Karaoke Forums

I am setting up a home studio and would like to use a mixer for various tasks. I use a CFX12 for gig work and like it and am comfortable with it. But as I think about the home studio setup I am wondering if another CFX12 would be right for the task. I have several preamps, compressors, digital EQ, effects. I have a Delta 44 in the computer. I want to use my other preamps for the studio recording and bypass the CFX12 pre's. Is this possible? Will I be trying to do something with this analog mixer that it is not suited for? I know several of you use the CFX12 and know a lot more about this stuff then I will ever hope to know. Assistance is appreciated.

What kind of recording are you going to be doing, just karaoke or multitracking?  The CFX12 is designed more for live use than studio.  The 1642VLZpro would be a much better choice for recording if multi-tracking, otherwise the smaller 1402VLZpro would be a great choice for just general karaoke recording.   These are very clean boards and have been at home in pro studios very general mixdown for years.
But if you are set on the CFX, there is no way to bypass any internal pre-amps - at least in any boards in the price range.  Generally the preamp will be the main pusher & you adjust at the mixers own gain which will normally be substantially lower than a mic would be w/o the preamp.  If you are looking to do more digital oriented recordings, you may want to consider another mixer entirely, the ONYX series is completely geared for digital recording via Firewire support, comes with the Mackie Tracktion software (very powerful piece in itself considering the price) & the pre-amps are some of the best i've heard without the aide of outside processors or without going into pro studio consoles costing thousands more.  The ONYX series are replacing many of the VLZ series in production studios.

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Hi Lonman, thanks for the reply. Always glad to read your replies and recommendations. I am going to do mostly vocal but will multitrack trying out some of the old school mic techniques used for echo, reverb, and that sort of thing. Also may have some duets.  I kind of thought that the CFX12 was not suited for this and will probably just use it for monitor mixing only. I have Tracktion 2 and will be using this for tracking and mixing (also have Cubase SX3 but haven't started that learning curve yet.) I am using M-Audio Delta 44 as my sound card so I have 4 inputs/outputs to work with. Will probably move to firewire as some point. Since I have a couple of different compressors, preamps, and effects units I can also play around with these and don't need these features on a digital mixer. As far as tracking and mixing I don't necessarily mind working with a mouse and keyboard but I have to admit I prefer having a fader and twisty to fiddle with. I am actually thinking about the Mackie Universal or the Tascam FW-1082 controllers.  No doubt it is overkill and probably will not result in a better finished recording but I still think they are neat. On the other hand my biggest challenge will probably be working through the signal chain and everything that goes along with that. I think I better get another gig or 2 to pay for this very expensive obsession.