VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Rob Ellis]

I also have an Apogee Duet, don't know if that might be a possible stand in for a separate mixer.....anyone know anything about whether this low-priced Mackie would do the trick for phone patch purposes..?

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/402VLZ3/

[Gp]

You might want to go a little bit bigger. It would probably work, depending on what the complete setup is, but you will end up wanting to run more through it than just the phone once you realize what it allows you to do.
just a thought

[Chuck Davis]

That one's missing the "alt 3-4" bus that the 1202 or 1402 has.

That's what does the trick.
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[Yoda117]

Chuck is right. You're going to want something that has ALT SEND and ALT RETURN bus. You don't need these to get the job done, but it makes life a lot easier.

If you're looking to do this on the cheap, check out some of Yamaha's mixers. They're strong candidates for the $. Otherwise you can do well with the Mackie Onyx (which works, but you won't be using a traditional configuration due to the shared nature of the bus topology), or the Allen & Heath MixWizard series (Mackie starts off around $450 - $550 and the A&H runs around $850 - $1000).

I've tried a few different phone patches and the one I liked the most was the Telos ONE. Easy to use, and great reception. Overpriced IMO, but good deals can be had in this economy if you keep your eyes opened. I picked one up a few weeks ago for under $300 from a studio that was closing. They never took it out of the box, and still in the protective wrap from the manufacturer when it arrived.
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[Rob Ellis]

What about this one? I think it has the requisite sends and returns, but I'm not real up on mixers beyond using the basic faders that us radio people were familiar with....

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MW10c/

[Rob Ellis]

...or this one, which definitely looks like it would have all the prereqs...

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MW12cx

The seemingly nice thing about both of these is that as USB mixers, they could function as a back-up/alternate/mobile interface as well as solving the phone patch problem, plus, being USB I am assuming they would work with both my PC desktop and Mac notebook...

...in which case I would probably sell my Apogee Duet.....

[Gp]

If you are going to spend that much money, take a look at this one. A little bit more than the yamaha but much better quality imho http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ZED14/

or not usb but http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/1202VLZ3/ good none the less.

or http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MultiMix8FW/ you don't really need all the effects though, and don't plan on giving up your Apogee Duet anytime soon, the convertors in these aren't that great,
good luck

[Rob Ellis]

Yeah, may be better just to hang onto the Duet, I tend to want to always sell a piece of gear whenever adding something, but in this case the Duet might be good to have around for travel, not sure how well a mixer would travel in comparison.

[Chuck Davis]

Now you're on the right track Rob. The Yam would work just fine. Personally I'm a big fan of Mackie products and think the 1202 would be a better bang for the buck. Older is actually better with Mackie since the newer ones are Chinese built. The older US made Mackies are better quality IMHO.

With either board the setup could be like this.

Mic channel one - aux one feeds hybrid (to caller) - Bus signal to alt 3-4 (rec on Yamaha). Pot this up to establish your record level on your workstation computer.
Take a channel insert from this channel and run to the input of mic channel two and bus to main mix (stereo on yam). Pot this up to listen to your voice in your headphones

Bring the output of your Hybrid back to a third channel (line level in) and assign to main mix (stereo on yam). Adjust that for the callers level in your headphones.

Once you get everything patched you can leave it set up this way. Super easy to use and very flexable. If you need to playback to the caller simply bring up the aux 1 send of your workstation to send to caller and hit play.

I use the same configuration with my older Mackie 3402 and a Gentner hybrid. No fuss no muss...works like a charm every time.
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[Rob Ellis]

Thanks Chuck (and everybody!)

Sounds like one of these would definitely bring my phone patch capabilities up to speed.

I like the USB capabilities of the Yamahas, simply because it gives me not only a mixer, but an interface if needed, but then again I may be straying away from my original intent, which is to have a mixer for phone patch sessions....

Would either of the Yamahas in my posts work?

Sweetwater says they won't be getting any Mackie 1202s for several months on their website, but I see lots of them on ebay ranging from $50 to around $250.....

[Chuck Davis]

It looks like only the Yamaha MW12 has the stereo+record bus feature. The MW 10 has only the single stereo (main) bus.
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[Rob Ellis]

It occurred to me also that with USB mixers (which I'm not familiar with)
is the USB optional, or do they by default have to serve as your converter as well......hmmmm.......

[Lance Blair]

I use a Yamaha MG16/4 in my studio for routing output signals (and I do some music with it too). Great bang for the buck, and I like it better than the Mackies I've worked with (esp. newer ones). The pres on them are almost good enough to use on their own if I wasn't such a snob about it - but I have used them to record other peoples' VOs and they were fine.

You can get an MG10/2 which is all you really need for next to nothing used, and they sound good...better than the alternatives at that end of the market.

My main Pre/Travel Pre is the half-rack Speck 5.0. The glorious thing about that is that it has several different outputs and a seperate "Mix Node" with discrete panning and output level: so you can really do patches to anything on the road.
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[mediaking]

Hi All!!!

I was reading this thread and had a crazy thought.

Could one use a softphone (Dialpad, Vonage, etc.) and route everything through one's soundcard? That way you could record and send audio down the line.

It's phone quality--not ISDN, naturally, but a lot less messy.

Just a thought...

Ideas?
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[georgethetech]

I am adding this reply to the Gear FAQ, because there is always some confusion about how best to use a phone patch with a mixer, and I know this topic has come up many times on VO-bb.
You can use a phone patch with ANY mixer that has an Aux Send.
It's all about creating a "mix-minus".
EDIT: You either need a mixer with the Alt 3/4 bus (Mackie, Behringer, Alesis), OR you must use the PAN or Balance control so the phone patch doesn't end up in your recorded voice track.

Here's how:

1. Mixer mic input channel- Aux Send 1 turned up to unity
2. Aux Send 1 jack- patched to input of hybrid
3. Mixer mic/line input channel- output of hybrid
4. Leave Aux Send 1 knob DOWN on mixer channel with hybrid
5. Turn Aux Send 1 knob up or down to adjust your volume TO your caller.
6. Turn the mixer hybrid channel fader up or down to control volume FROM your caller. EDIT: Engage Alt 3/4 bus (MUTE) or pan to the right and only record the left channel, for example.
7. If caller needs playback, just turn up the Aux Send 1 knob on the channel your recording interface is plugged into on your mixer. If your mixer does NOT have an ALT 3/4 bus like the Mackies, make sure fader for the computer is turned down while recording, or you will have a feedback loop.

That's it! No fancy patching required...
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