Awesome Mixer /Great work flow 
by Johnny Z from Huntington N.Y.USA, September 2008
Music Background:  Recording Engineer

The n12 is a great sounding mixer on it"s own,but when you mix it with cubase ai4 it blows me a way.In my studio i record a lot of acoustic tracks ,mainly real drums .typicaly i will use the 8 awesome sounding pres on the n12 for my drum kit ,sometimes i record with eq,compression,and reverb sometimes not. the cool thing is ,after you record your drum tracks in cubase ,you can bring those 8 tracks back into the n12 and mix them analog style with compression eq and what not ,sounds awesome kudos to yamaha! jz

  A small Professional Mixer with large console type amenities 
by homestudioguy from Central Illinois, USA, August 2008
Music Background:  Home Studio Guy, FOH Live Sound Guy (Yamaha M7CL), Former Orchestral and AFof M Union Hall Musician

The Yamaha n12 is clearly a great mixer and clearly in a league of its own, price-wise and function-wise.

There is a ton of positive "buzz" out there in regards to the Darlington circuit based pre-amps and I have to agree that they are quite clean with some very nice character.

Having the ability to send separate recorded digital tracks back into separate mixer channels for monitoring and modification is great and I definitely like having the ability to connect 3 sets of monitors for A/B/Cing. Having that 3rd "monitor out" on the n12 has allowed me to add the Avantone MixCubes which have been great for my listening and mixing.

The EQ section provides for a very wide tonal variey and can add some "major" boost if needed and having the transport controls "right there" for Cubase 4 is also a definite plus.

My only suggestion relative to the n12 is that Yamaha should add a button that would allow you to switch between XLR and TRS "ins" on each channel (1-8) thus allowing the user to leave equipment connected in both the XLR and TRS inputs all the time (ie snake into the XLRs and Patchbay into TRSs). As it currently stands, connecting to the XLR input cancels out the TRS input.


Adding this switch would more than double the n12's input capacity as well as giving the n12 another large console type function. The good thing is that there an empty space on each channel (1-8) right next to the pad switch where this new XLR/TRS switch could be located!!!

My only complaint is that owning the Yamaha n12 "forced" me to buy a Creation Station Rack from my very knowledgeable and very helpful Sweetwater Rep, Mark Bruhn.

  The N12 mixer is awesome 
by Soundrage from Salt Lake City, UT, December 2007
Music Background:  Serious Hobbyist

I just received the N12 last Friday and am very pleased I bought this mixer. The preamps in it are absolutely fabulous and in this price range would be very difficult to beat, if not impossible. The pre's are not "colored" like a lot of top end pre's but lean more to "transparency" but with some nice low end to them. Excellent low, mid and high frequency response is what you get with these preamps. Vocals sit really nice in the mix with a nice stereo image. Vocals come right out in front with these preamps too! Acoustic guitars come through very clear. Add a little Morph compression and you get nothing but great sound.

The N12 is a digital mixer but you wouldn't know it when using it. It "feels" analog but then you look at the back of it and there's not a giant mass of cables hooking things up. It's got a simple firewire interface. It's bundled with Cubase AI but I've got it hooked up to Sonar and Reaper as well using ASIO drivers.

I was able to get the N12 drivers installed with no problem and started with a sample rate of 128 but had some pops and clicks. Bumped it up to 256 and all is good! Cubase AI installed but when trying to register it the server I was connecting to kept giving me an error that I was not connected to the internet. I was connected so I will have to work on that some more.

Another great thing about the N12 is integration with your DAW software. It does have deeper integration with Cubase but that's too be expected since Yamaha owns Steinberg. It's nice to have some DAW controls right at the mixer and get away from the mouse. I have not explored all the integration with Cubase yet but Yamaha has some nice templates that set up your recording environment included and there's more on their website.

One thing to remember is the N12 is not a controller in the normal sense. It's a full fledged mixing console and a top notch one at that. The built in Morph compressor is very nice and so is the Reverb. There are tons of routing capabilities but the unit is simplistic in it's design. It's got some real nice monitoring features but I've yet to explore all the capabilities of the N12.

The build on this unit is rugged! Compared to my famous brand mixer it's in a different universe. My famous brand mixer was picking up noise from the overhead lights in my studio. Not with the N12, Yamaha engineers know something about shielding. The layout of the mixer is simple and you can clearly read all the text, very professional.

The D/A and A/D converters in the N12 are first class converters, very musical to my ears and combined with those awesome preamps all I can say is WOW!

At this point I can't think of any cons when buying an N12. I was a little concerned it doesn't have S/PDIF for my amp modeler but I plugged my modeler into a channel insert (which sits directly before the A/D) and then fired up the Morph compressor and I'm getting some amazing sound quality. This compressor is adding a new dimension to my modeler!

I highly recommend the N12/N8 to anyone looking for top notch sound, great I/O and buss routing capabilities and nice "analog" ease of use with a digital mixer.

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