Fostex LM16- too good to be true?

[richie1575]

Hi All,

 

Spotted the Fostex LM16 recently. Is this really a 16channel mixer with a cat 5 stage box? Seems too good to be true! Has anyone any experience with this? I'm currently using a mixwizz 16:2 but hate wrestling with the multicore. Investigated offerings from Roland (too expensive) and the Brikworm, but not really found something suitable. At around £800 this is cheaper than chips... Or am I missing something. Can someone enlighten me? The cynic in me thinks that too good to be true usually is!

Thanks in anticipation!

Richie

[revbobuk]

Just had a look at the manual. The one thing that jumps out is that the I/O is all-or-nothing; if you mount the I/O box on the stage, then all you have local to the control surface is a headphone output. It's pretty much a small analogue mixer with Cat5 connection to the I/O box - and only 3 aux, with 1 more for the (fairly limited but useful) selection of internal FX. Looks butt-ugly, though, especially when bolted into one unit!

[dbuckley]

I've investigated this mixer previously. It's quite clever, but has some gotchas one needs to think about.

 

Firstly, attitudinally, depite this having digitals at the heart of the gubbins, it is designed to look and work like analogue. So theres no scene recalls, no MIDI control, not even MIDI mute. Its a fairly simple analogue style control surface. This is not a criticism, and this is exactly what some people want, something that pretends to be an analogue mixer. It has none of the digital feel, as every function is on a knob or button, no LCD screen.

 

Secondly, the outboard goes with the "stagebox", so it's not next to the control surface but rather at the other end of the cable. You have full control of the integrated digital effect, but not of anything else plugged into the aux sends.

 

Thirdly, the groups come out on balanced TRS, but the auxes are unbalanced jacks.

 

As you've probably guessed, I passed on this unit, as it didn't suit what I do. But there are plenty of folks for whom this must be the perfect solution.

 

I ended up with the Roland VM-3100, but its still not the right answer for me, its just a different bag of compromises. The VM-3100 is very cheap on the S/H marketkplace, digitally very good (scene recall, bags of busses, sends, 2 x decent fx, flexible eq), MIDI capable, physically the size I want, but its I/O is horrible (allmost all unbalanced), even when expanded using the DIF-AT and and ADA800 (wont retain settings), and it doesn't have motorised faders. I have thus ended up in a love / hate / frustrational relationship with the thing, and I need to either get the right digital ($$$$$), or go back to analogue, accept the piles of wire and boxes, and somehow make it automatable, which I dont want to give up. When the little VM is going well, its a little cracker. When its arguing defiantly over who the clock master is half an hour before curtain, its terrfying. Choices, choices...

[Stuart91]

We've had very good results with the Roland VM7200 and 7100 systems. Unlike the VM3100 they have moving faders. The guts of the desk are in the rackmountable processor unit, but unlike the Fostex there are two local inputs. This can be a bit limiting for some applications but we have managed to work around it quite happily.

 

They are great for small events, as they're quick and easy to setup with no wrestling a multicore, but we have managed to shoehorn all sorts of shows onto them, including a couple of top 40 acts.

 

We managed to buy our first VM system (20 mono channels, 12 output busses, and a 50m digital multicore) for less than the cost of a second hand 01v96.