Last week as I packed for the trip to our corporate office in Ottawa, I naturally grabbed my bag of audio gear in case I was inclined to do any recording while I was up there. Unfortunately, the one piece of gear I am still missing is a small audio mixer that I can carry with me. What I want to do is fairly simple. It’s one of the following:
- Connect two condenser mics (or lapel mics) to a mixer and have the audio output go into a recording device (either my PC or my Marantz PMD-660).
- Connect one mic to the mixer and a laptop (running a softphone) to the mixer with the output going to a recording device – and with a mix-minus bringing the microphone audio back to the laptop PC. (so that the person on the softphone can hear me through my microphone)
It’s #2 that is a killer so far. The usual route to do this is to have a mixer with an AUX or FX port. You take the headphone output of your laptop and connect it to one of the channels. You then connect the AUX (or FX) port back to the microphone jack on your laptop. On the channel coming from the laptop you turn the AUX send (or FX send) to 0 so that the person on the laptop softphone doesn’t hear themself (and get any kind of echo or other feedback loops). It works great and this is how I record pretty much all my podcasts (both Blue Box and others).
But I can’t seem to find this in a small mixer. I can get my #1 fairly easily- the picture here is of the Tapco Mix 50 and, let me tell you, it’s wonderfully small! About 5 x 7 inches. Perfect to stick in a travel bag… but it doesn’t do a mix-minus. For that you have to go to a Mix 60, which is just a bit bigger. The Behringer UB502 is similar in size… but it, too, doesn’t do a mix-minus. I’ve looked at some of the USB or Firewire audio interfaces… but I want the simplicity of an analog mixer – and when I’m doing a mix-minus I’m very often recording to my Marantz PMD-660 so an audio interface doesn’t help much there.
Anyone have a suggestion for a nice small mixer that also has an AUX or FX port?
Hey man, I am also looking for this… No luck yet. Please, post if you find something! =)
I know this is an old post, but I’m doing some podcasting with a PMD660 and wanted to do mix-minus for skype calls. I don’t need a travel-size mixer, but I don’t have much room in my house so a small mixer would be great. Just wondering if you ever found anything?
Wow.. the good old PMD660! I still have mine here although I haven’t used it in years. (I’m using a Zoom H5 these days.) At the time I wrote this, I never did find a small mixer that worked for me.
Today, however, I do see a wide range of smaller mixers out there. I recently bought a Mackie 402 for a small home music studio ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EDRUQXC ) and it doesn’t have an AUX out, but it does have a Tape Out that might be potentially useful for a mix-minus.
I also looked at the Peavey PV6 which looked quite nice and does have an EFX Out which could do a mix-minus – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002AKCK38/
Beyond that I haven’t really done much digging. Best wishes finding something!
This seems to be a pretty old post, but over two years there still seems to be people posting here.
I do a weekly talk radio show called the Ask Noah Show (asknoahshow.com) <- Shameless self promotion :). It's a talk show about open source technology but a big portion of the show is our callers. I needed the same thing you all are looking for so we can take calls live on the air when I'm traveling. I needed my interface, mixer, and headset to all fit into a small bag that could go in my carry on suitcase and still leave enough room for clothes. After searching (and buying a ton of different mixers and trying them) I found the Mackie 402VLZ4. It doesn't have an AUX send, but what it does have is RCA Aux In with the ability to disconnect it from the main mix. I have my Mic plugged into channel 1. The return audio plugged into the Aux In. Then I depress the button to connect Aux In to the main mix and send the output of the mixer back to the studio. Viola! Mix Minus on a mixer that's no bigger than my headset itself! http://amzn.to/2onoW9f