Hear Back

Just finished hooking these up at our church. We have seven musicians and all of us love it. It is just like being in a studio and the controls are right at your hand. No more depending on the sound man for the right mix. It also cleaned up the stage volume by having the headphones on there are no more need for amplifiers, which really helped the overall sound, and improved the clairity. Great product only wish it had more inputs.

comes with expiration date

Well, it's great for the price (initially) , anything comparable is 3x as much. It sounds OK and is also flexible enough for what I need here in my studio (tracking live bands up to 6 people or so), and it's easy running those cat 5 cables.
The downside: poor quality of parts:
- There is a mini stereo plug for an additional line in. I bought 7 mixers, on not one of them was that input working in a way I could use it with any client.
- Tho pots get really bad after about 2 years of use
- On the hub, there is a switch between analog and digital in that was crapping out after 2 month, I sent the unit back, same thing on the replacement. I just ripped the out the switch and soldered the contacts solid to analog in, since that is what I use.
- And finally now after about 5 years, I had to replace about every single one (!!!) of the 7 mixers, cause they just stop working at all, they just go dark, and thats it.
And no reply from their tech support to my angry email.
So, yeah, you get what you pay for, after all

Good for small groups

Biggest problem is the limited number of channels, no pan control, no tone control. You get what you pay for. Sound quality is good. Easy to set up.

You get 4 stereo channels OR 6 mono + 1 stereo.
Stereo channels have no pan control. Panning has to be done from the sending end. No tone controls. Mono signals are in the center of the mix.
If you set it up for 6 mono + 1 stereo and use the stereo for two different signals, they will be panned hard right and left respectfully. This is the way we run it and it's not the best possible solution.

They recommend you use a common mix into the stereo channel and then add what individual signals you want to be able to monitor above the common mix into the other cahnnels. This takes away the advantage of a personal monitor system since the sound man still has to generate a common mix that is balanced. You also lose two monitor channels doing it this way. Also, we rotate musicians alot so this isn't a solution for us.

Great Monitoring System

Jeff Barnett here at Sweetwater told me this was a great system and he was right. Digital quality headphone mixes throughout the studio and it all took about an hour to hook up including pulling 12 strands of wire thru the existing conduit lines.


Before, in our studio, the mixes all sounded "mono" when they got thru the snakes, mixers,cables, headphone amps, junction boxes etc. Now the we patch into the original recording signal with a 2 ft. patch cable, then the signal goes into the Hear Back (24bit)converter and straight to the remote mixer and into your ears via your favorite headphones. Anyone in the studio that doesn't like the mix they are getting have only themselves to blame. And I plan to hang a sign telling them just that.


Thanks JEFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!