Couldn't Ask For More 
by Ross Huntley from Noosa, Australia, October 2008
Music Background:  Musician, Keen Hobbyist

After doing battle with the Alesis iO14 for the last 3 months (BEWARE - drivers are terribly unstable!) I thought I'd better go back to my original plan of using a small mixer going into a PCI card.

This Compact 4 by Soundcraft is purpose built to sit on your desktop and allow mics, synths, turntables, guitars and a host of other devices to painlessly connect to your DAW. I also bought an M-Audio Audiophile 192 PCI card for the interface. This mixer allows balanced jack send and return that suits this soundcard perfectly.

The mic preamps are clean and crystal clear to my ears. I plugged in my Rode NT1-A condensor mic and was recording in minutes. Loads of gain available with more than enough headphone volume for both engineer and artist (yes, 2 headphone outputs!).

This is what I wanted the iO14 to do. It failed miserably.

I can't recommend the Soundcraft Compact 4 highly enough. An awesome solution!

  Hard To Beat! 
by Scott Sundberg from South Central Michigan, March 2008
Music Background:  Muckin' About in the Basement ...

I've had this mixer for over a year now and I still find myself very happy with it. The sound is warm (it IS a Soundcraft!) and the routing is superb for what I would call a nano-desk.

The Compact 4's size may not be optimal for many; for me it has more than enough channels and options to keep me plugged in and recording for a long time to come. I found it very much in keeping with my minimalist ideal, yet it offers the sound and flexibility of a larger, more expensive mixing board in an easy-to-use, portable package.

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