Soundcraft Ui24R

UI24R

unique product, exceptional price, easy to work with.- recommend to every professional sound engineer.

IEM Rig for Function Band

We use this as the core of our IEM rig, to allow an 8 piece band to have individual mixes. We also have behringer DI4800A's in the rack to split inputs for the FOH engineer, and a Powerplay headphone amp on each aux output with headphone cables running to each musician on stage. It works great in every regard, however it is clunky to set up multitrack recording, and the WiFi is awful - definitely get an additional router. The FX and preamps are good quality and the user interface is very easy to use, provided you're confident with technology and are using it from a tablet. Overall 4/5 stars. If I could find an X32 second hand but in full working order, I would buy that instead though.

Great mixer

I own this mixer, purchased it for multi-track recording, mainly directly to a DAW.

It never let me down, it is easy to setup and recall a preset, enables quick setup whenever and wherever I am recording. The sound quality is great but at this price point of course it is expected from such device.

The lacking of physical controls of course makes adjustment on the fly little slower than mixers with controls. However this can be overcome by adding touch screen to the setup. I have seen some folks online doing it, the mixer has a Facebook group with a community where questions can be asked,

It has lots of effects and amp simulation for guitars which is great but only available on some of the inputs.

Overall this mixer is a great value for the money, it has so many great features I cannot even list them in this review... If you are looking for a fairly easy to use, compact digital mixer and you got the budget, go no further.

I can't say enough

Replaced my 16 ch version of this with the Ui24R. I use it mainly for our band and have it set up to have a separate 'show' for each venue. I use it also to record all of the individual tracks live (the Ui16 can only record the Stereo Out 2track output) and port them to Logic and edit there ( although this can also be used as a DAW interface). It is truly astonishing how much functionality this unit has. Finding problem feedback and sorting is a breeze. I have recorded bands by running a cat5 cable to my PCs (2) at the back of the hall and control from there. The RTA is very useful and routing and monitoring signals is easily managed.

There are 2 issues with this unit.

Wifi:

It's not reliable. In a real time situation there is only one solution imo and that's to hard wire your PCs to a hub and connect this to the network port on the mixer. Wifi is not comfortable to use in situations where you have an outage when you need it least and have lost connection. Very disconcerting!! This does not happen when cabled directly to the unit. Some people have added a better wifi router to get around this. Ok for going around the floor checking levels etc but I'm not 100% happy to just use wifi for full control.

Recording:

Multitrack recording has no option (I can't find it anyway) to allow the effects to be recorded also. Individual tracks in Multitrack, recorded on the REC USB port are PRE processing ( I think the 2track Rec Out does have the processing added)

There is no 'switch' to add the channel effects to the individual recorded channel track. This is a shame as tracks when ported to a DAW are totally dry and need to have all effects added in Logic or whatever. For simpler recording situations it would be SO useful to be able to port the porcessed tracks into Logic and balance them there because I generally find that the live sound is really good from the Ui24R. Soundcraft should be able to add this option in firmware easily in the record functionality. Maybe there's a valid reason why they don't.

Swiss army knife of mixers

Very well thought out - basic but great lexicon effects. fantastic EQ , compression, gates. Very easy intuitive software.

Compatibly issues with monitors and touch screen monitors when connected via hdmi - very hit or miss - some work some don't. Wireless can be laggy and wifi can cut out if there's a lot of wifi congestion.

So I bought a router and run ethernet to the Ui24r from the router then ethernet to a laptop. I also use a wireless tablet so i can move about the venue. I do hope it's drivers to connect to DAWs is kept in service ... i don't like how companies can kill something by not upgrading drivers. They should put the driver source code in the public domain after 10 years.

Soundcraft

Excellent mixer console. If you need a powerful studio, live, equipment, look no further.

Low quality - very short lifetime

I have had this device for 2 years now. After just a few months, one of the mic channels started to make white noise, which was unbearable. The noise was there even when no cable was connected to the channel. I switched to another channel, hoping this was a one-time thing. But since then, more and more channels started having that problem. Today, I have 8 out of 24 channels which continuously have white noise! It makes this mixer unusable to me at this point, and I have no choice but to buy a different mixer now.

This mixer does have a lot of cool features and it sounds nice, but it's not worth the money since it has a very short lifetime.

Great little mix

Full of features, great de-esser and 4ch effect chain. Using separate hot spot is a must..

We use it at church for the past 2 months - 4 Mic for Drums,1 pastor mic, 2 lead singers and 4 backing vocals, 1 Acoustic (direct connection using the amp sim - Acoustic Jumbo preset which is awesome), 1 Bass, ocasional Cajon and El. Guitar, Some BT adapter to stream music, accessing over Android Xiaomi Redmi Pad 4 (Great battery life, fast charging)

I love the multitrack recording straight to the USB - no additional PC/Mac needed to purchase/wait to crash, You can also use the USB connection to play music from PC or use master/aux mix to stream.

Overall great product! Highly recommended!

A huge amount of audio processing in a single box for a remarkable price.

I use this mixer for live sound, usually acoustic music events with several artists/groups in one session. I've also used it for live streaming and video recording.

It's very easy to use and I love the interface, especially the browser-based approach so you never need to update an app.

It has an amazing range of tools in one box, the quality of sound I can get is miles ahead of anything I've had before, particularly the ability to 'tune' the system to the room (many different venues). The multitrack recording to USB drive is excellent, allowing me to remix for video recordings.

The range of digital tools really make life easier, being able to set up complex multi-artist stage arrangements in advance and use patching to configure the mixer for easier use, as well as fun tricks like running more than one channel for an input to allow for instrument changes etc.

I also like the complex options for output control including using matrices and VCAs. I've learned a huge amount of new techniques since having the mixer. And there's a great supportive user group on Facebook if you have any problems. And of course the great thing about a stagebox mixer is the speed of setup and ability to mix from anywhere in the venue with a tablet or laptop.

There is a small cloud on the horizon. Soundcraft don't seem to be doing much development these days as their parent company doesn't seem interested in this kind of product, and there have been some questions over quality control, I had to have mine repaired under warranty when one of the inputs was noisy.

And like all stagebox mixers, you are advised to fit an external wifi router to ensure a reliable connection. The internal ones are underpowered because of regulatory restrictions that the manufacturers can't avoid.

Superb all-in-one mixer

Great Pre-amps, platform agnostic control options (browser based), compact form-factor, onboard recorder & player. Not the newest but certainly a terrific product that’s difficult to beat.