Alesis MultiMix16 Firewire Review

April 07

I needed a mixer to tie my Korg TR-88 sampling workstation, Roland U-20 synth, and Alesis SR-16 drum machine together so I started looking around. When I found I could get a Firewire enabled mixer for a little more money I started researching the Alesis MultiMix16 Firewire. I ordered one from Sweetwater a few weeks ago and I love this mixer. Sweetwater has excellent service and usually the lowest price. I paid $399 with free shipping and no tax.

The MultiMix16 Firewire is a very nice analog mixer in its own right, but its Firewire capabilities are impressive. It will sample and send all 16 channels plus the main outs (18 freakin' channels) simultaneously to your DAW software at 24 bits and 44.1 or 48khz. Many of you want 24bit/96khz but for my work I'm happy with CD compatible 16bit/44.1khz wav files and 24bit/48khz sampling is just gravy. It also has 100 24bit effects built in.

The MultiMix seems to be a quality piece of gear that should hold up to road use. I mounted the optional rack ears and put the mixer in a desktop equipment rack. I like that it comes with microphone pre-amps with adjustable gain and built in phantom power for condenser mikes. I was surprised to find that it has an spdif coax output that will send 24bit audio out to anything with spdif in, but is compatible with standard 16bit spdif (least significant bits are ignored for 16bit).

My Sound Setup

Here's a link to a small wave file (2.4MB) created in Cubase SX 3 by recording a Korg TR-88 keyboard with the MultiMix16 Firewire and then mixing down the main outputs to the wav file. As you can hear for yourself, the wave file sounds crisp and clean. It's nice to go from keyboard to final wav file with just one analog to digital conversion done expertly by the MultiMix.

I have a Soundblaster Audigy II ZS Platinum sound card in my desktop computer but the MultiMix can function as your one and only sound card. That's a nice bonus that Alesis doesn't really advertise.

It took me a few minutes of experimentation to figure out the best way to feed my speakers and monitor through the headphones during recording and playback. I ended up with my monitor speakers connected to the CNTRL RM OUT (control room out) for playback, and headphones plugged into the MultiMix's PHONES jack. During recording I use the headphones to monitor the mix and do so by selecting the MIX TO HEADPHONES button. During playback the 2TK TO HEADPHONES button must be pressed to hear what Cubase is sending to the MultiMix over Firewire (that was the tricky part).

The Alesis MultiMix16 Firewire

The MultiMix works great with Cubase SX 3 but the included version of Cubase only supports recording 4 of the 18 channels simultaneously so keep that in mind if you don't have the full-up version of Cubase. I’ve heard Alesis offers a download to upgrade the included Cubase to 8 channels of simultaneous recording but haven’t verified it.

Overall I'm very happy with the MultiMix16 Firewire and recommend it for those looking for a hybrid analog/digital mixer.

Rob