Hola dopers!
I was looking at an Akai Powered Mixer. It’s relatively inexpensive, but I was wondering about quality. Does anyone here have anything to say about Akai musical products?
punk snot dead,
broccoli!
Well, you can’t abuse the cheaper brands like you can the more quality oriented brands. I used the cheaper stuff for low volume 4-track and rough recording work with varying degrees of success. For jamming and shows on the other hand, you want something that will sound good when you push it and won’t blow up. (Keep in mind the style of music I was putting my gear through was punk/grind/metal which typically is played quite loud. The demands are significant as you need not only volume but clarity through the distortion and million-mile-an-hour pickwork)
IMHO, spend the extra money. I still have the Peavey Bass stack that 15yrs ago the whole band played through.
I’ve used Akai recording equipment and thought it performed just fine. No first hand experience with their PA stuff.
Dewt’s right though, one of the things that tends to get sacrificed with (ahem) inexpensive gear is durability. If the mixer seems to do the job for you and the price is right, I’d go for it , keeping in mind you’ll probably want to take a little more care packing and transporting it.
I think I recall Bass Player Magazine having a survey of powered mixers, but I can’t find a link on their web site and I’m too lazy to go downstairs and skim through 40-50 issues to find it. You might try a Google search and see if you can get any more info on performance, durability, etc.
good luck.
I’ve got an akai synth (ax80) from about 20 years ago, still going strong and its been horibly abused. Most of the akai stuff I have delt with seems to be pretty well made, though maybe not in in the Allen and Heath catagory. Try the mixer out, if it works, and sounds ok, and the price is right, buy it.