Soundcraft Notepad-12FX 4-stars Reviews

It's small mixer

Not many features but does the job good sound as you can expect from sound craft

Soundcraft Notepad-12FX

Very good choice for a home studio. My Novation Summit (A and B outputs) and Model D are connected with it. Good quality vs. price ;-)

Does a good job recording synths over USB.

Excellent sound. It seems just right for my setup: currently a Volca Bass, Microfreak and Medusa plugged into mono channels, and Blofeld and Model:Samples in two stereo channels. It has one mono channel and one stereo (but RCA version) still available. I use the secondary headphone output as send effect (Ocean Machine effect pedal) which returns a stereo signal.

I just wish the onboard effects could be effective even when receiving an effect return. Also it would have been nice if all channels would be recorded separately over USB (it can do two mono channels, or the stereo mix).

Also, for a beginner without experience in mixing, I found it a bit obscure to fiddle with synth volume, input gain and the proper channel levels for my effect send pedal, which can crackle if the input is too loud. Most of the time I can resolve any issue quickly, though.

I suspect isolated brief drop-outs in the recorded audio were produced in my laptop (i7, 16 GB, Windows 10, Audacity) by background processes.

Nice sounding Mixer

Sounds nice and is sturdy made. My came without manual or any hint

how to get the USB-Audio working.

But anytime I'd prefer a poorly documented but nice sounding mixer to a mixer with a perfect manual, that sounds like sh...ooot!

Compact quality mixer

I us it in a small bedroom studio,so it needed to be compact,which it is,plus it has great sound quality with superb Lexicon effects(chorus,reverb,delay) built in.It also has a nice feel and design about it.I have only one criticism,that is channels. 7 to 10 do not have eq,which there’s room for,put over all I would recommend for the reasons listed.

Received Last week, First impression is good

Look nice, small and lightweight. Maybe not the most robust but no problem for homestudio/rehearsal

Simple and minimalist (no power switch, no power indicator, no 48v switch, ..) But not a problem for me

Preamp clear, Neutral, Good gain, no breath, pop's or other

All linds of Mic / Inst are well supported (Sure S58, RodeNt1, Bass guitar, Digital Piano, ..)

Simple and effective effects

Real 2/2 USB (Directly recognizable by Ableton after Installation of PC drivers)

You can record two tracks simultaneously in your favorite DAW

Different routing options in order to assign Mixer Inputs to the two USB tracks

Also two separate output tracks from the DAW to the mixer

The only "weak" point i see, but you can deal with it:

You always have to play with two

Knobs "FX / AUX (blue)" and "Input Level (big red)" in order to adjust the good balance between level and effect on a channel.

Also in order to completely silent a channel, your have to turn both knobs to zero

But first impression is Simple and Efficient

Update to come