Page 2 of 3 FirstFirst 123 LastLast
Results 11 to 20 of 23

Thread: Rotary Mixer Decision ...

  1. #11
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Dayton, Ohio, USA
    Posts
    315
    Dennis & Slay:

    None of the rotary mixers above have true adjustable analog crossovers for the sound system, which, yes, I have set up and actually mixed live with on pure analog systems... mixing vinyl with moving coil cartridges, tweaking the system with the crossover as I go. All of the OP's candidate mixers' implementations are actually crossovers run into summing buses, making them functionally just adjustable full cut master EQs with big knobs.

    I also said nothing about the lack of per-channel stuff being a detriment. Actually, I was making the exact opposite point. It is the very lack of features that is responsible for much of the sound of classic analog rotary mixer designs versus other analog mixer designs. There is less in the signal path. By limitation, I meant sound quality is limited by it being analog in the first place. There are diminishing returns with analog. Whether the mixer is rotary, fader, has isolators or not, is totally independent of whether it is analog or not.

    My point was that if you have a budget cap (which the OP said he does), then there are sparse-feature analog rotary mixer alternatives that will sound very close to the much more expensive designs first listed, all of which are analog and subject to this diminishing returns, anyway. An Omnitronic tabletop 202mk3 or rack 502 with the matching outboard rack isolator will get very close to the sound of the others at a much lower price. Certainly closer than a Bozak gets to an MP2015.

    If you want an analog rotary mixer, this boutique stuff is way the hell over priced, in my opinion, especially if you're on a budget. If he wants to spend an extra thousand bucks for the last little bit of extra sound quality possible in an inferior-sounding type of mixer design, then go for it.

    Oh... FYI, Omnitronic has some pretty amazing customer service. People who bought the mk1 202 literally got a free mixer after they found a little design defect.

  2. #12
    Junior Member SlayForMoney's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2016
    Location
    Europe
    Posts
    98
    Quote Originally Posted by DennisBdrmDJ 2.0 View Post
    Edit:not interested in getting into a war of words,on opinions,nor in defending one's passion...moving on!
    Then don't post such condescending questions in the first place?

  3. #13
    Member DennisBdrmDJ 2.0's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    1,940

    Click here for mobile viewing.condescending??? you're new here,and don't know my writing,.at my best, I endeavor to be positive,helpful,and God loving,..at my worse,I can be confrontational,with much regret,on my part...Reticuli,is an older member here,and who's writing,I find agreeable,for the most part.He's also an adult,and is more than capable of defending himself,and has made his opinion,much clearer to me,in his last post..I don't see where i was being offensive,or rude...condescending,No! I don't think of myself better,than anyone here,nor do I speak down to people.that's just,not my way! condescending would be,me pointing out to you,that adults,are speaking,and children,should be quiet,that's would be an example,mind you.lighten up,flying off the handle,doesn't makes friends here!...Peace be with you,and go with God!
    Last edited by DennisBdrmDJ 2.0; 07-28-2017 at 08:59 PM.

  4. #14
    Member DennisBdrmDJ 2.0's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    1,940
    Quote Originally Posted by Reticuli View Post


    ~By limitation, I meant sound quality is limited by it being analog in the first place. There are diminishing returns with analog. Whether the mixer is rotary, fader, has isolators or not, is totally independent of whether it is analog or not.

    My point was that if you have a budget cap (which the OP said he does), then there are sparse-feature analog rotary mixer alternatives that will sound very close to the much more expensive designs first listed, all of which are analog and subject to this diminishing returns, anyway.
    Raticuli,I commend you,for speaking highly of Omnitronic products (rotary series),on your advise,I'll look into it's merit...now,where you loss me,is where you keep mentioning diminish returns/limitation on analog (?).outside of analog being linear (compared to that of digital),I see,and hear,the many positive benefits of using, a system/or mixer using analog (again,compared to that of digital).follow up,please.

  5. #15
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Dayton, Ohio, USA
    Posts
    315
    Quote Originally Posted by DennisBdrmDJ 2.0 View Post
    Raticuli,I commend you,for speaking highly of Omnitronic products (rotary series),on your advise,I'll look into it's merit...now,where you loss me,is where you keep mentioning diminish returns/limitation on analog (?).outside of analog being linear (compared to that of digital),I see,and hear,the many positive benefits of using, a system/or mixer using analog (again,compared to that of digital).follow up,please.
    At the most basic level, I think even the best analog mix bus is not up to what even the most modest digital mix bus can do. Seems sacrilege, but from there for analog I don't think it gets better, only worse. Every analog gain stage, filter, EQ, etc... high-end digital can do it not only more transparently and accurate to the original signal, but with surprisingly unique character with all the different math techniques that can be used. Re/up-sample methods. DSPs. Filtering (including processing-intensive types not possible with analog). Differences in DAC implementations. It's curious how digital can be so much better than analog that it's clearly more faithful to the original signal, and yet can have even more nuanced flavor of its own from implementation to implementation. Sort of paradoxical. With this in mind, the OP's budget limitations, and the possibility he/she might not have much prior experience with rotaries, saving a thousand bucks might not be such a bad idea. And yeah, there is also digital he could move towards, but I'm not necessarily trying to steer him towards that. There are only four rotary digital options out there, anyway, and they're not that easy to find right now.

    Correction, there are five rotary options if we include the DB4, and that is currently available, unlike the DJM800R, DJM1000R, MP2014, and MP2015.
    Last edited by Reticuli; 07-29-2017 at 01:49 AM.

  6. #16
    Member DennisBdrmDJ 2.0's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    1,940
    what you just did,was made a wonderful assessment of,and for digital sound..let's put aside the Op's desires for the moment.i'm trying to pick your brain,here on analog sound.I'm well aware of it's limitations,yet you speak very little on it benefits.~"analog that it's clearly more faithful to the original signal"~well,there's a lot to be said within that sentence.I know you are well aware,that there are legions upon legions of so-called Audiophiles (not DJ's),that spent thousands upon thousands of dollars,just to achieve that simply fact,of staying faithful to the original signal.Why?..many even go as far to remove the analog mixer from the signal path (sacrilege,to us Dj's,lol).you speak nothing of the beautiful nuances inherent,to analog sound:it's depth,color,warmth are characteristic,I have yet to ever come close to hearing from a digital signal....okay,sorry,this is starting to sound (from my part) like the old "analog vs digital debate.please feel free to further enlighten me,I'm enjoying your rhetoric.
    Last edited by DennisBdrmDJ 2.0; 07-29-2017 at 03:57 AM.

  7. #17
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    Dayton, Ohio, USA
    Posts
    315
    Quote Originally Posted by DennisBdrmDJ 2.0 View Post
    what you just did,was made a wonderful assessment of,and for digital sound..let's put aside the Op's desires for the moment.i'm trying to pick your brain,here on analog sound.I'm well aware of it's limitations,yet you speak very little on it benefits.~"analog that it's clearly more faithful to the original signal"~well,there's a lot to be said within that sentence.I know you are well aware,that there are legions upon legions of so-called Audiophiles (not DJ's),that spent thousands upon thousands of dollars,just to achieve that simply fact,of staying faithful to the original signal.Why?..many even go as far to remove the analog mixer from the signal path (sacrilege,to us Dj's,lol).you speak nothing of the beautiful nuances inherent,to analog sound:it's depth,color,warmth are characteristic,I have yet to ever come close to hearing from a digital signal....okay,sorry,this is starting to sound (from my part) like the old "analog vs digital debate.please feel free to further enlighten me,I'm enjoying your rhetoric.
    I think a lot of it is placebo effect as a result of money spent and obsessive toiling over turntables that tend to be an OCD black hole. The rest of it that actually is real is just Loudness Wars stuff particular to good vinyl pressings, not the mixer that's being used.

    My reason for not using terms like "warm, cold, deep, shallow, wide, narrow" (I actually deleted such a passage in my post) was that good digital mixers are not so gross, and their character and flavor and differences with each other are both more unique and subtle than an analog mixer could ever hope. I didn't want to get too carried away trying to describe the subtleties between the various good digital mixers.

    Case in point, though: even the best passive mix buses send the signal through high resistance as soon as more than one channel is activated at the same time. Boom... degradation. An active sum network can get around this, but unless you're using an internal balanced differential bus, presents its own inherent problems. Off the top of my head I think the two DJ mixers that I'm aware used a true differential sum bus were the Foundation and the new Model 1. Maybe some of these other rotaries have that, too. Not sure. This is just the sum bus in analog, and I'm not saying there isn't going to be degradation elsewhere in the design.

    Good digital is closer to the signal as if it never even passed through the mixer. The ability to have a ton of features is just icing on the cake. There are methods of doing phono preamps in the digital domain that use filters or equalization that are close to impossible in the analog domain at any sane budget at these fine voltage levels. These are latent (but now lower latency with fast processors than even the acoustic delay of the sound coming from the speaker to your ear) that use ingenious math to do stuff that has its closest analog approximation in like high-power microwaves and just isn't likely to be done for audio. So there are ways of making even the phono pre using digital techniques that can be empirically measured as superior to any analog preamp we are ever going to see. And that's just the phono stage.

    The mathematics of summing in digital is settled science and provably transparent. Any sonic character from the DSP isn't coming from that. Sure, there are some exotic situations where in the DSP you want massive fixed point versus float for some specific technique you want to employ or you want 64bit instead of 32bit if you're stuck in floating point and you want flawless super high (narrow) Q filters, but that gets into the applications of effects and such. Cake icing stuff. I think that's where some of the subtle flavorings and character of digital starts coming in, that, frankly, an analog mixer doesn't have the fidelity to start considering those teeny tiny idiosyncrasies.

    I completely agree that if you're using vinyl and don't need a mixer, the easiest and obviously cheapest solution is simply to David Mancuso-style it (RIP, disco godfather) and just take the mixer out of the chain. Paying nearly 3 grand for a digital mixer that just so happens to have better-than-analog-mixer phono preamps doesn't make any sense if you don't need a mixer at all. If you're in need of DSP for delays and crossover, and you're going to be mixing and blending, a good digital mixer in the digital path starts to look and sound a lot more attractive, IMO.
    Last edited by Reticuli; 01-04-2018 at 11:45 PM.

  8. #18
    Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Location
    Austin, TX
    Posts
    1,268
    The best place to get advise about rotary mixers is on the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/98725673209/ that is where all the rotary guys hang out. You will get a mixture of rotary guys that are old school like me, who prefer original Bozaks and Ureis, and the new school guys that like the newer rotaries. Us old school guys don't care about gain knobs or eq's. We only use the two volume knobs, and never touch the other knobs. So the old school guys are going to steer you to a restored Bozak or Urei. The nice thing about the restored rotaries, is that they usually have the black beauty volume knobs which pretty much last forever, and the new mixers have the blue velvets, which sound just as good, but will wear out a lot quicker. The black beauties are no longer made. I had my original Bozak restored a few years ago by the master, Buzzy Beck. He still has a supply of NOS black beauties that he puts into his restorations. I'm not going to get into which rotary sounds better, they all sound fantastic. Those newer rotary builders pride themselves on the sound of their mixers, and you really can't go wrong with any of them.

  9. #19
    The Rudy Bozak is Awesome especially for low end bottom and warmth but I used one b4 and they're sensative and tend to brake easily due to its age. The Urei would be the Best choice, an Amazing choice.
    I've had the pleasure of doing a "mixtape" on each one of these.
    The Bozak still trumps in terms of sheer sound Quality. Amazing mixer.Discreet design. Very Neve ish.
    Choice

  10. #20
    New Member
    Join Date
    Dec 2017
    Location
    parts unknown
    Posts
    1
    anybody got any ideas on a plug converter euro to u.s. - not seeming to figure which one to get although ive tried a few adapters

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
a