Soundcraft Signature 16 Mixer with Effects Reviews

I needed to get some repairs for my signature 16 and Soundcraft did an amazing job helping me get my unit back into good operating order. Their website is very tractable, they actually fixed the problem(s, they found one I didn't know about), and they honored the warranty. I used to revere Soundcraft, and now I venerate this company in a new way thanks to their service department.

I am using mine for home recording. It is not ideal for that mostly because the monitoring facilities are not elaborate. I use this with a UA Volt interface now and I am very pleased. I love this mixer in the studio because I have intricate routing requirements for my electronic music production. The monitor buses with switchable pre/post settings per bus, and the two stereo sub mix buses enable me to route things in ways I have not otherwise been able to accomplish. Being able to have a bus compressor on a sub mix is awesome.

I do live AV sound for work and I would definitely like to use this console for music. I think this would make the perfect Open Mic night, or blues jam mixer.

What would I like to see in the next version?
- Channel Insert points, or Direct Outs. I mostly feel the need to have outboard channel compression, gating for this to be a good live board. (The limiters on Ch 1 -4 are OK as far as they go...)
- A few more options on the monitor section that account for using the console in a recording application, especially the ability to monitor mains in headphones while they are muted.
- It would be dreamy to have 16 x 8 channels of 24bit 96khz on this console, setting it above the Signature 12 and Signature 22 as a professional option.

Other boards I use daily: Allen & Heath Zed 10, which is a great swiss army knife of an interface/mixer, and an old Yamaha M7CL in an auditorium.

I like the EQ pretty well, the board is quiet. The routing capabilities are marvelous.

Hope this helps you evaluate this console and this company for your application.

great board easy to operate service and technician and salesperson always willing to help

With any audio gear purchase, the two big factors for me are reputation and versatility.Soundcraft is well known and respected throughout the audio industry....so that was an easy choice. As far as versatility goes......this small console can do a lot. I use it for my keyboard setup and it works great through headphones or my keyboard amp. The sound is clean and the eq is great. I recommend this to any home audio enthusiast. It is PC compatible and compact in size.

I have been using this mixer for about 2 years now, usually about twice a week for live gigs into JBL PRX 12s. This board sounds amazing first of all, and its got many awesome features with lots of creative options for a professional mix ! It also is very durable; mine has been stepped on, fallen over, beaten up over time and its still working great! I JUST WISH SOUNDCRAFT MADE A MULTITRACK RECORDING VERSION OF THIS, but they don't and its not the end of the world 'cause you can still track a stereo master out, but a multitrack version of this would be great. There's no compression, but there are 4 limiters so thats a good note. . Also wish there was at least one more effects engine for multiple effects at a time, but really this board still blows me away. You can still send things through group or aux to external compression or effects then return them to the board and through the master out, but onboard stuff would be convenient for me. It does the job very well though, and I love it!

Love this mixer. Very impressed with the sound quality and the options.

The Soundcraft Sig 16 is nearly perfect for our needs - certainly the best bang for the buck.

Sweetwater's real power is in their advising engineers. Craig E was thoroughly knowledgeable, professional and courteous.

Excellent service,Excellent sound board!

I run a local acoustic open mic in my area. Needed an "Old School" design that decades of experience told me was needed. So I pulled the trigger on this unit for 2 reasons. 1) sweepable upper & lower mids 2) Lexicon effects. The board is lightweight, fits perfectly on top of my 6U road case of processing and amp units. In all practical sense it really only has 12 XLR channels but that doesn't bother me. It's set up and runs like a pro board without the fancy bells & whistles, wifi/ipad digital hoopla. It is crystal clean, adjusts quickly on the fly as needed for each different performer. You can send a submix of everything to recording while not sending the unwanted extra signals to the PA. The recordings I've done to a Tascam DR44 as well as a Zoom Q8 have audio so sharp, you can shave with it !!!
The reason it got 4.5 stars and not 5 stars is there are no inserts on the individual channels. But don't let this hold you back. If you're looking for an easy setup, easy use, lightweight, razor clean board, I Highly Recommend you seriously consider this unit. Yes you're gonna have to shell out some Benjamins, But you're getting a Great Investment !!!

Only gave it 4.5 stars because I shoulda gotten the 22! I was using a digital board and found that for my purposes, analog is much better. This is for live sound for my multiple guitar rig...nothing else. I don't need (or want) a mixer with digital memory, etc. My settings will change some from room to room so it's perfect. That's what sound check is for, right?
Anyway, love the Soundcraft board. Nice internal effects, good sounding pres, smooth faders, etc. No complaints at all. I recommend it to anyone wanting to mix analog.

Great ergonomics: controls are nicely spaced for easy access, great visibility with light colored background, faders feel great under the fingers.
Nice effects with two adjustable parameters.
Outstanding EQ: the two sweepable midrange controls, which cut with a narrow Q and boost with a wide Q, really make for great sounding vocals and acoustic guitars.

I needed a larger mixer for our praise band. Very happy with the build and look and ease of use of this unit. I liked it so much that I purchased the Signature 22 MTK. I use this in my studio because of the I/O for recording. It is a recording/mixing console. I would have given the Signature 16 5 stars if it had the capability of multi track recording and playback. A d best of all, its usb powered.

Verry fast to use for live application.

I really, really wanted to love this mixer. I used to have a Ghost mixer in my old studio and I just loved it. This Signature promised to have the same preamps... nope. Not by a longshot. The pre's had very low headroom and very brittle overtones. The EQ is extremely odd and doesn't allow you to work in the normal fashion on boosting the full 12db, sweeping the frequency until you find the offensive one, and then cutting that frequency accordingly. Because this EQ is wide bandwidth boost and narrow cut, you often miss the frequency you thought you had when you go to cut. Makes EQing very time consuming and frankly irritating. The built in limiters had a threshold that was set absurdly high and are all but useless, and the effects are truly mediocre. If you want an analog Soundcraft board I would recommend you go and find a used GB. That was the last truly professional analog board they made.

Verry dissapointed. The sound is so pour, no presence. I bought a new one (after I waited almost one year) and, after comparing it with the MFXi 20, I sold it quickly and bought a MFXi8 (used one). It,s much, much better then the long waited Signature wich I do NOT recomand at all.