This months Sound on Sound has a review of the MultiMix16. In summary:

"Given its low price, the Multimix Firewire 16 offers extraordinary value for money"

"The Multimix may be built to a price, with competent rather than esoteric audio performance, but the strategy has clearly paid off. After all, where else can you buy a multi-channel mixer, an 18-input audio interface, and a digital effects processor for such a small outlay?"

They didnt like the uneditable effects parameters, but I wonder who would actually use the effects given the quality of the plugins that come right out of the Sonar box? Another brickbat for the fixed mid band EQ and inability to bypass the EQ but all up it was a good review.

The review was done on a Mac and they did have a few driver issues early on.

Anyway, the rest of the article is available online if you subscribe to SOS which I really think is one of the best Magazines out there and well worth the money.

4 pin firewire port - yes it works for me
I'm using the Alesis MultiMix 16 with the jan 06 firmware/drivers update through the mini 4 pin firewire port on my Dell inspiron 6000 (2ghz 1 gig ram, dedicated 128mByte video, 72000RPM 60 Gig drive machine, using an external USB2 7200RPM seagate HD in a acomdata case). This is with the January drivers

It works great, I've recorded 3 8 track sessions now, stopping about every 5 or 10 minutes and saving. However, One time I booted up and then turned on the MultiMix and then Sonar and it wasn't visible to the system. I had to turn off the laptop and the multimix, reboot the laptop, and then turn on the MulitMix again and it worked perfectly. This only happened once but I am going to keep my eyes out for this as it worried me.

So far I think the product is great and it works well with Sonar.

I'm using ASIO. I had used the MOTU896 prior to installing Multimix and it was set to ASIO, (the MOTU didn't seem to perform well in WDM). So when I installed Multimix it came up in asio automatically and works fine in that setting. I haven't tried the Multimix in WDM yet. I haven't tweaked buffers or anything either, and the minimum latency sonar allows is 5.8ms for my system so far, which these days isn't that fast. It may be able to go lower with adjustments in the buffer size but I haven't explored that yet.

Hi,

Sorry, I returned the MOTU before I tried using both together. Without any facts to base this on, I don't have much confidence that you could get away with combining these.

By the way, last night again Sonar lost communication with the Multimix. This always during a pause in the recording thankfully, Sonar would no longer recognize that there was the multimix present. This happened 2 or 3 times during a 3 hour session. It turns out that a reboot of the laptop wasn't necessary. My solution was to shut down the Mixer, shut down Sonar. Turned the mixer back on, and open Sonar again and once again the connection would be good. So now I have less confidence in this system than before, but I haven't had time to look for hidden causes so I can't fault Alesis (yet). MOTU was in fact more stable. Still, the multimix recordings are fine and it works pretty well.

Hi dfin13 -

The band isn't ready to post it for the world yet, but I'd be happy to email you a 2 megabyte mp3 snippet of a short improv. Email me if you still want it - you can see my email address in my user name.

By the way, Last rehersal I couldn't connect to the multimix until the 4 th try! However, after that, it worked flawlessly for hours. I don't understand the tempermentalness of my setup, yet it is. Still, I'm happy about the unit despite this flaw that would be very troubling to some. I worry mostly about live shows which I would like to record where I won't be able to fuss with rebooting the mulitmix 3 or 4 times.

Other negatives: The computer records the signals after the EQ section and after the fader. I wish I could record before the EQ and fader. For example, I may want to turn down the treble on the vocal to avoid feedback, but it would be great to have a flat EQ on the recording. I may also want to mix just a little guitar and bass into the headphone mix (see below) particularly using closed headphones, but I can't. The multimix records a muted track just fine, but if you turn down the fader, you get a turned down recording.

Other tricks of the trade:
1)
The bass amp we use has a direct out. The cheap mics I'm using don't do justice to the low frequency stuff, and of course since everyone is in the same little room each mic picks up a lot of all the other instruments. The direct out gives isolation between channels. In the end it sounded better than the mic on the amp.
2)
Using a Nady 4 channel Headphone amp: Headphones for all and no PA. Vocals only go into the headphones so far. This way, you can record the song, remove and redo the vocals later if needed (which is impossible with a PA since other mics pic up amplified vocals and then you can't get the vocals out of the other tracks), and even if you want to keep the original vocal track, you have no feedback problems, and no sound of the PA bouncing off the walls. However - closed headphones really reduce the overall volume of the room. Which may be a good thing, but it also takes something away from the experience of playing. I plan to try the open type of headphone next to maintain the room sound as well.

3) It ain't perfect. There is a lot of bleed through between tracks. I use SONAR effects like EQ and compression to make a mix out of it. Still, it's way better than trying to record the room. Now for an acoustic group this may not be necessary, but for a loud band playing in a situation where the vocals get drowned out by loud instruments, this method can help get a decent mix recorded.

If by chance I'm mistaken about any of the above, please chime in.

Just picked up a Multimix firewire and so far it doesn't work.

Has anyone had trouble uploading the new firmware using a Mac? My computer sees the multimix when it is plugged in but when I try to upload to it I get an error message saying "my device has a problem with uploading" I've contacted tech support and they told me to try a different cable and firewire port which I did. I can't seem to get past square one here...

Just another follow up. The last 2 rehersals I recorded with the Multimix and had no problems at all. I don't know what the difference is, perhaps it was turning off the anti virus and the other active programs at the bottom of the task bar. It's great when it works - and I hope it continues!

i just purchased the alesis multimix 16. i wish i would have found this much information before i bought it. everything here is absolutely correct in that the device sucks. ive spent 5 days trying to get it to work with sonar 5 producer. all alesis could do was recommend i replace it with a new one! they thought the mixer itself was defective...i doubt that highly. after reading all the bad press, theres no way in hell ill get another one and waste another week trying to get it to work.

it just pisses me off that alesis would be so ****ty as to put this product out without being sure it was rock solid...they have a long history of quality stuff to up-hold, and this is giving them BAD press. they certainly experienced these issues in the developement of the product...so what, they just ignored them?? this is ****.

using:
hp pavillion 2.6 ghz
1 m ram
120 g hard drive
sonar 5 producer


a t vish
www.soundclick.com/carolblaze

What type of problems are you having, can you tell us a little about what you are doing - what you want to do etc.

Have you run the driver update, or are you using the ones that came with the mixer?

Not trying to be a smart-aleck, just trying to help and a little more info would help.

randy

It is a shame you arent getting your mixer to work properly to be honest i've not had a sinlge issue with mine since I got it, as I say on both my Sony Laptop and my own made PC it works just fine.

Both have on board Firewire and they both saw the device and it stick all the time.

With regards to your post about "everyone" having issues, well people only tend to go looking for threads like this when they have problems , so generally this isnt necassarily true.

I'm sure for every customer with a problem there are 10 or more without.

Either way if you wanna cheque any settings or anything, feel free to MSN me at paul@saints.org.uk and i'd be more than happy to see if I can help you.

Well, just following the thread here and I hate to see the MultiMix FW getting bad press since it's been such a useful tool for me.
I use the 16 input version.

I understand there were initial product release problems because I preordered my unit, received it a day after the distributeor received it,
and promptly beat my head against the wall for 2 weeks trying to get it to work with Sonar 4 PE. Alesis told me to wait for driver updates
and I did. After installing the latest drivers from Alesis (posted 1/2006 on their website) I have yet to have any problems getting my
computer to see this device. For 2 months now I have had 0 (!) problems and days full of pleasurable experience with this product.
I use this product approx. 2-6 hours a day 4 days per week, 70% for mixing and playback 30% for recording. I record direct and mic'd
drums, bass, and guitar usually 1-8 channels simultaneous. Most recordings are under 5 minutes, but I've recorded up to 25 minutes continuous
on 8 channels with no distortion or dropouts. Amazing considering my computer is only 1.3GHz with ATA/33 hard drive (bought in 2000 and
still goin' strong!).

Having said that, I still can't get it to work with Sonar using WDM drivers. Who cares though, it works beautifully using the ASIO
drivers with < 10 ms latency for up to 8 channels (the highest I've used so far). I did accidentally turn off the mixer before shutting
down Sonar once which caused my computer to spontaneously reboot, but that was my fault. The reboot was ultimately caused by
Windows I would suspect...

Ok, so someone claims the headphone output is mono in some cases...Is this true? I will have to investigate. Someone claims that turning
on phantom power turns off the stereo inputs...I don't know the answer to that either. Turning on phantom power while the device is turned
off still lights up the phantom power indicator though. Also, the 2-track coming back over FireWire is VERY HOT. I personally run the
2-track into the Main mix and then send the Main mix to the Control Room output in order to control the level in my headphones. Or control the
level within Sonar...And the stereo tracks don't have input gain controls. These are just annoyances in my book, not any type of deal breaker.

If my house burned down I would definitely buy this product again...

Just my thoughts and experience...

Skylab,

I experienced the same kind of communication losts using my multimix 12 FW, 6/4 pin cable, HP pavillon laptop, XP SP2 and Cubase LE, ASIO driver only.
This does not occur after a specific action. May be (as far as I can see), when I do not perform any action during few minutes like play/record within cubase.
Error message within Cubase is : "Error getting information from dice bus : (1f)", then communication is lost.
I use the same workaround to get the communication back : exit from cubase, switch on/off the multimix, start again cubase.
I reported this to Alesis. I will let you know the feedback.

Skylab, did you get any solution regarding this ?

I got my guys to spring for the Phonic Helix Firewire 18. We think it works just fine with my Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop (3GHz processor, 1GB RAM). I use an external firewire hardrive for the audio. We record 10 tracks at once, and the box keeps up.

That's right, two firewire, 1394a devies, connected to a laptop.

Price was $459 at zzounds, but it's about the same everywhere I looked.

To be honest, the Phonic firewire mixer does about 20 things we don't really need, but it does do the one thing we really wanted, which was to record 10 tracks at once to Cakewalk. I know Ohhey keeps plugging "I would just get a firewire interface with good drivers. That way you can use any mixer or preamp you want. ", but this is so simple and it works.

The reason I ask is that I have a MOTU 828mk2, but I'd really like to expand my number of inputs without having to ditch my existing audio interface (or fork out for another 828).

Have you considered using a Behringer ADA8000? This would give you 8 more inputs and outputs through the ADAT ports on the 828 while still avoiding any driver problems. You would also still be able to take advantage of the 828's Cuemix DSP mixing.

damn. i'm just another victim... got my multimix 12 a few weeks ago, returned it after a couple of days just to face the same problems with the second one..

just finished reading this whole thread and i'm kinda glad, that i ain't the only one having troubles with this mixer.
this guy from the support told me, that he had never seen this problem nor heard about it which i really can't believe after reading this thread... to me, it really seems like those guys just string you along with **** like "wait for the next update" or "we never heard about a problem like this, must be a user-error"..

i was really glad when i read your post daze, cause i thought that i finally had found the resolution i'm desperately seeking for... but it's still all f***ed up..

now my computer doesn't even recognize the multimix after switching on & off..
i'm tired of installing, un-installing and re-installing. and i'm tired of talking to those guys
and hear the same ignorant answers over and over again. plus i really don't feel like
sending my mixer back again, since it took them more than a month to return it to me...

i just hope that any of you guys will figure out how to really and definitely fix
these problems soon, cause i'm really at a loss with this..

any help is highly appreciated!!!


Wayne