He tried to talk me into the ONYx series, but that was just to pricey and had no firewire. So I settled with the 12
channel unit. Out of the box , it sounded incredibly transparent. The reverbs are good enough for live playing. ( I use it for solo-duo sequences with a Bose PAS system and a GT-6 guitar unit). Instructions are very straight forward. Easy to learn. I use a MAC and it immediately recognizes the driver. I also recorded
through Performer software which is top of the line. The manual is very simple and lacks detail. Then again the details are for those window dudes because you have to tweak it alot more in that operating system.

Drivers a easily downloadable from the Alesis website.

I'm giving this an eight because of the fiasco discussed above. I hope that is not a rule for most of the units.
The Power adapter is a weird 3 prong one that is dedicated for this unit only. It appears flimsy so I would be very careful when packing it after the gig.

I have done some recordings of my sequences and me playing gtr along with it (George Benson, Peter White, Jeff Golub) and the results are very satisfying. It is important to do a good sound to noise ratio calibration from the get go so optimal recording levels are achieved.
The digital out is a great feature, although I didn't use it.

Live performance- GReeeeat sound. I just played a gig at Caesar's Casino this past weekend and I received compliments on my sound. This a profesiionally good sounding board for live gigs.

Based on the first unit experience and the salesman's comment, I will reserve judgement on this until I have enough milleage on this unit.

Have not had the need for it yet.

I played variety music. Smooth jazz, some light rock (Steely Dan), Disco, Big band, anything that can be sequenced. Played for about 24 years..wow I'm getting old. I use the PAS system, GT6, This mixer, NAdy mic, epiphone gtr(semi hollow body, and Ibanez Saber 540, and a nylon acoustic/electric Honner. I play with real good singers so it is great to see this mixer do a good job with their voices.

I bought this unit/system with the idea to sound as good as I can, with little setup and being able to put averything in the trunk of my car and my back seat. So far...mission accomplished (no political statement here)

I thought I'd have problems straight away... But Alesis did their homework. It really is plug and play. You have to be aware that it maps to your machine as a sound card, so if you want to play something from the PC sound card you have to switch source, or simply unplug the USB cable. If you have no clue how sound cards co-habitate a machine I'd get a geek friend to set it up for you.

I fiddled with the SoftWare that came with it for about 10 minutes, and threw it away. I use the VERY cool and free AUDACITY. GREAT code. Multitrack, no prob... skew a bass line timing... no prob... fade in, out, amplify separate tracks, bass boost, Audacity does that and more. GET IT!

If not for Audacity, I'd probably slam the product. But in this case, the true nature of the mixer comes out with good control code.

You have to watch where you put it, and NOT touch it while you're recording (LOTS of coupled lamp noise and odd stuff picked up) but it's generally VERY quiet. I have done some 4 track recordings late at night and used Audacity to tune the low volume input with great success.

Audacity exports to a .WAV file and you can burn CD's with that output. I considered one of the Boss, or Roland hard disk workstations, and they may be OK, but if you already have a computer (who doesn't have one avaialble nowadays) you get a LOT of flexibility for 1/10 th the buckaziods.

I've owned it about a year. It stays in my hot Florida garage, and powers up every time.

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I've used big boards, but if you want to record directly to a PC or laptop, and diddle with the mix a lot, with Audacity you can't go wrong for the sub $200 bill!!!

I understand Alesis now has a firewire version. I think that my setup with USB has plenty of room. Perhaps they did some recording and ran out of bandwidth, dunno, but if it gets better than this, I'll be REAL surprised.

It's not often you can buy something and be more satisfied than you thought you would be, but this mixer did just that. Great job Alesis!

Ever loved someone but found some character flaws too hard to live with? That's the Multimix 8. Easy to use, but not reliable in the long-term. In six months, mine has needed to be returned twice - it just stops being recognized as a USB device (still functions great as a mixer).

And there is that annoying hum on most (not all) computers. Alesis has not announced a fix for this bug, nor have they indicated they are working on it.

This is a great machine, easy to use, competitively priced, but with fatal flaws. It is a great mixer, but don't count on using the USB interface for long. The hum is more than annoying, so if you do buy one of these, test it on your computer (don't open the software - if you do, they won't let you return it). Alesis could have a winner here if they would just address these serious problems.

Very easy to get a great sound out of it. I downloaded the most recent drivers, installed them on my PC and it worked flawlessly. I've recorded 5 tracks simultaneously without a hitch in cubase sx. The manual is pretty good. I would totally recommend reading it before touching the multimix. There are a lot of options on the mixer so it's good to know what the individual buttons do.

Okay, I've owned a presonus firepod, a motu 896 and a tascam us-122 and this sound as good, if not better, than those - honestly. It's a great sounding mixer. The mic pre's are clean and the onboard effects are usable. When I was shopping around for a recording interface it was between this and the mackie onyx, but the onyx is not only 'very expensive' the firewire outs to the computer are pre fader, so you can't get any of the eq settings to record. With the multimix you can! and this is why I got this. Now, I have to be honest, I was very hesitant about buying one, because I had read online that people were having terrible problems with the drivers, but I have not had any problems (knock on wood) - I had many more problems with the thousand dollar MOTU than with this.

Seems very reliable. It's a solid feeling unit, although the fader knobs are plastic, but the mixer itself has some heft to it.

Don't know - they've been around a while - they had current drivers to download.

Overall, I am very pleased and somewhat surprised by the multimix. It's a very versatile mixer and recording interface all in one. Is technology great these days or what? It's a great idea and I love the fact that you can eq each channel going in. There are 8 mic pre's and another 8 line in's - you have aux sends - on board effects with 100 presets - headphone out - digital out - cool lights - mute - solo buttons - what more could you ask for? and for 499? gettoutahere.....

Very easy to use compared with other mixers with the same options.

Before this I owned a Yamaha MX 12/4, the digital effects(ie reverb)sound way more natural than the Yamaha. The unit is very quite and no unwanted hum or noise seeping thru. I like the size of it also, it's perfect for home studio and one of the main reasons I upgraded from the Yamaha. I use my Peavey Wolfgangs and Taylor 410CE thru it as well as a Yamaha S90 keyboard and Shure Beta 58A mics for mix thru headphones and recording to my laptop. I like the usb connection to my computer and I have it set up so that when I play anything off my computer it goes thru the mixer first...great for mixing backing tracks thru the headphones with your guitar or mic if you're a karaoke person. I haven't tried all of the effects, I generally leave it on the reverb.

No problems yet

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Overall a great mixer. It's small, very reliable, quite, and the effects are great. Alesis is really starting to make a name ofr itself. I would choose this over Behringer. I think I may be upgrading to the Firewire version, I think it automatically splits the tracks for recording, but if I'm wrong on that then I'm keeping this for a long time.

straight forward easy as pie

well let me start by saying that I have in my arsenal..soundcraft,yamaha,mackie and behringer mixers and through a careful a/b test recorded digitally onto a digital work station and a reel to reel 16 track tascam machine using acoustic guitar and vocals with other music professionls in the room as audio testers.. this little 100 dollars mixer beat them all ..the alesis multimix is the most natural sounding the others had a bit of that boxy and somewhat tinny sound that you hear from cheap preamps but somehow some way they stuck preamps into this little things that competes with lots other much more expensive preamps I own like tc electronic,focusrite,dbx etc..and I have no idea how or why :) Im sure it was accidental or just one of those "right" blends of wiring that just happen to hit the spot..major diamond in the rough..the first one i got had troubles with the digital effects (ooh did I mentions theres 100 digital effects)...so I had to return it but I was so impressed with the naturalness of the sound I opted for another and after hearing them sold my behringer stuff..Im sure the multimix with the digital outs is something worth looking into..man a diamond in the rough..not alot of options wish it had individual mute buttons but I think the 12 channel versions with the digital out's do have them..I use the small 6 and 8 channel versions and I love them....keeps my larrivee sounding like a larrivee :) ok so my adat which cost me 4000 bucks sells for 200 on ebay now :) who cares ...I'll forgive alesis and blame it on the times this piece however is worth every penny!

well so far so good...doesnt have standard ac adapters so if your on the road I suggest buying a second adapter from alesis cause you cant get these at a local radio schlock :) there totally proprietary

never used them

best sounding pre's in a mixer I"ve heard in recent times