Anyone had a chance to check out the Alesis GIGAMIX-8FX*8 Powered Mixer?
I assume this would be far better than anything from Behringer... Still
working on raising funds for a sound system for monthly contra (folk)
dance with live bands providing the music.

Thanks,
Phil
--
send real mail to phil (letter gee) (number two) at mac dot (sounds like) calm

Phil Good-Elliott wrote:

Anyone had a chance to check out the Alesis GIGAMIX-8FX 8 Powered Mixer?
I assume this would be far better than anything from Behringer... Still
working on raising funds for a sound system for monthly contra (folk)
dance with live bands providing the music.

At most of the dances I go to, that is handled as follows: Find a
musician who owns a sound system. Invite him or her to join the
contradance band. g

I wouldn't expect a huge difference between the two brands you
mentioned, but that's based on reputation, not direct experience. It
looks like the Alesis (Giga8FX) costs about $120 more than the
comparable Behringer (PHM880S). Both are pretty darn cheap - $500 to
$600 for eight channels of mic pres, plus a 400 WPC stereo power amp.
Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Mackie has a similar unit (808S) for $850 to $900, and a mono version
(808M) for $100 less. I'd expect it to have fewer gimmicks and both
better build quality and better audio quality. But again, I haven't
actually used any of these items.

All three companies do some creative things when rating their amplifier
power. Alesis and Behringer just quote 400 watts, with no additional
information. That tends to suggest that the claims are pretty grossly
exaggerated.

Mackie calls their amps 600 watts per channel. But they go on to
mention that this is when driving a 2 ohm load. However, they also give
some real specs for their amps if you dig a bit deeper. Turns out that
they are 240 watts per channel into 8 ohms with both channels driven at
no more than .1% THD from 40Hz to 20KHz. (And the mere fact that they
can drive a 2 ohm load says something good about their amps.)

240 watts per channel is probably plenty of power for a contradance.
And I'm betting that if you similarly rated the Alesis and Behringer
units for clean power, they'd come in somewhere below that 240 watt
figure. Which may still be perfectly adequate, but without accurate
specs it's hard to be sure.

In article 30btd.2253$2U2.1201@trnddc01 writes:

Anyone had a chance to check out the Alesis GIGAMIX-8FX*8 Powered Mixer?
I assume this would be far better than anything from Behringer...

Why do you assume this? There is no history of people raving about
Alesis mixers though many people at least give the faint [sic] praise
of not being any worse than Mackie (better in some areas) and for less
money. Alesis doesn't have a good reputation in the power amplifier
area (though this is new to Behringer).

I'm not saying that Behringer is better, I'm just saying that there's
no reason to assume that it's worse.

Still
working on raising funds for a sound system for monthly contra (folk)
dance with live bands providing the music.

Keep saving your money and when you're ready, do some listening.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo