[Freeflyer]

I haven't been in front of a sound desk in 15 years. However, a few friends have put a band together and are practicing every week in a small local venue. I've been asked to do sound for them as there's no one else who knows anything about it.

The gear in the venue is a peavey 16 track desk and a variety of FX gear, most of which I need to learn how to use.

However, it's taken me a few weeks to figure out that much of it is badly put together, cables are flakey and it's going to take me a few solid days to try and trace all the faults and fix them.

I've been wondering about getting one of the small firewire desks that are around now and using my powerbook to do the live mixing and effects. I could have my own gear that I know would be good, wouldn't be messed about with by other people and could be taken to any venue the band plays locally.

So, is this reasonable. What sort of software would I need to use the mac as an effects controller etc. I'm not looking at something like pro-tools, as recording isn't the primary idea, although recording might be fun to do for them, I'm more looking at being able to use around 8 channels (the drum kit's electronic, so only 1 input there, guitar, bass and 1 or 2 vocals), mix it, add some effects as necessary, probably some eq and pipe out to the PA.

I'd be grateful for any advice you can offer.

Cheers,

J.

[analogika]

What's your budget?

[Freeflyer]

Well, I've been looking at the new Alesis firewire mixers which are $3-500 (8-16ch), one of those with the mac doing effects duty would be a great, low budget option, although I think you're likely to run into latency problems.

The other idea was to go for something like the small Behringer digital mixer that has onboard effects/gates/eq etc. which runs around $6-700, but doesn't have firewire out, so no recording.

This is hobby stuff only, although the behringer desk seems to be used quite a lot in professional settings.

Any other suggestions around that price point would be much appreciated.

J.