Soundcraft Compact 4- craptacular? best cheap mixer?

[dirtmachine]

Has anyone used one of these? Any experience with the pres?
Compared to Behringer? Mackie? other cheap stuff?

For that matter, what is the best sounding of the under-$200 mixers?

I used a Behringer recently and thought it sounded better than an old Mackie that I had for a while.

[Professor]

I don't think there's much of a question that a Soundcraft in that price range (or any) is going to sound better than a Behringer, Mackie or other bottom-end mixer. In fairness I've not tried the new Onyx line from Mackie, but I've used lots of soundcraft stuff. Ron Streicher of AEA uses the preamps on a Spirit board for his location recordings - or at least he did when he was recording the Graham Blythe organ concert at the 2004 AES show. Of course, Graham also designed those preamps so he may have been just stroking his ego, but I doubt it.

-Jeremy

[dirtmachine]

Thanks for your reply.
I found out about the Compact 4 this morning while reading about some of the higher-end Soundcraft mixers. I searched the TOMB and was a bit surpised to find very little mention of it. It has some nice-looking features such as two headphone outs, to which you can assign either different or identical mixes. I saw them new on some website for a hundred bucks, which, if the preamps are even slightly better than Behringers, would make it a pretty good value in my book.

Professor, do you have any thoughts about pres/mixers in that price range?

[the velour fog]

i've been looking at these mixers as well. i like the looks of the compact 4 and the compact 10...and in general i like the sound of soundcraft over behringer. i've been looking at them to replace the behringer mixer i'm using on the key section of my room...or to use as a submixer/buss. plus i've needed a phono preamp forever.

[darjama]

I like the yamaha mg102 I picked up when my Spirit SX crapped out an hour or so before a recording session started. Lower noise floor than the spirit, though the pres on the yamaha might be a little less detailed. Still quite usable though if you need a few extra tracks.

I haven't heard a compact, so I can't comment directly on it.

[segaface]

I've been using a Compact 4 for a little over a year now.

I don't have much experience with Mackie or Behringer mixers with a similar feature set, but it's worked great for me. I haven't had any reliability problems using it almost every day (and for a few remote recordings). The DI on channel 2 is handy, and the pres don't sound half bad. The blend knob on the headphone monitoring section is nice for use with a DAW, too.

Andy

[bantam]

ill be using a compact 4 for monitoring my daw, but im curious as to how the pre's/eq sound. Are they usable anthing on par with M series or 200 series?

how is the low end?

thanks

[the velour fog]

i just bought a compact 10, right off the bat i can tell this thing is going to be very useful for me. nothing is really spectacular sounding, but everything sounds good. i like the sound alot actually. right now i'm using it as a combo pre/monitor-control/sub-mixer, in the studio and i plan on using it as a submixer for live shows, just so we still have some control before it goes to the main soundboard. i think it's pretty versatile...no aux or efx sends, but it does have mic/line/DI/turntable channels...so you can pretty much hook anything to it. the eq is fixed, but it does a good job. in alot of ways i like it better then the eq's in my 388. the 388 has parametric eq's, but they seem to be really flabby and unprecise. even with the soundcraft eq in a fixed frequency, it seems to respond better. i plan on using this for minor eq-ing and then using a plug-in if i need to do any sort of precision work. there's my little review...though i've only had this thing a week.

[lancebug]

I dont know about the compact series but I have a folio notepad that I use for monitor routing and turnatable/tapedeck input. I may never try out the pres on it since it is pretty well occupied with its current duties. It is tiny (a footprint about the size of a sheet of paper) and low and works great for routing the outputs of my soundcard to my monitors etc.. The eq's are detented so you know what flat is. I cant say I would want to take it on the road at all as it does seem a bit delacate. I have seen the compacts in person and they definately seem more rugged than the folio. I would be curious to know if there is any sound quality/component difference though. I got mine for around $100 new but I think they go for a little more normally.