Soundcraft Notepad-8FX Mixer with Effects Reviews

We bought this mixer for our keyboards to mix the sound before sending it to the house. It really is quite and easy to use. The onboard FX is useful, too. I recommend this mixer for anyone who does the same.

I bought six compact mixers to choose one,needed a small mixer for my daw,none were perfect, the 8fx was the cleanest overall,clean is a deal maker for me,I’ve had it a couple of years now it’s used a lot,no problems

I own three Soundcraft mixers: 16, 12, 8 channels. They are the best I"ve ever used in this price range. Workhorses and always sound great! And Sweetwater is the best! Ten Stars! I purchase a lot of equipment and the only time I purchase from other venders is when they don"t have an item I need (which is rarely). I always recommend Sweetwater to other musicians I meet. Sweetwater Rocks!

I have tried comparable Yamaha and Mackie models. I ended up with this SoundCraft. The noise level is zero. There is no noise at all, as if you were in outer space. Very clear recording.

I noticed the Mackie has a clear zero noise recording, but only if you don"t use the FX function of the mixer. The SoundCraft does not have that issue. It is clear with and without FX. I really love it!!

The company has updated Firmware and updated drivers on their website, I think they are digitally signed drivers, not sure since I disabled the digital signature check in my PC. What I"m trying to point out is that the mixer is newer than most other comparable mixers and does not have any issues.

One thing I wanted to mention is the control panel window that comes with the driver, for some reason, it starts whenever I restart the PC and this caused issues while recording. Seems I lose a channel when this panel starts, so I disabled the panel from my startup and problem solved.

I must underline I am not a Soundcraft employee nor related in any way with them except for the fact I own this outstanding product :) I belive this is my best buy among gear I ever used, no kidding. For the price you get an analog device of great Soundcraft quality, no need to tell more. But I want to focus on great job they did with digital domain. It features a *GREAT* USB driver, running Notepad8FX as an audio interface at a very low latency with pristine quality with no dropouts. I was absolutely thrilled when auditioning my performance through Notepad8FX ASIO for the first time. I used an old Laptop for the purpose (a platform based upon Core2Duo), the sound is smooth, free of any clicks and very powerful. I highly recommend it.

This is a great sounding mixer. I"m currently using it to blend two mics for recording guitar and it"s working beautifully. The EQs are very wide sweeping. Zero complaints.

Solid build and feel. Very versatile with output/monitoring switching. AND the output sounds cleaner and clearer than the Behringer I replaced it with. Honestly I was expecting to pay more for the brand, but I guess they all wanna hit the price point.

The whole point of having a portable mixer with an audio interface built into it is to be able to 'Mix' either on the fly ( interview / podcast / live performance ) and record the result or, track into a DAW ( Laptop / iPad ) and be able to control what BOTH the performer AND the engineer actually hear at the same time.
This is where the Soundcraft Notepad series actually performs better than most other mixers/compact interfaces out there in this price point and many above it as well. The 8FX model can control 'which' set of inputs the computer will actually 'see' as recording inputs. That makes this little guy a lot more flexible when recording someone or using the mixer in a podcasting setup where you need to record the computer audio as well ( known as loopback feature ) like an incoming phone call or video playback. Having a mixer that record the Mains L+R as one of the input options in the Soundcraft Audio Control Panel, and having a gain knob to control the level of computer playback, instead of digging through menu pages makes ALL the difference in the world.
It is the only mixer anywhere near its price range that gives you 2 completely independent stereo headphone mixes that are not tied to each other in software. This allows the engineer to have a completely separate mix from the 'more me' mix of the performer. Unlike like most small format tabletop interfaces that force you to do a 1 knob balancing act between the playback and the recording signal.
The built Lexicon effects are all quite good and is one of the very few mixers that allow you to use all 3 of the FX engines at the same time.
The combination of very good Nuetrik combo mic preamp inputs as well as stereo TRS balanced and RCA make this a Swiss army knife of audio mixers.

This is a great little console/interface for someone who wants to lay ideas quickly into their laptop. The built in effects sound great.

Love this little mixer! I have a few others around here (two Mackies and a Behringer) and I believe, for it's size, this little guy's got the goods. Crazy Simple, even portable, very clean/quiet well built and very dependable. The E.Q. section has a very nice midrange +/-. Pleasantly, the USB feature actually ~works~ without jacking around. The only thing discouraging me from picking up the 12FX/USB is the lack of a compressor. (which was an oversight IMO)

The price on these almost doubled up since I bought mine, but I think is cuz they realized it was actually worth twice what they priced it at when released. I suggest you buy the 12FX/USB for like thirty bucks more; you won't be disappointed.

While not overly robust, featurewise, (dollars per donuts) it's about as good a deal as you'll find. Nice, quiet, clean and simple.

I bought this for an odd ball use. I wanted a small mixer for testing stomp boxes. So this review will focus on the features I needed for that only more than sound quality.

My requirements were 3 band EQ and a true High impedance input for guitar. Very few small mixers have this High impedance input anymore and most that say they do are around 220k, which is not high impedance enough to me. Alas Soundcraft does not publish a specification here so I had to buy it and take my chances.

Measuring the line input I got about 30K input in line mode, and with the high Z engaged I got 990K, which is very close to the ideal 1Meg Ohm so good work Sound Craft. You have the only guitar input low end mixer that really is high Z for guitar! 30K is a hair higher than the typical 20K on most desks so that may account for some of the added noise I saw below.

Moving on to USB I was hoping I could replace my low end external sound card and reduce desk space. Running a loop test from Aux out to Line In I got an impressive 0.0063% THD and .0079% THD/N. This is actually really good for a low end desk. Alas frequency response was not as good. It was down about 0.8dB @ 20Hz and 1.5dB @20KHz. Most other low end desks I tried were well within 0.2dB 20-20KHz with some better than 0.1dB.

There was also more leakage in the line in than I had wished. Putting a tone into the left channel and panning hard left I was able to hear quite a bit of it in the right channel. I didn't measure it but it felt like maybe -40dB - -50dB or so. Not a great channel separation spec.
Also note the USB does 44.1KHz and 48KHz only, no 96K on this mixer.

The build quality and feel is very good for a mixer in this range however the feature set and routing is less than typical mixers from some competitors. For example there is no channel mute, control room control, no 1/4" output for the main, no aux return, no RCA returns, switchable phantom power or compressor as some other popular brands have in this price range. They don't have lexicon inspired effects either and that is a nice trade in my mind.
Honestly the only two features I wish it had was 1/4" main outputs and a 2nd control room output.

As a small mixer this is a nice piece of kit. If you are seriously intending to use the USB you may want to think about a different mixer or a stand alone USB interface.

While the sound quality is okay, I never got the usb interface function working. I bought a demo model or something, so perhaps it just needed a firmware update. After a couple of years, the mixer started making a really nasty noise. At first I was certain it would be coming from a connected device or an input channel, but after some testing it's certainly coming from the MASTER bus, so it's been ruined for the past few weeks. It's a harsh grain that could be digital, but i'm not sure.

It's possible I just got a bad unit. The onboard effects and EQ are decent. However, not a fan of how the AUX and FX sends for each channel are on the same knob, making it impossible to use those features independently.

This is a good package at the price point.
I really liked the reverb of this mixer. The Lexicon FX are great.
All other functions work as expected.
BUT the signal that gets recorded via usb is extremely low. The firmware update fails.
Harman support from India is working with me for fixing this issue, i will give this product 5 stars if they solve the issue or give me a replacement.
Regards,
Musician Vishal

I bought one 2 weeks ago for a happy hour gig and there was NO OUTPUT from the main bus. I had to cancel my gig. SW sent me another one and this had very low output and it was very distorted. 2 strikes and you're OUT, Soundcraft. I call this poor quality control by Soundcraft. Maybe stop using 3rd world labor to maximize profit over consistent quality and build them in the UK or the USA. I do not recommend this or any Soundcraft mixers currently built. Soundcraft is resting on their past laurels and they're not what they used to be. I feel the same about other manufacturers with the same business practices. STOP using 3rd world labor especially China! BUY AMERICAN.

I wanted a portable mixer mostly for DJ duties and low size live sound. This seemed to be the specs I needed in the size that would work for me.

I got it home and hooked it up and it just didn't sound good--hard on the ears. Especially harsh at higher volumes. I assumed maybe I had a bad cable or something. I swapped all sorts of stuff out and just couldn't tame the harsh sound.

I swapped in an old Allen & Heath Zed12 for an A-B comparison and, my goodness, the sound was warm and inviting.

Also, this uses a wall wart which is super annoying--no other piece of pro audio gear I have has a wall wort.

I don't recommend this item.

Don't purchase this for a PC. The driver certificates are expired, and the company seems to have no interest in updating their certificates.