SoundcraftNotepad-12FX Small-Format Analog Mixing Console with Usb I/O and Lexicon Effects

I bought this to plug in my Nord piano and a condenser microphone and then to sing and play together with headphones plugged in, and for this, its fantastic. The headphone driver powers my headphones very loud! - so loud it will hurt your ears if you turn it more than 70% up.It has a DC power in with the cable and adapter supplied, there's no power switch, I just leave mine on all the time, there's also no Phantom power for the microphone, but I leave mine on at the time.The first 4 inputs are sockets which will take either a quarter inch Jack plug or a male XLR plug. Its great that these sockets are dual purpose because it saves space, its a shame that the main outputs don't do the same, theres on a female XLR socket option - no Jack or Phone out to send to your amplifier or main mix. - So you will have to buy an XLR cable for this. I haven't tried this yet as I don't use it to power an amplifier.The in built echo and chorus is good, I have no idea what the delay is for and its really not needed for me. Each channels Aux Send (Blue) knobs act as an effects level - so ideal for controlling reverb. You cannot use chorus for the keyboard channel and the reverb for the microphone. You can only control all effects at once. You can have reverb and chorus on at the same time if you want, but what for?The USB digital out is very good. It takes a lot of messing around with your computer to get it working though. I use it with a Windows laptop and I tried Audacity and I downloaded the Soundcraft driver from their website which installs and works perfectly. The only trouble with Audacity is that it will only work with two channels at once. So I could record the keyboard in stereo, but not the microphone at the same time, so it would need two takes, which ruined the performance to be honest.So, I turned to Cubase, I got a 30 day free trial and had all sorts of trouble getting it working, it kept coming up with ASIO recording not working or something like that. In the end I fixed it by uninstalling Audacity and doing a cold restart. After that all worked perfectly, except there was a little bit of a delay in the recording playback from the Cubase and the new track I was going to record live. To fix this, just go into the soundcraft driver control panel (double click the icon on your desktop once its installed) and change the buffer. Its set at 512 at the start, change it to 128 and you will find the delay of 12ms changes to 2ms which is much better.So, I am very pleased with this, and would recommend it to anyone, there is no hum and no hiss unless you turn up the gain to nearly max and you wouldnt need to do that if your source instrument is set up properly.Oh, another gripe, the feet are an unusual shape and so close to the edge of the unit that it will only fit onto something that is at least as big as it is. My keyboard is unfortunately a bit too small, so I had to wedge some bubble wrap underneath to protect my keyboard.I had a Mackie mixer before and I would say both are a similar quality, the USB 4 track input / output on this is very good value though for the money.

For my particular needs as a home music experimenter this has been a great little unit. The quantity and variety of input and routing options has covered all my needs and it's solidly constructed. Built-in effects are handy and good quality (if a little limited compared with what you get in a pure purpose made effects unit). For the price it feels like you get a heck of a lot.Main snag has been that the first unit I received died after 6 months use. This seems to have been an internal fault in the unit itself, not a power supply failure. Amazon very swiftly replaced it with a new unit so I'm still happy but I'm flagging this up in case it happens to others (also it's the reason for dropping the rating from 5 to 4 stars).When I first got it there were some difficulties with using it in conjunction with Windows 10 (it was supposedly compatible but required workarounds for driver signing issues). However, as of mid-2020, updated firmware (v.2.04) seems to have addressed this.

Buying a USB audio interface is a bit of a nightmare process for me - I look at signal to noise, dynamic range, and inputs and go crazy wishing Firewire still existed, or Thunderbolt 1/2 hadn't changed format to USB-C meaning those dedicated, high-speed interfaces had remained worth developing for. Eventually, I end up choosing something I'm not happy with, and the process starts again.So this time, I saw the Notepad 12FX's 4-in, 4-out and just went for it. At £119 it's not much more than average 2x2 interfaces or cheaper 4x4 ones anyway, and I don't record over 48KHz so for all the extra dynamic range those high-end interfaces can capture, I'm wasting money anyway.Usually I'd have gone for an eight or ten-channel 1U rackmount to solve the issue of plugging in more kit, with the computer having to act as a mixer (no DAW or loopback mode, no jamming!) and so forth, for three to four times the cost.So the Notepad's actually a brilliant choice. You can hook up guitar, mic, synths - just play like any mixer. The effects are decent but limited.Time to record? Inputs 1&2 are hardwired to USB 1&2, pre-channel strip, post gain.USB inputs 3+4 can be routed to input audio from 3&4, 5&6 or 7&8, or the main mix. As with 1&2, recording 3&4 bypasses the channel strip and is dry, post-gain; the stereo inputs don't have any EQ to apply. These settings aren't persistent, so you need to set up each time to power the mixer on and off.Main mix means if you're monitoring through channels 9&10, you'll get double/phasing/loopback - but that's okay, 'cause you can route your DAW to USB outputs 3&4, assign those to the headphones and use those for monitoring with their own level control too.You need to record main mix from USB channels 3&4 to record the EQs and effects.It's not unduly noisy, the latency is acceptable, and it's 24-bit, 44.1KHz or 48KHz. No fancy ADAT or S/PDIF, just straightforward analogue hookup. It can auto-duck incoming channels for selected mic inputs if you're mixing and podcasting live, but I haven't tried or needed that feature.Build quality is good, and it's not particularly bulky - see pictures to compare to a Novation Circuit.Downsides, you need to use their app to swap input channels - why not just use a switch, Soundcraft! There's space! There's no phantom power switch, it's always on - so watch out for duff XLR cables. And there's no power switch, but I don't think the Mac takes too kindly to it being present/removed lots on USB anyway, so any switch would have to leave the USB part live. Power supply is a nice soap-on-a-rope with an easy cable loop.Honestly, on paper the specs sound limiting, but for the price, this is a way more versatile option than a typical 4x4 USB audio interface (which will set you back about the same price) with no downsides unless you're recording the very highest-end audio. For home studios, jamming and hobbyists it's brilliant. Get this if you love playing music and aren't trying to do serious studio production at home - you can hook up more instruments, record like a four-track, and the quality is better than most people's ears can detect anyway. Particularly once you've mixed and made your MP3s...