Phonic?

[atarisrock55]

http://www.phonic.com/partner/modules/product_explor/products_detail.php?product_id=141

I'm looking into getting this mixer, but I can't find a review of it anywhere on the internet. Does anyone know if Phonic traditionally makes good mixers or if this is a good mixer?

[KKKKKocaine]

Hey,
I have no experience with phonic boards or preamps, but it does look a very competant mixer. A good amount of mic/line inputs, lo-cut filters, individual phantom power e.t.c.
I'd check it out.

I'm going on quest now because it's got my interest and I'd really like to know it's cost.

The Helix Board 17 got a 7 in Music Tech mag
http://www.musictechmag.co.uk/mtm/reviews/helix-board-17
It's a much smaller model, but it'll be a good indicator of the preamp and general construction quality.
The 17 lost the last 3 out of 10 because of only having 16 bit USB connections and some problems with monitoring and recording.

I don't think it's actually been released yet in the UK.
In the US http://floridamusicco.com/proddetail~prod~phonic_helix_24_fw.htm it's retails at about $999. And they're selling it at $799.

To be honest, $999 is pretty damn competative for something of that size.

My personal reccomendation would be to wait a while until it's been out on the market for longer and you have more user reviews. Unless you need it desperately. From what I see it looks to be a good unit but still I'd reccomend waiting a bit until some more reviews come up on it. I'll be watching it very closely to see what competition it can give the presonus firepods.

[atarisrock55]

Hey,
I have no experience with phonic boards or preamps, but it does look a very competant mixer. A good amount of mic/line inputs, lo-cut filters, individual phantom power e.t.c.
I'd check it out.

I'm going on quest now because it's got my interest and I'd really like to know it's cost.

The Helix Board 17 got a 7 in Music Tech mag
http://www.musictechmag.co.uk/mtm/reviews/helix-board-17
It's a much smaller model, but it'll be a good indicator of the preamp and general construction quality.
The 17 lost the last 3 out of 10 because of only having 16 bit USB connections and some problems with monitoring and recording.

I don't think it's actually been released yet in the UK.
In the US http://floridamusicco.com/proddetail~prod~phonic_helix_24_fw.htm it's retails at about $999. And they're selling it at $799.

To be honest, $999 is pretty damn competative for something of that size.

My personal reccomendation would be to wait a while until it's been out on the market for longer and you have more user reviews. Unless you need it desperately. From what I see it looks to be a good unit but still I'd reccomend waiting a bit until some more reviews come up on it. I'll be watching it very closely to see what competition it can give the presonus firepods.

yeah it sells for 730, but from what I understand phonic used to manufacture all of behringer's stuff, so I'm a little worried about the quality. It seems like a good deal though doesnt it?

[airborne50caliber]

phonic used to manufacture all of behringer's stuff, so I'm a little worried about the quality.

That's quite some bull**** argument you've got going there.

[atarisrock55]

That's quite some bull**** argument you've got going there.

what do you mean?

[Moseph]

airborne likes to tout Behringer as the mothers of all invention.

Though I have to say, that board does look like they're building it out of the same parts they use to build the Eurodesk and UB series mixers.

I'd say if you're willing to spend money on a good case for it, and you baby it, you should be okay in a normal home studio setting. Travel and live sound are different scenarios. I'd trust it if you don't abuse the circuits, and it doesn't move too much.

I'm not going to vouch for preamps etc, b/c I've never heard them. Do some searching for reviews and see what magazines are saying.

The Mackie desk that pioneered the idea of a FW mixer costs more than 2x that though, so while it looks like an appealing deal, I wouldn't jump right out and say that it's going to be the best quality either.

[KKKKKocaine]

airborne likes to tout Behringer as the mothers of all invention.

Though I have to say, that board does look like they're building it out of the same parts they use to build the Eurodesk and UB series mixers.

I'd say if you're willing to spend money on a good case for it, and you baby it, you should be okay in a normal home studio setting. Travel and live sound are different scenarios. I'd trust it if you don't abuse the circuits, and it doesn't move too much.

I'm not going to vouch for preamps etc, b/c I've never heard them. Do some searching for reviews and see what magazines are saying.

The Mackie desk that pioneered the idea of a FW mixer costs more than 2x that though, so while it looks like an appealing deal, I wouldn't jump right out and say that it's going to be the best quality either.

What always annoys me about the Mackie mixers is the fact that the boards are expensive as it is (and with good reason) but to buy the firewire interface you have to cash out almost as much as you'd pay for a presonus firepod. I was looking at one as an option a while ago until I found out the website had neglected to tell me that I was just buying a mackie mixer with the option of firewire. I practicly crapped my pants when I saw the firewire I/O cost.

[jaykemurd]

If it costs around 200 bucks, I'd go with a Behringer Eurorack, or similar Behringer mixer. Behringer makes excellent products, for the money. You get MORE than you pay for usually!

[KKKKKocaine]

If it costs around 200 bucks, I'd go with a Behringer Eurorack, or similar Behringer mixer. Behringer makes excellent products, for the money. You get MORE than you pay for usually!

The behringer mixers don't have firewire outputs though.

[airborne50caliber]

from what I understand phonic used to manufacture all of behringer's stuff, so I'm a little worried about the quality.

Wait, so the reason behringer isn't top-notch is that they don't know how to build stuff, as a pose to they choose to cut some fields short for the benefit of keeping it cheap? Good call, dude..

[Moseph]

What always annoys me about the Mackie mixers is the fact that the boards are expensive as it is (and with good reason) but to buy the firewire interface you have to cash out almost as much as you'd pay for a presonus firepod. I was looking at one as an option a while ago until I found out the website had neglected to tell me that I was just buying a mackie mixer with the option of firewire. I practicly crapped my pants when I saw the firewire I/O cost.


That's not the case in the states. Here, the mixers are expensive, but the firewire card are only $200-300 totally. The Firepod here in the states is $600 usually.


What I don't like about the Mackie Onyx series is that you can't use the EQs in the firewire stream. I know that in practice it's not a big deal since you can route backwards, but it's a pain if you want to record using the EQs live. Since I would have been using that setup for recording rather than live sound, I'd be essentially paying $300-$400 extra for nice EQs that I'll never get to really use. Other than that little feature, they seem like great boards. One of the facilities at work has one for live sound and it works really well for routing etc., and it sounds good too.

[KKKKKocaine]

That's not the case in the states. Here, the mixers are expensive, but the firewire card are only $200-300 totally. The Firepod here in the states is $600 usually.


What I don't like about the Mackie Onyx series is that you can't use the EQs in the firewire stream. I know that in practice it's not a big deal since you can route backwards, but it's a pain if you want to record using the EQs live. Since I would have been using that setup for recording rather than live sound, I'd be essentially paying $300-$400 extra for nice EQs that I'll never get to really use. Other than that little feature, they seem like great boards. One of the facilities at work has one for live sound and it works really well for routing etc., and it sounds good too.

Everythings far too cheap in America :upset:

[Moseph]

Everythings far too cheap in America :upset:

You just don't happen to live where all the good companies are located. It costs a bunch to ship internationally, plus tariffs etc.

You should just move and cut your losses. All the big studios are in New York City anyway.

[airborne50caliber]

Or buy things in the US and bring 'em back

[jaykemurd]

Are Firewire and USB equipment things more polular just because people are afraid of putting a PCI card in their computer, or because it's "better quality"? What is it?

[Moseph]

Are Firewire and USB equipment things more polular just because people are afraid of putting a PCI card in their computer, or because it's "better quality"? What is it?

convenience. I'm not afraid to install a PCI card, but when I have firewire ports on all my computers, I can easily move the device to desktop/laptop if I need to. Additionally, if something goes wrong with the PCI card connections, it's probably on the motherboard and will be expensive to replace. If something goes wrong in the external device connections, it's likely to be a cable problem, which is less expensive to resolve.

Firewire has the added benefit of allowing many devices to be daisy-chained together, without having to install a whole seperate device and it's drivers.

In terms of quality, that's dependent on the converters in the device itself, and is not dependent on the data transfer hardware.

[atarisrock55]

Wait, so the reason behringer isn't top-notch is that they don't know how to build stuff, as a pose to they choose to cut some fields short for the benefit of keeping it cheap? Good call, dude..

no the reason behringer isnt top notch is because they rip off other companies and build cheap knockoffs of their products. I take a recording studio class at my college and our professor (who owns a million dollar studio http://www.shout.net/~pogostudio/) HATES behringer and told me about a case where another company (i believe mackie) sued behringer over the eurodesks and in court took the tops off of both mixers and showed that they were exactly the same to the point that the holes for the screws even lined up perfectly. And he was the one who warned me about phonic mixers which is why I got on here to ask for second opinions, not to get crap from people who don't know what they are talking about. I mean seriously, sure behringer is good for entry level equipment, but you can't possibly be saying that it would be used in any remotely professional situation can you??

Now back to my original question which is simply :Would this phonic mixer be a good investment for good quality recordings or should I look for a different one?

[airborne50caliber]

I' wasn't defending behringer I was just saying that an argument saying phonic might be crap because they make behringer's stuff is an argument that doesen't line up. Forget it.

[isojoe420]

I mean seriously, sure behringer is good for entry level equipment, but you can't possibly be saying that it would be used in any remotely professional situation can you??
Sure it is. See it here and there for semi-pro to pro jobs.

[KKKKKocaine]

no the reason behringer isnt top notch is because they rip off other companies and build cheap knockoffs of their products. I take a recording studio class at my college and our professor (who owns a million dollar studio http://www.shout.net/~pogostudio/) HATES behringer and told me about a case where another company (i believe mackie) sued behringer over the eurodesks and in court took the tops off of both mixers and showed that they were exactly the same to the point that the holes for the screws even lined up perfectly. And he was the one who warned me about phonic mixers which is why I got on here to ask for second opinions, not to get crap from people who don't know what they are talking about. I mean seriously, sure behringer is good for entry level equipment, but you can't possibly be saying that it would be used in any remotely professional situation can you??

Now back to my original question which is simply :Would this phonic mixer be a good investment for good quality recordings or should I look for a different one?

I made a MASSIVE post. But Mx deleted it.

I'll summarise it.

1. Your tutor owns a million dollar studio. The rift in quality and in fact the very difference in the subjective difference of the word quality between what you may want and what he expects means his opinion should be taken with a very large amount of salt. He's naturally going to slag off the gear because compared to his, it is bad.

2. If it doesn't negatively affect your audio signal (adding large amounts of noise, distortion e.t.c.) Then combined with decent mics and experience, it'll be more than sufficient for home studio work.

3. The best thing to do is to find a retailler who will give you a trial period so you can buy it, play around with it and if you don't like it, take it back and get a refund within a certain time period.

4. I'd really reccomend ignoring your tutors advice on this. Asking him if it's any good is like asking an owner of a top end $10,000 Gibson guitar if a $100 guitar kit is any good. He is in a different market to you and has different requirements and expectations. What he needs and requires will not be what you do. Consider it like the difference between a top end video editting and gaming pc, with a business pc for web and document use. Compared to the specs of the gaming pc, the business pc is underpowered. It would be awful to the gamer as he requires something that runs games, but to someone with purely business requirements, it does exactly what they need.

The Phonic will likely be sufficient for home studio recording, but bad for professional* recording. The best thing is to test it for yourself, only you know what's 'good quality' audio to yourself.


*When I say this I mean, you could most likely record and release a local bands CD. Sell it, get signed off it. And have no complaints over it's quality. However if you played it right after a top end studio recording, you'd be able to hear the difference. But that wouldn't make it any less acceptable.
When I say professional, I mean things like the kind of studio a band the size of Metallica will use.

[KKKKKocaine]

Sure it is. See it here and there for semi-pro to pro jobs.

A venue near me uses a full Behringer P.A. set up. (1kw) that the local pro tools studio bought for them, (for the price of their souls :rolleyes: of course)
It does well enough, and they make more than enough money to buy a new mixer if they needed one.

Now back to my original question which is simply :Would this phonic mixer be a good investment for good quality recordings or should I look for a different one?

I missed this bit off your post. Whoops.
It really depends what good quality means to you. Just remember though, spending over $1000 on a mackie firewire mixer won't turn your recordings into award winners. The majority of the recording quality comes from the technique.

[KKKKKocaine]

http://www.sonicstate.com/news/shownews.cfm?newsid=2355
Has a video where the crew are getting the manager to go through all the features of the product, with a user coming up half way through talking to the manager about how pleased he is with the mixer.

[Moseph]

I got on here to ask for second opinions, not to get crap from people who don't know what they are talking about.


Okay, harsh. I'm done helping you.

[airborne50caliber]

Don't worry, Moseph, he was dissing me.

[KKKKKocaine]

Zif can't have crazy cats dissin' ma kru :evil:

[Moseph]

Don't worry, Moseph, he was dissing me.

I know.

Let me put it this way. He asked a question. When you wanted him to clarify his question, possibly so that you could help answer his question, he basically called you a moron and told you to **** off.

I'm not going to help somebody who's going to act like that. One of my tasks at work is to train people to use the studio rooms, and if we get a user who feels the need to ask a question and then turn around and call us dumb****s, we have no qualms about letting them figure it out on their own.

[airborne50caliber]

Respect.