Anybody have experience with the Soundcraft Spirit M12 mixer? It has direct output that can be made post-fader so I can use my existing A/D D/A converter and use it for its mic preamps. Are the preamps any good? What do they compare to?
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Thanks for the reply. I won't entertain the thought of buying on
Thanks for the reply. I won't entertain the thought of buying one then. I'd probably be better with an A&H console with direct outputs like the Zed420 or the live/recording console Zed R16. I'm looking around and trying to figure out what the best mixer I can buy around $2000 or less would be. I want good preamps and lots of them. The Zed R16 A/D D/A converters are probably better than my Motu 2408 mk2 so it interests me, but if I'm better off getting something else and plugging direct into the Motu I want to do that. The Motu only has 8 inputs, but I want a 16 channel board for future expansion. For recording drums I have a Roland TD-9KX, but may get a TD-20 some day so I have the individual outputs (hence the future expansion capability of a 16 channel board).
It didn't seem from your original post that you were in this lea
It didn't seem from your original post that you were in this league. The A+H Zed-R16 is at least a couple of notches up from the Spirit you mentioned. From my experience, the R16 pre-amps and built-in A-D converters are superior to those in the MOTU 2408, and give even quite expensive digitizing pre-amps a run for their money.
I see R16s being advertised for around USD2000 in N America, and if the specification fits your bill (e.g. a hard limit of 16 channels), I would save up for one if you can't stretch there immediately. I also saw you responded to the guy in Baltimore MD who was advertising an R16. His price is a good one if shipping and duty do not inflate it too much for you, but I would try the agents in Canada first to get an idea of the new price there.
The Spirit series is a value-engineered console that performs we
The Spirit series is a value-engineered console that performs well for its price. The pre-amps are not exciting, but give good results for vocals and instruments. Getting a drum kit to sound good through this level of unit is more of a problem, but keep the gain trims low on the drum channels and make up the levels digitally, and you should get acceptable results.
It's difficult to compare the pre-amps in a value-line mixer with those in similar-priced audio interfaces, but the Spirits I have used do better than most of the low-end pre-amps or interfaces around.