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Sound Devices MixPre-3 and MixPre-6
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    Sound Devices, LLC, the audio manufacturer whose products are trusted for award-winning productions including La La Land, Mad Max: Fury Road and Game of Thrones, announces the launch of its new groundbreaking product line, the MixPre Series of audio recorders with integrated USB audio interface. The lightweight, robust, ultra-portable MixPre-3 and MixPre-6 are the perfect audio companions for musicians, sound designers, podcasters and videographers. Available now for $649 and $899 respectively, Sound Devices’ MixPre Series marks the first time the industry pioneer is bringing its high-end, professional audio innovations to the wider consumer market.

    The 3-input/5-track MixPre-3 and the 6-input/8-track MixPre-6 feature Sound Devices’ groundbreaking new Kashmir™ microphone preamps. These high-performance, ultra-low-noise, discrete, Class-A microphone preamps with analog limiters are custom-engineered by Sound Devices. This sophisticated design ensures high quality, professional-grade audio recordings.

    “Our new Sound Devices MixPre Series is the culmination of decades of experience designing products for the best-of-the-best in the professional audio industry,” says Matt Anderson, CEO of Sound Devices, LLC. “Our mic preamps simply have to be heard to be believed, whether mic’ing drums, birds, or dialog, using condenser, dynamic, or ribbon mics. The MixPre-3 and MixPre-6 merge the latest advances in audio technology with an unintimidating, compact and rugged design. Not to mention they’re both very affordable. These products are a must-have piece of equipment for anyone ranging from production engineers and musicians to YouTubers.”

    Some of the unique features of the MixPre Series include:

    • Superior professional-grade audio – state-of-the-art, custom-engineered Kashmir mic preamps with analog limiters and new 32-bit A-to-D converters.
    • USB audio interface – record while streaming USB audio at the same time; ideal for mixing or recording podcasts, Skype interviews and video blogs. Also serves as a useful backup by recording to an SD card.
    • Compact and durable – the pocket-sized MixPre-3 is one of the smallest products in its class. Both the MixPre-3 and the slightly larger MixPre-6 are the perfect size for jobs on the run. They are also constructed with a die-cast aluminum chassis making them robust, yet extremely lightweight.
    • Touchscreen – sunlight-readable, color LCD using IPS touch-screen technology for the ultimate in convenient navigation.
    • Full-featured mixer – equipped with ergonomic gain controls for fast and accurate mixing, and a custom-designed, wide-bandwidth headphone amp for monitoring. Also includes pan and soloing plus circular LED metering.
    • Mobile app – built-in Bluetooth Smart(R) Technology enables control from the Sound Devices free Wingman app. Users can start/stop recording, enter/edit metadata, as well as arm, disarm and rename tracks on the MixPre recorder from a mobile device. The Wingman app is available for iOS from the App Store.
    • Camera mounting – as an added benefit to DSLR users, the MixPre Series also have retractable 1Ž4″-20 mounting capacity making them a perfect pairing for a wide variety of cameras.

    The MixPre-3 and MixPre-6 offer many similarities in terms of functionality but differ in size and I/O capabilities. The MixPre-3 offers up to a 5-in/2-out USB audio interface with 3 discrete mic preamps, and the ability to stream up to 3 analog inputs (including 3 high-quality mic inputs) + 2-channel mix over USB. The MixPre-6 offers up to an 8-in/4-out USB audio interface with 4 mic preamps and streams up to 6 analog inputs (including 4 high-quality mic inputs) + 2-channel mix over USB to a Mac or Windows computer. In addition, the MixPre-6 features XLR / 1Ž4” combo inputs allowing 1Ž4” line-input sources to be connected directly. Both models record to a removable SD, SDHC or SDXC media card.

    Both MixPre recorders come with Basic and Advanced modes. Designed to allow a user to start recording right out of the box, the Basic mode takes the guesswork out of audio recording and is intended for simple 2-channel mix applications, such as interviews, video blogs, music or podcasts. The Advanced mode offers more experienced audio enthusiasts access to multi-channel recording and advanced settings, such as metering, routing, timecode, trim gain, stereo channel linking, headphone presets and more. The MixPre Series also has several convenient powering options from AA batteries sleds to hot-swappable L-Mount battery power. It can also be powered via USB to a computer or optional wall-mount accessory.

  • 71 Replies sorted by
  • Last year Zoom was SD killer with their great f4/f8. But now SD makes much more interesting product for same price. Wow! I have SD pix-lr, and it is flawles tool, wide DR, rich clear preamps and poweful analog limiter, always great recording and sound levels monitoring right under the video monitor. And this new thing will be mine asap!

  • @1917

    Such things need wireless audio and wireless timecode build in. Ala Zaxcom, but patents hold it.

  • They appear to have HDMI timecode and start/stop, which previously only existed on the Tascam 701D and Atomos devices. This is a great feature for DSLR video I think.

  • This is awesome news. SD MixPre and UsbPre have been holding their prices on eBay. But now SD is offering better products with lower prices. Finally.

  • But do these have an analog limiter?

  • yes, very good ones. Mine arrived yesterday.

    Only complaint so far is that the touchscreen is a bit small. I have narrow fingers, but have nails on my right hand because I play classical guitar. It makes controlling some of the functions a bit fiddly.

    Also, the 4 AA battery sled will not last a super long time so other power solutions using the usb c are needed, which of course makes it a bit less portable.

    It can't be overstated how incredibly tiny this thing is. It really is palm sized. I have the 3, not the 6.

  • There is the v-lock sled available? I can't work that at @_OZ

  • There is L Battery sled, not vlock.

  • :-/ well there is always external power over USB, but it would be nice to "hack the sled" to have a nice strong power connection. My Tascam uses micro USB and it sometimes gets loose.

  • I think the idea is to have 4 AA batteries in the sled and use the usb C connection with external battery. That way if the connection comes loose or if the external batteries die, the 4 AA in the sled continue to power the recorder.

    BTW, USB C connection feels more secure than micro usb. Not totally secure, but definitely better than micro usb.

  • That's good. Have you tried a swap over to make sure there is no audible glitch? I find with the Tascam power swap over causes a small spike. Nothing that RX can't fix. But seriously, what can't RX fix?!? :-)

  • Unboxing

  • This really seems like sound device of my dreams. I only wonder how noisy headphone amp is. That was the only defect of USBPre 2.

    EDIT: SD claims the headphone amp should be great, and a review I found confirms it: "Talking of hearing - the headphone amp is also fantastic - clean and powerful, as SoundDevices say in their promos."

  • Yes, the headphone amp is really good. Drives all of my headphones from closed back location cans like the sony mdr's all the way through my Sennheiser HD650's with ease, not noisy at all, and more volume than you would ever need.

  • Really interested in the MixPre6. Can anyone share thoughts on SD card issues? I have a few tascams and they are not capable of recovering from SD errors (relocating bad sectors) this isn't a media issue- as they are approved cards.

    I know the zoom is very good at recovering from errors (it continues recording- and doesn't crash)

  • @alcomposer

    Why they do not make recorders with two SD card slots? Can solve all issues and cheap.

  • Iirc zoom has a dual sd slot. However it wouldn't matter if tascam have 1000 SD slots. When it hits an error it crashes. Crazy stupid- even a gh2 doesn't have this issue!

    Zoom also don't have analog limiters. MixPre is analog limiter.

  • Zoom also don't have analog limiters. MixPre is analog limiter.

    I think it is quite old story. In modern CPU based recorders it does not really matter, if gain is digitally controlled (and it is in almost all). Implementation can be slightly lacking, but it is more question to programmers and engineers.

    In present reality all design of digital recorders is horrible and does not match existing chips.

  • I would much prefer to use an analog limiter if I will use this for show recording from desk. (which is my main purpose) as I can't constantly monitor the mix. Remember that the Tascam's DR70d limiter adds 12db of noise, which normally shouldn't be an issue- only if there are quite sections of audio.

    The audio could peak without me knowing, and I need some reassurance that it won't turn into digital rubbish.

    Has anyone have experience with the MixPre6 and SD Cards? Are they reliable, any issues similar to Tascam DR70d? (such as erasing SD Card causes unit to have write errors?):

    V1.13 FIXES... When using the erase format function, writing speed would slow and a Write Timeout error would occur sometimes. This has been fixed.

    (Mind you I have run 1.13 and still experienced this issue, so I don't know if its fixed)

  • I would much prefer to use an analog limiter if I will use this for show recording from desk. (which is my main purpose) as I can't constantly monitor the mix. Remember that the Tascam's DR70d limiter adds 12db of noise, which normally shouldn't be an issue- only if there are quite sections of audio.

    Tascam's DR70d has dual level recording on top of this. Looking at specs it is -12 db, so actually your limiter noise can come from implementation where it just use backup channel and pushes it up.

    One thing that I also understand that Tascam does not care about limiter performance much, as well as Zoom. At least for now. As good design allows to make digital limiter without all issues that show.

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    And this is really wrong understanding of digital limiter.

    In reality in Tascam such limiter seem to be made such

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    And this is proper implementation

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