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Obscure Sony mixer - SRP-V110 - any thoughts?


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Hi guys,

I've just bought one of these (shipping is being sorted at the moment so don't have hands on) because it was too good a deal to pass up. I'm hoping to use it for recording (Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 (and Yamaha 01x for multiple ins if needed)), but it seems it could also manage in a live setting and for silent/headphone only band practicing (which is probably where it'll get the most use as all of the band members either have or are expecting young children). 10 mic pre's, 8 auxes, multiple stereo channels...

 

There's not a lot o info on the web - just wondering if anyone here has ever run across this board or other Sony analog mixers? I got it for a song (less than a Behringer with 4 mic inputs locally) so couldn't pass it up and the little info I could find suggests that it should be a decent bit of kit, but any experience or opinions would be gratefully accepted.

 

Steve

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There is a manual on line. http://www.ulab.uni-osnabrueck.de/anleitung/manuale/manual_audiomischer.pdf

 

Its mainly a live mixer. Sony makes some decent Hi Fi audio gear. I've never been too impressed with their pro stuff. Everything I bought of theirs failed.

Hopefully you'll have better luck. The mixer does have Aux busses which can be helpful recording, but since the Scarlett only has two channels there's not

much flexibility there for incorporating the mixer since everything will wind up being combined into those two channels. Your next item should be a multichannel interface

and then you'll be able to make better use of the mixer for recording.

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Thanks for your input - appreciated. I've had no contact with Sony's pro audio stuff prior to this. It's disappointing to hear that you've encountered lots of failures.

 

To be honest, the reason I bought the mixer is mostly because it seems to be a bit of a swiss army knife in terms of versatility - able to do small live shows, recording, silent based practice, etc, and I appreciate that it may be a jack of all trades master of none. It was also dirt cheap (about 5% of original RRP) although I know they sold at way less than RRP.

 

In terms of multi-track recording, I was thinking that the 8 direct outs might be good if the preamps are decent. If I need to do more than stereo recording, the 01x (which is clunky but still works for me) does the job and can do 8 simultaneous ins. I previously had a mackie vlz 1402 which I used for pre's and was happy with (sold it a couple of years ago as we moved overseas for a while).

 

Steve

 

 

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Just on the off chance that anyone's interested in this mixer in the future, I thought I would post a followup. There is precious little information online and much of what there is comes from brief posts on recording forums. The bottom line is if you see one for a good price I would suggest grabbing it… I bought mine mostly because the price for the features was outrageously low (but it came from a studio liquidating analog gear, so I'm sure it wasn't illegitimately obtained, just hard to sell because there's so little info on it!).

 

I've now got the mixer and had a chance to check it out. Everything is working except 1 channel's aux 1/2 pot, which looks like it's been sheared off the board. Hopefully not too challenging to fix.

 

 

The SRP V110 does seem like an amazing swiss army knife mixer for recording and other tasks.

 

There are 10 pre's, which seem to be very low noise even at maximum gain (60dB) and neutral-sounding (initial testing with phones only so take this with a grain of salt, although an online discussion I found suggested very flat frequency response from the preamps). Channels 1-8 have direct outs, and all channels have inserts you can take an unbalanced direct feed from the other 2 pre's if you need to. The EQ sounds good, not surgical but you have DAW EQ for that right? Given I paid less than $250US including shipping (and especially considering that the original RRP was over 2.5k Euros) the price per pre is right! I'm sure they're not Neve quality… But on initial testing they sound significantly better than the Mackie pre's I used to use.

 

It also has 8 stereo ins (if you were to want to do some analog summing?) may be of use for recording (an I guess makes it ideal as a keyboard mixer too), and if you wanted to use the EQ and auxes for analog processing at mixdown there are "tape in's" for the first 8 channels.

 

The features are all packed into a very compact shell, so this won't take up huge amounts of real estate in a studio setup - it's about 45cm/18" square. It's moderately heavy. Because of the small size, the knobs and switches are very small and packed tightly together - to the point where fat fingers may be an issue!

 

So overall from a recording point of view I can see a lot of milage in this mixer.

 

For other tasks, it's more variable. I think live the very, very compact nature of it would make mixing tough - 60mm faders and tight spacing of knobs and switches would make it less than ideal, unless you needed something for side-of-stage where space was tight, in which case it would probably be great. Only 4 of the 8 auxes are pre-fade (and 1-2 are a stereo pair) so effectively only has the option of 3 monitor mixes. Still a lot better than many compact mixers but you might well want more unless you're in a trio. Also, durability would be an issue in the live setting. It's housed in metal, but the pots appear to be board-mounted (and one has sheared off the board on mine) and not actually attached to the chassis so there's a lot of scope for damage if dropped or otherwise abused. Would need to be road-cased and babied.

 

For silent band practice for a small band, I think this is an ideal substitute for the jam hub I was considering, as we should be able to use the 3 pre-fade auxes + main outs to generate 4 separate mixes, 1 for each band member. 3 of them will need headphone amps of some description but that won't be a problem and even if we had to buy cheap headphone amps it would come out cheaper than buying the cheapest jamhub!

 

Steve

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That's good that it seems like something you'll be using. I have a bunch of mixers collecting dust. The only one I'm currently using is my 12 channel SoundCraft mixer for the PA. I picked it up at a Guitar center used for $400 a long time ago. Its a very clean sounding mixer with low noise, but I've owned better. I do use the direct outs to record the vocals when tracking a full band. Its not nearly as good as recording vocals direct with a high quality preamp, but its good enough for tracking scratch vocals.

 

I recently tried using a small Behringer 12 channel Mixer that's got 4 XLR mic ins and 4 channel outputs.

Considering I only paid $50 for that mixer, its not bad sound wise. I did a series of recordings with it too and got some decent results.

 

I used to have a big Soundcraftsman mixer for live stuff. I really likes that board because it was made when they used quality components. I think I had a big Tapco back in the late 70's too. It want bad but with the case it weighed a ton. I had a decent Kelsey in the 80's then went without a board for a long time. I have a bunch of them now but I'm probably going to sell them all off and get one good one. Maybe even a digital mixer.

Analog gear doesn't get better with time.

 

Caps dry out, pots get dirty and worn. As a tech I refurbish them, but the best you can do is match their new quality which wasn't all that great. Other then the PA I really don't have a need for them. I can track 24 channels into the DAW through the interface, and coming back out of the interface I have a bunch of amps/headphone amps. This way I can hear the new tracks and the tracks playing back at the same time.

 

I do use an 8 channel preamp fro the drum set which is needed because I need to get the mic signals up to line level. I used to use a mixer for that but the sound quality of a mixers $1 preamp chip wasn't nearly as good as a decent rack preamp. The mixer took up allot of valuable real estate too so the minute I could retire it the better. Like any gear, anything you place between the mic and interface is going to rob some audio quality. In analog recordings, you had to pre mix a mic signal to get the best tape response. With digital, all that went out the window. You just track with the mic and you do all that mixing in the box.

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I definitely understand where you're coming from - larger analog mixers are definitely on the decline (I imagine that I'm benefitting from the studio that liquidated the Sony moving to a digital desk).

 

I haven't owned nearly as many mixers as you, but I can see if you're regularly tracking a whole band that a bunch of great preamps and then straight into the box is the way to go. But with my budget constraints and other uses, it's great to get a bunch of neutral preamps for less than what it would cost to buy a Presonus blue tube locally...

 

I do own another mixer which is a behringer with 2 mic pre's and a couple of stereo channels. It's a great little box to have around - enough to run a couple of vocals through a makeshift monitor setup for a band practice in the garage, decent enough sound in terms of preamps to get the job done although noisier than my old Mackie, easy to set up a multi-source loop pedal arrangement, etc. and that's certainly not being replaced by the Sony - it's too convenient just to throw it in a bag with whatever else you need.

 

I guess digital doesn't get better with age either - the caps don't dry up, but the hardware packs up, the OS stops being supported and the plugins are discontinued or not supported in the new format (my foray into multi-channel interfaces was mLAN-based…)

 

Steve

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  • 3 years later...
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I have the Sony SRP-V110 you don't see many of these. I sold a Soundcraft Ghost because of this mixer, there was no comparison the Sony won, plus think of all the space I saved. I have had mine for years without any issue's it's built like a tank. I recently watched one selling on ebay for $3000, I purchased mine for $400. This mixer is a sleeper and if your lucky enough to find one grab it.

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I have the Sony SRP-V110 you don't see many of these. I sold a Soundcraft Ghost because of this mixer' date=' there was no comparison the Sony won, plus think of all the space I saved. I have had mine for years without any issue's it's built like a tank. I recently watched one selling on ebay for $3000, I purchased mine for $400. This mixer is a sleeper and if your lucky enough to find one grab it.[/quote']

 

Welcome to Harmony Central! :wave:

 

What things about the Sony did you find comparable (or better) to the Soundcraft besides the smaller size?

 

 

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