A comment on mixers

Until last weekend I'd managed reasonably well with a fairly modest little 10 channel Behringer mixer but I still had to unplug and repatch things every now and then. For some reason this really zaps my creative energy, so I decided, geez, they make a much larger console for not much money (the 2442FX) and, I have to say, this was a really great idea. I hadn't thought about the usefulness of four output busses in a system with only a stereo audio in/out to the computer, but what is really useful about this is that you can plug the PC outs into the desk but then assign subgroups 1+2 to the PC stereo inputs. Now you can mix in PC audio along with all the external MIDI devices etc, but without getting a feedback loop, because obviously you don't assign the PC outputs back to subgroups 1+2, but just the main buss. Any audio in to Sonar, just assign to subgroups 1+2, but you can still hear everything regardless through the main buss.

Previously I had to use a separate little four channel mixer to submix the PC outs and the main desk outs and then send them off to my monitors.

I don't know how Behringer make this stuff for the price - I guess they probably have some awful sweatshop in China or (I hope) they just have some kind of automated production facilities, but anyone with even a modest setup might benefit from one of these, because now you can plug in your cassette recorder, radio, 2 or 3 MIDI sound sources, the PC and a mic or two and... YAAY... no more pulling wires out and then scratching your head because you screwed something up.

Another useful feature is that if you're doing late night work with headphones only, you can just send the subgroup to the phones and turn the main faders down, disabling the monitors.

Finally, although I initially thought the inbuilt effects were a bit pointless, actually they're useful in that while recording you can quickly patch them across the main buss and solo something, work out what kind of reverb etc is gonna work, roughly speaking, then go tweak inside of Sonar, but it's much quicker to fiddle with the preset effects on the desk first.

Until I got this, I would have said, hmm, why would you need a medium-size analogue mixer, you can do it through the PC, but this, plus the BCR/BCF2000 control surface, makes a very good combination indeed.

Just to comment on the Behringer prices:
They are about half the price of what other manufacturers charge for comparable products, so I believed until recently that they used lower quality components.
However, a friend of a friend of mine, who's an engineer in electronics and computers, disassembled the Behringer Pro DEQ2496, which is a digital equalizer and room correction unit combined.
He said that every little piece was state of the art, top notch, high quality, and comparable to gear both three and four times it's price.
And this guy knows his way around such hardware......

FWIW
The pre-amps in the ADA8000 are the same as in the UB1202 (which I have). Very useable although poo-poo'ed by many. And yes, they are the same, I asked
Behringer in an e-mail and at least that's what they told me.