Zoom LiveTrak L-12 Digital Mixer & Recorder

I bought it for my son to use in the dorm room.I tested it at home for 3 days.This is exactly what the doctor prescribed!Yes, its plastic, but not flimsy.Yes, its small, but not miniscule, like Roland Botique or Korg Volca stuff.As a mixer it sounds pristine, even when you add some EQ and crank up the gain a bit, still pristine. Add some reverb (only one send/return type effect processor), still excellent. Add some "one knob" Compression on some (or up to 8) inputs, still pretty darn good.Now you can add up to 5 (FIVE) fully customizable headphone/monitor mixes with 5 separated outputs and 5 volume knobs!How about that?Ive paid $500 for a 6 channel headphone distribution rack unit in my studio alone, right?So this makes my son and his friends able to plug ... MoreI bought it for my son to use in the dorm room.I tested it at home for 3 days.This is exactly what the doctor prescribed!Yes, its plastic, but not flimsy.Yes, its small, but not miniscule, like Roland Botique or Korg Volca stuff.As a mixer it sounds pristine, even when you add some EQ and crank up the gain a bit, still pristine. Add some reverb (only one send/return type effect processor), still excellent. Add some "one knob" Compression on some (or up to 8) inputs, still pretty darn good.Now you can add up to 5 (FIVE) fully customizable headphone/monitor mixes with 5 separated outputs and 5 volume knobs!How about that?Ive paid $500 for a 6 channel headphone distribution rack unit in my studio alone, right?So this makes my son and his friends able to plug in a couple guitars, a bass, a couple of keys, plus whatever, and jamming until the whee hour without disturbing the neighbors.The Audio Interface:At 24 bit and 48 kHz it is also pristine. Its class compliant, plugged it into my iPad pro, opened Auria, and there they were, all 8 mono and 2 stereo inputs, and 4 USB return.Again, the latency was absolutely minimal, mixing the USB return stuff with the live instruments was a breeze (push of one button) and again, no audible latency.How about that?The only reason I'm not getting the larger version (20, I guess) right now, is the lack of MIDI, and no control protocoll implementation of any kind, in other words, you cant use it as a control surface for your DAW.Overall, worth every penny, in good hands it is absolutely capable if producing pro results.

Zoom know how to make great sounding easy to use recording desks and this is no exception . I purchased this from swamp mostly as an interface for recording to my Mac and it does a great job of that, have been also recording to the inbuilt SD card slot which you can do at the same time which is amazing, has a great routing setup and very useful 5 headphone outputs. It isn't the most robust built desk I have owned but im sure it will last, Zoom dont make rubbish. Would highly recommend Zoom Livetrack L12 and Swamp.

Best mixer in this price bracket!

Amazing piece of equipment! This mixer is able to send in stereo and record individual tracks on a DAW simultaneously! Perfect for what I do with my project Chase Me, November on YouTube! It tracks songs perfectly, and the on-board effects are nice as well! All of the lights and indicators work very well, and there is never any glitchy noises or glitches in general with this board, which is a stark contrast when compared to my experience with the Tascam Model 12! Zoom did an excellent job with this one! Well worth the money!

Excellent flexibilty

Really straight forward to use and clear routing functions for online meetings are provided. The one knob compression is outstanding and prints to the channel which is useful. However, some might find that useful so one can turn it off. The reverb selections are fantastic and each is very musical sounding. The mic preamps are extremely quiet and musical sounding too. There is an excellent amount of gain available and the noise floor is low. The output configuration is useful although to use it online for conferencing, zoom conferencing simply sums ALL the inputs. This is annoying and third party software to get around this is required. Soundlower and Ladio get it working as I wanted. Live output mixed from 5 inputs and a bit of reverb mixed with a backing track. The ... MoreReally straight forward to use and clear routing functions for online meetings are provided. The one knob compression is outstanding and prints to the channel which is useful. However, some might find that useful so one can turn it off. The reverb selections are fantastic and each is very musical sounding. The mic preamps are extremely quiet and musical sounding too. There is an excellent amount of gain available and the noise floor is low. The output configuration is useful although to use it online for conferencing, zoom conferencing simply sums ALL the inputs. This is annoying and third party software to get around this is required. Soundlower and Ladio get it working as I wanted. Live output mixed from 5 inputs and a bit of reverb mixed with a backing track. The sound is very professional. Recording internally is very good although using it as a true standalone studio set up is less easy and it is really best used recording whole live sets. it records each channel separately with its compression and also records a separate stereo mix with the effect included. Some master eq would be useful but I'll check out if that is possible! I am very happy with the equipment and using it live is outstanding. The mute functions are clear and universal. So handy when in a live situation. Great delivery service from DV 24 too. Fab all round. One very happy customer!

Good for Home Use

Overall I like the unit. It is made of plastic, and although that doesn't necessarily mean it is fragile, I don't know if this would really be the right unit for using heavily as a road mixer. For instance, it's billed as being useful as a stand alone mixer, without the recording capability, but I think if you were going to take it to a lot of clubs you'd want to be pretty careful with it. However, I bought it for mainly home use and knew that I wouldn't take it out all that much.That being said, I find it pretty useful with the following caveats. For initial recording your channel must go straight to the track you are recording. So for instance if you wanted to mic a drum kit with 4 mics and routethat all to two tracks you couldn't do it initially. There is a ... MoreOverall I like the unit. It is made of plastic, and although that doesn't necessarily mean it is fragile, I don't know if this would really be the right unit for using heavily as a road mixer. For instance, it's billed as being useful as a stand alone mixer, without the recording capability, but I think if you were going to take it to a lot of clubs you'd want to be pretty careful with it. However, I bought it for mainly home use and knew that I wouldn't take it out all that much.That being said, I find it pretty useful with the following caveats. For initial recording your channel must go straight to the track you are recording. So for instance if you wanted to mic a drum kit with 4 mics and routethat all to two tracks you couldn't do it initially. There is a work around though of once you have those 4 drum tracks, you can do a mix to the master fader (which has it's own track), you can export that to a USB stick and then drop it back on the stereo channels, freeing up your initial 4 drum tracks. For my workflow this sort of replaces "ping ponging" on other units. IAnother thing is that it doesn't have phantom power for each individual mic input, it has two groups of 4 channels that can have phantom power on or off. This means that if you want to use all 8 mic inputs at once, and you have 5 condenser mics and 3 dynamic mics you have an issue, because you have phantom power going to all of them. I don't usually plan on using all of them at once though.Pros: I like the compatibility of using it to record, dropping tracks on a USB stick and then plugging into my computer and dropping them in my DAW. Also, I think you can record simultaneously to the unit while using it as an audio interface, so you'd have a back-up recording. I haven't used the audio interface, but it seems to work. When recording in 96K it disables effects and EQ on playbackBottom line? I'd say it's good for small home studios that want to use it in conjunction with a compute

Great Mixer and Recorder for a live band

This ideal if you are in a band who wants a mixer with In-ear monitoring as it has 5 separate mixes for headphone outputs. Great to capture live performances, practising/jamming sessions to record each instrument onto an SD card in WAV format to capturing the moment. If you need good audio interface for a DAWS you have 14 in 4 out, which is good value for money, however you are limited to 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz sample rates when using it as an Interface. The plastic casing it feels solidly built and good quality Pots and Faders. As a 14 channel mixer for live use for small band using in ear monitoring it has very few limitations - mainly effects. As a recording device for a live band or to capture the moment without lots of setting up brilliant. As a recording studio ... MoreThis ideal if you are in a band who wants a mixer with In-ear monitoring as it has 5 separate mixes for headphone outputs. Great to capture live performances, practising/jamming sessions to record each instrument onto an SD card in WAV format to capturing the moment. If you need good audio interface for a DAWS you have 14 in 4 out, which is good value for money, however you are limited to 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz sample rates when using it as an Interface. The plastic casing it feels solidly built and good quality Pots and Faders. As a 14 channel mixer for live use for small band using in ear monitoring it has very few limitations - mainly effects. As a recording device for a live band or to capture the moment without lots of setting up brilliant. As a recording studio limited in that you cannot edit or process tracks; however, it was designed that to export your tracks to a DAWS (I send mine to BandLab) and the edit and produce your tracks there. The only little niggle I have is the track relates to the channel you are plugged in, so if overdubbing you need to re-plug your instrument to the track you want to record it to. You lose the use of a stereo channel when connecting to a computer for audio playback. Otherwise I love the way I can capture a recording idea really quickly without having to boot up my PC.

Great piece of kit!

I’ve been using a Behringer Flow for the last year, but there were a few things that were putting me off. Lack of channels and struggling to see the app on my phone at outdoor gigs were two of them. With this desk everything is easily seeable and the great thing is when you get the right mix, you just save it and that’s it! Also the fact that you can record gigs, putting all 10 tracks, unprocessed, onto an SD card is a great bonus. All in all hugely recommended.

Impressive Little Mixer!

Opinion is subjective to the experience of the user so here it is. I'm 57 and have owned a recording studio since I was 23. My work is on the radio, in commercials, tv, and motion pictures.This unit is amazingly good for the price. No it is not as good as my 2000 converters and the preamps are not as good as my mega stupid expensive preamps. Still, there should be nothing stopping a fairly well studied musician from cutting record after record with this mixer. The cons are better looked at than the pros, which are obvious.So here they are.There are no inserts for outboard gear so you are stuck with the internal effects. Luckily they are quite good internal effects but I would have rather been able to used my gear with this should I need to.It is a plastic shell ... MoreOpinion is subjective to the experience of the user so here it is. I'm 57 and have owned a recording studio since I was 23. My work is on the radio, in commercials, tv, and motion pictures.This unit is amazingly good for the price. No it is not as good as my 2000 converters and the preamps are not as good as my mega stupid expensive preamps. Still, there should be nothing stopping a fairly well studied musician from cutting record after record with this mixer. The cons are better looked at than the pros, which are obvious.So here they are.There are no inserts for outboard gear so you are stuck with the internal effects. Luckily they are quite good internal effects but I would have rather been able to used my gear with this should I need to.It is a plastic shell and though it feels like it would survive sitting in a studio, live use might take a toll on it. I much prefer Allen & Heath mixers over all others but this should do fine with a little care.There is a very nice shared set of eq knobs that makes this desk small and less price but I prefer to have individual knobs per track. This works fine and for some best, but if you are like me and like a direct approach this is not the board. Personally, it is not a big deal. This board live in my bedroom for those moments I need it. Give the single set of knobs and controls a long thought before buying this. It isn't a big deal for most but keep it in mind.The good stuff on this board is that is sounds great, does a ton of good stuff and all for a tiny price tag.

Unbelievable Live and Studio Mixer

Overall:This mixer does just about everything you could ask for at this price range, and perhaps in a range several hundred dollars higher. Having five individual monitor mixes on a board of this size and price is essentially unheard of. Add in the ability to record up to 10 tracks simultaneously while also using the board to power the PA/FOH and monitors for all five players, and you have something that very few other products offer. The learning curve is easy, the controls are intuitive, and the aesthetics are pleasing and simple. I love this board and would recommend it to anyone who wants a mobile live solution for offering all of your bandmates individual monitor mixes while powering the PA and recording all inputs. Wish they would have included an SD card, ... MoreOverall:This mixer does just about everything you could ask for at this price range, and perhaps in a range several hundred dollars higher. Having five individual monitor mixes on a board of this size and price is essentially unheard of. Add in the ability to record up to 10 tracks simultaneously while also using the board to power the PA/FOH and monitors for all five players, and you have something that very few other products offer. The learning curve is easy, the controls are intuitive, and the aesthetics are pleasing and simple. I love this board and would recommend it to anyone who wants a mobile live solution for offering all of your bandmates individual monitor mixes while powering the PA and recording all inputs. Wish they would have included an SD card, but those are inexpensive and easy to find. With a card, you can bounce all of the individually recorded tracks into the DAW of your choice for mixing/mastering. Conversely, you can also mix and add a few effects on the board before bouncing a master track, but I find the DAW much more flexible. It's nice to have both options, though. If there is one weak spot on the board, it might be the durability. It is mostly plastic and doesn't have the heft of other boards in this size/price range. That said, take care of it and I am sure it will be fine. Zoom has done an absolutely incredible job with this board. I look forward to using it every time I pull it out of the case.

Zoom Livetrack L-12 first impressions

First impressions after 48 hours are very positive. Extremely intuitive to use. Without any reference to the paperwortk, I inserted an SD card, plugged in a couple of mics, recorded an interview and some acoustic guitar in stereo, played the recording back down headphones, removed the SD card and transferred the files to my DAW. Faultess sound quality. The built in reverb sounds sound very impressive, at least down headphones, so really looking forward to doing the first gig and recording the whole thing. The casing is plastic and it feels lightly built, which is good for those of us who prefer to do gigs with minimal gear, but probably means it will need care on the road. Time will tell.Minor point: it arrived with a European plug but I managed to borrow an ... MoreFirst impressions after 48 hours are very positive. Extremely intuitive to use. Without any reference to the paperwortk, I inserted an SD card, plugged in a couple of mics, recorded an interview and some acoustic guitar in stereo, played the recording back down headphones, removed the SD card and transferred the files to my DAW. Faultess sound quality. The built in reverb sounds sound very impressive, at least down headphones, so really looking forward to doing the first gig and recording the whole thing. The casing is plastic and it feels lightly built, which is good for those of us who prefer to do gigs with minimal gear, but probably means it will need care on the road. Time will tell.Minor point: it arrived with a European plug but I managed to borrow an adaptor until the shop sent one through.