Cheap and effective mixing setup?

Tonedef

Hai gaiz, got one I'd like to bounce off you. I'm going to start practising and jamming with a mate of mine, who is a bassist. What we are going to need is some sort of setup where we can both jam quietly with earphones while hearing the other guy's output at the same time.

So some sort of rack or desk with multiple inputs that overlays them to create one or more line outputs. Cost and convenience are obviously important, it doesnt need to be fancy, it must just be an enabler for our (quiet) jamming. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

guidothepimmp

hey bud.. there are some behringer mixers going for cheap that ive seen everywhere from converters to junkmail.

4 and 8 channel can be had cheap.

theyre not the ultimate but theyre certainly good enough for tinkering with.

i had a 8 channel one for the band and it was fine for practice rec.

mind you.. tascam have an interesting o/e out..

Tonedef

Cheers dude! I'll have a squiz on the web! Any idea what sort of price I should be aiming for? 4-channel is plenty for now, but I guess 8-channel will be better value in the long term. Thanks!

PS How many outputs do these things normally have? An earphone splitter should do the trick on one output, no?

guidothepimmp

for 4 channel i reckon between 400 and 800 depending on condition

8 channel ive seen between 1k and 2.5k..

yeh the one i had headphone outs per channel. not sure about splitters.. never used the head outs..

Sidecar

I think you 're going to need a headphone distribution amplifier, but they are not exactly cheap. Maybe a secondhand one?

Mike-Foal

Tonedef wrote: PS How many outputs do these things normally have? An earphone splitter should do the trick on one output, no?

They usually have a left and right output for monitors and a headphone out.
I don't see any reason why a splitter shouldn't work.

Tonedef

Fantastic! Thanks all, for the, erm... Input!

Mike-Foal

You're probably gonna need DI boxes though...
Impedance issues and what not.

Tonedef

Fixing impedance for the headphones should be a straightforward homebrew hack. It shouldnt be an issue tho because we're talking a couple of milliamps worth of drive power.