Post edited 13:20 – Wednesday, 2009-07-01 by admin

At the risk of making myself unpopular with the pro's, I'm going to suggest a Behringer option to you.

My recommendation would be for a Behringer SX2442FX, it seems to meet all the requirements you have and I doubt you'll find anything cheaper that can give you the feature set this desk offers.

http://www.behringer.com/EN/Pr…..442FX.aspx

Ignore all the marketing hyperbole on that site and what you've essentially got are 16 fully featured channels with mic pre-amps, then two stereo channels and finally a couple of mini channels, which are essentially there to make up the numbers and don't really offer anything.

You get a 9 channel built in EQ which frankly you should just forget about, with only 9 channels each one will effect far too much of the frequency spectrum to make it practical. However you do get two FX processors which are actually surprisingly good. There are 4 auxiliaries, though 3 and 4 are pre-assigned to the two FX's, however, you can just bypass the FX and use them as ordinary aux's.

There are some drawbacks with this desk which include no independent control of your main L & R mix, both are assigned to a single fader. Normally this won't be a problem as you'll probably run L & R at 0dB anyway, but it would have been nice to get the flexibility.

Possibly my biggest gripe with the desk is the total lack of a PFL button on the individual channels. In live mixing it's a heavily utilised function and it's completely missing here. I don't know why this isn't available, but it does seem to be a common thing with Behringer desks.

Possibly my favourite feature is the level LED on the gain pot, it's excellent. Just up the gain until you get a good response from this LED and you'll find that at 0dB on the fader you'll have a good strong level. I really like this and wouldn't mind seeing it taken up by other manufacturers.

This has turned into a bit of a mini-review of the desk, didn't mean to do that. In terms of money, you'll be looking at around the £400 mark for one of these.

If you want something “better” than Behringer, then you could look at Allen & Heath who do a 22 channel desk called the “ZED-22FX Live Mixer”, but then you'll be looking at £500-£550 for that one and you don't get any FX processors, or other extra features the Behringer provides.

You could also look at the Soundcraft MPM 20/2 mixer which is similar in features to the Allen & Heath but with 2 fewer channels and it will cost slightly less at around the £450-£480 mark. I've never really liked the Soundcraft desks though, they just have a feel about them that I don't like. However, it's purely personal and they are perfectly capable mixers.

Anyway, there's a few ideas for you, hope it helps with your group.

That's a nice desk, but I've a feeling it's probably going to be beyond the reach of most amatuer groups. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd be looking at between £4,000-£5,000 for that desk. That makes it rather a lot more than £400-500 for the desks I had mentioned.

As Ryster gave no real indication of budget, I went for cheap. There was nothing in the original post to suggest it had to be though. It is probably worth giving this to them as an option, just in case!