A bit late in here but … you really might want to consider a Soundcraft Ui-24. It has almost no hardware controls but because good faders and knobs are expensive, this unit is quite inexpensive. The other advantage is: No one will touch the gain knobs between rehersals. To control it, you can use any PC, Tablet or Smartphone: The interface is a HTML5 website that you can try out right here: https://www.soundcraft.com/ui24-software-demo/mixer.html.
It has 20 mic inputs, 10 XLR outputs, if you need more, connect another unit. Each Channel has the usual Channelstrip with EQ, Comp, Gate, De-Esser. Multitrack recordings are possible directly to a USB drive or via PC as a multitrack audio interface.
The downside IMHO is the Effects section which is very basic.
Agreed about the Soundcraft, but a word of warning is to avoid the smaller and earlier versions of this (the Soundcraft Ui 12 and Ui 16). Both of those units have far inferior preamps to those in the Ui 24, but more importantly they have a lot of connectivity problems and are extremely unreliable. I made the mistake of buying a UI 12 a few years ago for use as a live sound mixer and had more than a few white-knuckle moments where I’d lose control of the mix for minutes at a time in concerts, with no ability to mute, control feedback, mix, etc. The Ui 24 is completely redesigned and all reports indicate it is much more reliable and better all around.
I had a Presonus 1818VSL and used it for 3 years with no issues, then wanted more channels and got a Presonus StudioLive AR-16, I’ve had it for a year, recorded multiple projects with it and I’ve had no problems at all, the Pre’s are very quiet, you can stream bluetooth through it so very handy to learn new songs off your phone and the USB Multitrack capabilities work perfectly under Linux.
Presonus, Mackie, Soundcraft, Behringer et al are all competing with each other in a tight marketplace with the cheapest components they can source so they are probably all somewhat risky as far as quality goes at the ‘prosumer’ level… I have a Mackie board for live sound that’s 2 years old and the trim pots became noisy after 3 months and I also drank the kool aid that Mackie was king of the hill… After that experience for me the Presonus has been a better product…YMMV
That’s the beauty of those remote controlled Mixers: Analog signal paths are expensive or noisy and unreliable. DSP power is cheap. So without all the knobs and faders, these units reduce the analog signal path to a preamp and there’s simply no trim pots to become noisy. The downside is of course that there are none to touch and turn either, you need to do that via a tablet or PC.
Soundcraft are not the only ones with wifi mixers, of course. Their unique advantage is that they’re controlled via a HTML5 Website and not with an app that doesn’t run on Linux. They will work for the forseeable future with any device with a web browser.
The thing works pretty well. Its construction feels a bit shoddy, but so far so good. I like how it has inserts on all lines and good routing. With proper hardware on the computer side, I could use this as a mixed four-track recorder, or a pre-fade 8-track record, which is fine.
So far I’ve got a crap soundcard so it’s only a mono recorder, but it does its job (which is to let me scream into speakers) well enough (that is, until COVID-19 struck and destroyed our chance to jam together in a reasonable way…)
Thanks for everyone who contributed here, and sorry for pinging you all, but i thought it was a good idea to explain what happened in the end.
I just got a Soundcraft Signature 12 MTK, it has a class compliant USB interface with 14ins/12outs that all work in GNU/Linux. The ins always capture from the inputs, but there is also an option to return the USB channels individually from the PC back into the channel strip, by individual buttons on the desk, this means you can use the EQ/FX on the desk and capture the master (via channels 13/14 that are always routed this way). So Ardour can function as a set of inserts on channels 1-12 and you can mix on the desk… or you can route all channels into Ardour and mix in Ardour, then return a stereo mix back to the desk to play back into any channel! This set up is something I’ve wanted for a while, and now I can sell all my other redundant equipment, as the mixer acts as preamps, interface, outboard gear and router for my amp.
I’ve had my eye on one too. Now that I know they work well, it might be my next purchase! Incidentally, is the routing diagram from QJackCtl? I’ve wondered for a while why the various repos only have v0.5.1 (over two years old!) when v0.6.2 is on the dev’s website with goodies like that beautiful graph/routing window.
I have a tip for this mixer: Use the group 1-2 outs to drive your main amplifier because you can set the level lower, but set the master fader on 0dB, this way when you capture from channels 13/14 you get a unity levelled mix on the summing bus and can record it directly. Also the headphone mix is affected by the master fader so you need to do this to get independent headphone level from the group outs driving your main speakers.
Did you compile from the source or are you running a bleeding-edge distro? It seems that Debian Sid has the latest offering but MXLinux 19 is buster so no such luck.
Also, thanks for the tip on mixer routing. The 12 MTK looks like a stellar product.
Just on Fedora 30, quite old now… Yeah I’m really happy with this mixer, I can see it will serve me well, either in standalone mode jamming, or recording, or both…
