RCF M 18 4-stars Reviews

RCF M 18 flimsy, weak, cheap, plastic case

I have not had this long and new to digital mixers so haven't fully explored yet using the RCF M18 to it's full potential. This is more about the construction material of the case.

For a pro piece of kit, this should be in a metal case as it is far too flimsy and I imagine if you dropped this on a concrete floor would break into a 1000 pieces. It's a cheap flimsy plastic case which forces you to either buy the rack ears to mount it in a protective case ( the rack ears should have been included with it), or the rubber bumpers, both of which are expensive for what they are.

UPDATE

I wanted to do an update on using this. Firstly I bought the additional bumpers for the M 18 as I wanted to keep it light and small format with no additional rack gear for easy quick setups. The bumpers are great and add a lot of protection also it now sits nicely upright for easy cable connections. The bag for this is a bit pricey if your not fussed it will fit in an old laptop case where you can find loads of good cheap ones for a fiver or less in charity shops.

I work solo as a singer guitarist, I have a rack with all the toys in it for larger gigs but wanted something small and easy to setup for small, short gigs, overseas flights and busking. As regards busking I think this is fairly hungry power wise as the seperate battery pack with inverter I use drains a lot quicker using this unit(the M18 is not battery powered). It gets quite warm so I think the computer gear in it is working quite hard.

There is a bit of a learning curve if you haven't used a digital mixer like this before and getting used to not physically turning knobs and sliders. But I have been told nowhere near as bad/complicated as the Behringer X18. I haven't had any reliability issues with it at all, just user mistakes. Classic is at the wrong moment I have pressed the wrong button on my tablet that takes me out of the screen and silly things like that but if the worse thing happens and your getting flustered just switch the unit off. The unit is very user logical/friendly/intuitive. Personally the presets that come with it are a bit OTT. They may sound great in a studio but not live. For example all the preset voice eq's cause loads of feedback, the acoustic guitar presets make it sound like a cr*p electric guitar and the preset output setting either sound far too boomy or squealy. You have to tweak them. Unless your a sound engineer the eq even on the easy setting is confusing and complicated. The rock electric guitar sounds are brilliant and that was one of the main reasons I bought this over the Behringer X18. And the backing track music player is great, if a little hard to read and select a track on a smaller display. You can also record but only the complete mix in stereo which is useful just to listen back too critically. I use in ear monitoring and although basic the unit deals with this well. One thing for me that is missing that is fairly essential and on most units of this kind have it, is a feedback suppressor you have to fart around with the eq settings while the squealing deafening feedback is clearing the pub out, so I took a star out for this reason. although its maybe a trade off for the excellent guitar amp modelling. Personally overall this is a great unit a game changer. I am amazed how much can be packed into such a small unit. Before I need tons of expensive big heavy complicated rack gear with cables everywhere that took ages to setup and a nightmare to track a fault, and in some situation is just not practical. This has made life a lot easier. One achilleas heal is to change any settings or use the music player on it you need a tablet or phone at a push. I dropped a tablet the other day it cracked the screen and rendered the tablet useless also the battery can go flat on a tablet( I had to make do with the tiny screen on my phone). I found it useful to have 2 tablets and a mains charger so for example you can display the mixer on one and for me as a solo act the backing tracks or effects settings on the other without having to go through the menu. Also if one tablet goes down you still have the other one. You may still find you prefer some of your external effects over the ones in the unit that's not to say they don't sound good on the M18. For example my TC Helicon Mic Mechanic sounds nicer on vocals to my ear but for the sake of convenience I stick with the effects on the M18. You can't easily physically label up the inputs, so if your mounting this in a rack and inserting cables on a dimly lite stage can easily put them in the wrong inputs. Also if you mount the M18 in a rack the light that shows its on is around the back so you won't see it.

Some useful added connections that you find on many analogue mixers but are not on the M18 would have been a 6.35mm stereo jack input so you can add music from either your phone or a portable MP3 player. An additional 6.35mm jack for headphones. An addition set of quarter inch jack outputs. A set of stereo phono inputs and outputs.

For this money best mixer

i have 3 pcs, very stabile wi fi conection, very god sound, softver is not very logical, but if someone have expiriance with digital mixer, dont need much time to understand app.... at all best mixer for that money.....