Message 2/3
Date: 20-Oct-03 @ 03:07 AM -
RE: eso mixers
Hey... a friend of mine just got an ESO Star. It's a 4 channel job... he got it for like 40 bucks or something ridiculous, brand new on ebay. You should check that out, a few people are blowing these things out new for cheap. He brought it over to my place, and this is what I found... the faders are pretty sweet for a cheaper mixer. I have a numark dm1720, which is a good workhorse I think... everything you need with nothing you don't. I liked the ESO's faders better.. the xfader slides really smoothly, and the channel faders are a little stiffer than the cross, but still smooth. None of them have that 'wobble' you get with the numark.. they just move back and forth. And they are are the long 60mm, not 45mm. The xfader can be turned off. The eq's are pretty average, but get the job done.. however, they sort of 'jump' quickly from sounding like they are cutting the frequency, to the point where they sound like kills.. but they work nicely. The gains are a little jumpy too... it's not a totally linear fade from silence up.. but you can get used to that, just watch the input meters. This Star, it had some kill switches for all three bands, which were ok, but unnecessary, and transform buttons.. those were cheesy. They click, change the volume... they sucked. All of which you can just ignore.. but the thing is, it lacked some more useful features, like cue pan, split monitoring, and a dedicated PFL meter (there are two meters for left and right channels that you can, with a button, switch between master output and PFL. The sound was very clean and quiet though, and the outputs are hot, like pioneer mixers. I prefer the sound and features of my numark.. it is a little warmer, and about as clean. Also, the headphone amp has a bit of hiss, but so did the one on my pioneer djm300. It will get loud though. So, these are not top of the line for sure but get the job done.. just make SURE that the monitoring features that you want are there before you buy! And based on the crappy 'features' bolted on to the Star, I wouldn't expect much from the effects on the 1000dsp. (I am just assuming that is what the "DSP" name implies) Reliability? Well, only time will tell! But since you want to turn off the xfader, it's obvious you aren't scratching and won't be beating the thing up too much, so it will probably last. If you can afford to, get something better, but if you can't don't sweat it, the ESO should be fine. I hope this helps, good luck!