Can anyone suggest me a nice and cheap line mixer to sum a couple of keyboard outputs into a stereo out? EQ is not necessary, just level control and thats it. But i can't afford things like neve summing amp etc.

http://www.samedaymusic.com/product--RLLRM203

looks good, haven't tried it.

Try a couple of Y adapters. If your keyboards have analog attenuators you should be fine. If you need more gain, get an active DI box. Or 2 DI boxes, and Y cables or adapters.

Any particular reason why you wouldn't record them individually? If you only have two input channels, you could midi them and record them in two passes ...

Rane makes a coupl e of servicable units, the SM82 and SM26b.

www.rane.com for specs

I was just going to suggest Rane. I use an SM 82. No Frills, Good pots, Good Head Room, Built like a tank. After years of use, Live and in the studio, this thing acts like new. I can't say the same for any of the Mackie or Soundcraft line mixers I've used.

Rane
or for less cash Behringer (would be fine just for listening purposes, no mixing)

You can get the new SM Pro PM8 for $399. All passive, even has a seperate passive o/p like the Folcrom, so you can use your own o/p amp / pre for gain make up. Looks funky too.....

http://www.smproaudio.com/PM8.htm

What i do is this: I have couple of keyboards and modules, i record them in different passes, but i only have 2 mono inputs available, so i need a line mixer or some sort of switcher to choose whichever module or keyboard i want to record and be able to solo it so that i can record it on the fly (or via midi)


Actually i already have lots of gain from the outputs of my keyboards, do you think merging them with hardwiring won't cause any impedence problems?

Looks really nice but really i won't use the mixer for mixdown, just while tracking, i want to be able to listen to different sources at the same time, and be able to solo any input so that i can record the output via a stereo input on my firewire soundcard

But this is a very nice piece of equipment for summing!...I know there is a big debate going on about analog vs digital summing, maybe i should give this a try to see whether digital summing is as good as analog..

The Rane SM 82 has an FX send which I've use instead of a solo for the purpose of tracking. The Main out goes to my monitor, and the FX Send goes to the DAW. If you don't have an analog monitor with multiple ins, then you would need 4 inputs on your Daw to use it this way.

I like to DI my synths anyway, so I'd probably set the Send out to my Mic Pre DI which is normalled to the DAW already.

Best,

Bob

thats exactly what i want, thanks..i wanna send whatever signal i want to the out so that it is recorded, and maybe use the main out for monitoring..

Try to find a used (no longer made0 Roland M-120 line mixer. These are very quiet and reliable. 12 mono channels, volume, pan, 2 sends, stereo returns, great headphone amp and 1 rack space. They are on EBay fairly often . Gere's one :
http://cgi.ebay.com/ROLAND-M-120-LIN...temZ7421656471


Best of luck!

I would not recommend hard wiring, can sound bad. You can mix the outputs passively, but you should introduce some resistance in to the lines, say about 3k3 ohms, to reduce the loading. All you do is make a Y cable, but have the 3k3 resistors in series of each "hot" leg of the inputs feeding the junction.

Tim.

If I understand you right, then you don't actually want to mix or merge at all. You just want a convenient way to patch them up as required?

That's what a patch bay is for. Although with unbalanced cables, a little rotary switch box (as used for hifi components) can work well.

Avoiding active circuitry can avoid noise. Unless you also need impedance matching or gain/attenuation, you can't beat the performance of straight wire. Or the nearest thing to a straight wire.

This is clever! Thanks Wow, simplest solutions are sometimes the best!..