Alesis MultiMix 4 USB Four-Channel USB Mixer

I bought this small usb interface/mixer (Alesis Multimix 4) to allow me to digitize a set of cassette tapes (interviews and other research materials), and to be able to add voice over introductory comments using a dynamic microphone. I'd read reviews beforehand, some of which mentioned hiss or other noise. I assumed this might be idiosyncratic, and bought this unit. I set it up, very pleased with its looks and solid metal construction. Its a very nicely made piece of hardware.

However, as soon as I powered it up (it has a small transformer and external power) and attached headphones (Sony MDR 7506 -- professional quality), I could hear a clearly audible background hiss. I thought this might just be audible in the headphones, until I made test recordings using my microphone (a Shure SM58). Each test recording has a clearly audible background hiss or hum, which I could not get rid of no matter how I adjusted the gain and other settings. There is also a faint high pitched whine audible in some of the recordings. I had a friend who owns his own recording studio come over and test this unit with me. We concluded that while it looks great, this usb mixer must be made with inferior components, most likely the mic preamp, but possibly other components too.

Reluctantly, I returned it -- with regrets as it seemed the perfect item, great looking and the price at about $78 was good. I subsequently bought a Yamaha AudioGram 6 (again through Amazon) and of course immediately tested it in the same way I did the Alesis. I was relieved to find that it performed flawlessly, very little extraneous noise (virtually none when just connecting the headphones) -- just what I was hoping for. The Yamaha unit is about a half inch wider than the Alesis mixer, and has a plastic housing rather than metal (which I preferred). It is also quite a bit lighter in weight, but solid enough. I would hope the makers of the Alesis MultiMix 4 pay attention to this and other similar reviews and re-engineer their product to get rid of the noise it introduces. They'd have a winner if they did so.

this is a great mixer, i would recommend it to anyone who records at home.

In general, I like it, but it has warts. The biggest issue, which was mentioned differently in other reviews was the hum & noise when you're monitoring a live recording through headphones. The weird thing is that this noise doesn't appear on the finished digital file. Since I'm not taking this into the field, I'll live with this odd behavior because the other features be the heck out of all of the other USB mixers in this price range (here's a hint: there aren't any, or at least their weren't any when I bought this). Before I got my cushy desk job, I moonlighted as an A2 so part of me wants to cringe at the noise in my headset; however, in an earlier life I worked with the old Hitachi HR100 1" VTRs, and they had the same problem except for about 100 times more money. I can live with this, and it gets a 3 only because of the monitoring issue...otherwise this little baby excellent.

Im loving this so far. Only made a few basic recordings from dynamic mikes and guitar inputs. Not sure how well the phantom power will be but I dont anticipate any problems. The only thing I wish is that this had included software.

I thought it was the answer to adding a microphone into my realtek sound card while doing podcasts and streaming movies for people to watch on a BlogTV channel, sadly it appears I needed a better sound card to add a microphone directly into my computer and this mixer did not do what I hoped it would do. After playing around with it trying to make this happen, I was impressed for the value on what this might have for a musician doing podcasts online for instruments. Very easy to use and set up.

Follow up to this review. I am now rating it 5 stars, it was what I needed. It was a matter of simply plugging my pc speakers thru mixer, it is working awesome now and was exactly what I needed !! I did not need a sound card, product works fine thru my original sound card !! and also to get sound out of both pc speakers I had to use phones jack, not main out speakers jack. Main out speaker jack only allowed sound out of 1 pc speaker.