Reddit reviews Allen & Heath ZEDi-10 Hybrid Compact Mixer/4x4 USB Interface

The mics can be had fairly inexpensively (Behringer has a three pack for $40) but with 4 voices I find that having them all on a separate track is fantastic.

With a single stereo track, you can do some adjusting on the mixer, but in the end ALL voices come out together. So, overtalking can be an issue trying to edit. If someone gets a coughing fit or if someone laughs really loud and the rest snicker, etc. If you are fast enough you can usually catch it at the mixer level, but often not. And having the ability to edit individual voice tracks makes a lot of sense.

I did not do that when starting. Here is a mixer that will be in your budget but will come close to maxing you out a bit

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ATAK938/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2BR4I7RNDFL6P&colid=308EUVC8V7ROA

So you have some options, and ultimately it comes down to future ability.

Starting out, you can buy a SM58 for cheap, and it'll have pretty nice quality. It outputs mic level signal though, so it will need amped by something, which is where your choices come in.

If you're looking to keep it cheap, you can pick up an audio interface to get the mic up to a reasonable level and into your computer. Something like this. This setup will run you ~$200 in total (mic and interface), but will limit what you can do with the equipment you purchased.

If you're willing to shell out just an additional $100, you can grab a mixer like you said. This would be my recommendation. It gives you 4 mono inputs and 2 stereo inputs, opposed to the 2 mono inputs the interface above provides. It's also a fully fledged board, so you can use it for more than just getting audio from your mic into your computer. Its USB interface is pretty handy, too. It'll send 4 channels to your computer and your computer can input 2 stereo channels back to the board.

Initially I only used my board for getting my mic into my computer, but I've ended up using it for mic and guitar input into my computer, as well as computer audio & DAW output to my monitors.

The board's pretty handy, but if you don't need it there's not much reason to buy it. If you're only ever going to use one channel to get your mic into your computer, you're probably better off with the interface, as setting up the board can take some time. Plus, if you don't have studio monitors / speakers that take analog input, the board isn't going to help you in getting signal to them.

So it pretty much depends on what you need, and if you plan on expanding or not. Rule of thumb, however, is to plan ahead so you don't end up spending more buying something you could have bought earlier. And if you plan on getting serious, you're going to want to pick up some studio monitors.

But again, if you're just going to be recording some covers every now and then in your room and not much else, I'd recommend going the interface route opposed to the full on mixer route.

> I'm at the upper end of my budget

Ain't that always the way.

A headphone amp like a Behringer HA400 might be useful for sharing the mixer's phone jack but you can deal with that later.

Though the Mackie can be used as an anvil, at that price the Allen & Heath ZEDi-10 multichannel mixer gets to be interesting. Necessary, no, but interesting. I posted a respected review on this new mixer a few days ago. I have not used one myself.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ATAK938/

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The Allen & Heath ZEDi-10 is around $200 and does 4x4 over USB.

That's about a $200 piece of kit. Allen & Heath makes a similar prodect for about the same price, but with 4 in and 4 out. Might as well return it and get what you really want/need.


https://www.amazon.com/Allen-Heath-ZEDi-10-Compact-Interface/dp/B01ATAK938/