Signature 22MTK : Great piece of gear but read through

INTRO:

I got super excited when I learned that Soundcraft was about to release these new analogue boards that could run multitracks. It's the heart and soul of my recreational studio. I basically use the PC as a glorified tape multitrack recorder and as soon as the recordings are done, I feed the tracks back to the board and mix with it.

PROS:

- pre amps are clean, though can be noisy if you drive them too hard. I guess the limiter is a nice feature but I didn't explore it too much; if it turns red I'll just take some heat of the gain knob.

- EQ is really nice. It's sensitive and easy to use for someone who is used to this kind of analogue pieces of gear.

- Tons of routing options though it feels like it's something more useful for live situations or to use with outboard gear which I don't have many.

- 2 separate DSP (Aux 4 and 5) which is nice but I guess you have to be really creative and experienced to take advantage from the majority of the effects. If you aren't you'll probably use 3 or 4 out of the 22 different options.

CONS:

- This one really bugs me: The phone output is not decoupled from the master! that is, if you want to hear on your headphones only, you can't. only way is to have every track routed to a group, say 3-4, patch that into a stereo channel with a couple of jacks, and press PFL button but even still you get a mono signal. What a shame...

- No inserts on channels! This is something that I underestimated. If, like me, you want to mix more outside of the box, you can't insert dynamic processing on each channel before the EQ. Only VSTs. If you like to use that analogue compressor you found on ebay, you have to patch the channels through one of the 3 Aux (assuming you have the other 2 Aux occupied with effects) and to bring it back, you have to occupy another channel on the mixer.

- For some weird reason, the USB send of the master channel is super low.

- Some channels can get noisy when you drive them too hard, namely the Group channels and the PFL.

WOULD BE NICES:

- An USB return on the master channel to listen to the Master after it runs through some VSTs and/or outboard gear.

- AFL/PFL toggle button, as there is none. It is set to PFL although on the LED bars you can read "AFL/PFL"

- 2 48V groups so you can use sensitive ribbon mics and condenser mics at the same time.

OVERALL:

It's a great mixer if you are an amateur and can tolerate some small poor design faults. It's the cheapest option for analogue USB multitrack I/O, apart from the ones from Behringer, which might be worth take a look into also.