Tascam LM-8ST Anyone?

[lowerhodes]

Has anybody seen or tried one of these? When it was announced about a year ago I was pretty excited about it as it had every feature I have been looking for in a rack mount line mixer. Problem is that none of the major retailers are carrying it. This is usually a red flag and a couple of vendors that claim to carry it have it marked down 50% or more from list. Another flag. Usually this suggests either a product which failed right out of the gate or a major distribution issue. So, anybody?

[DanS]

I bought one off these guys. .

I waited a long time for it, with many release date revisions, and actually cancelled the order initially, then started shopping around for something else.

 

Been using it for about 5 months. No probs. It might be marked down because it lists for $550, and isn't worth that much.

It's a bare bones, well built, decent quality mixer.

 

[lowerhodes]

Thanks for the reply Dan. Are you using this to send identical signals to the FOH and your own monitors simultaneously? And if so, has that been problem free?

[DanS]

That's exactly what I'm doing, and no probs.

Aux1 to the K10, and Aux2 to FOH, with independant control over the volume to each.

[Todd Ague]

I just picked one of these up and think it's a great mixer for keyboardists. The LM-8ST's two sets of (L/R) XLR outputs offer flexible routing to onstage amps and FOH -- you can send a mix to your onstage monitors that's completely independent of the one you send to FOH.

 

The 1/4" buss outs/buss ins aren't directly promoted as a stereo effects send/return, but it appears that's what they are. Given that, you can choose to only add effects to the XLR outputs feeding your onstage monitor amp(s), and leave the XLR outputs feeding FOH dry -- or you can go vice versa or include effects in both XLR outputs.

 

All 1/4" inputs and 1/4"/XLR outputs are BALANCED! This is very cool given that balanced 1/4" cables work fine for both unbalanced and balanced 1/4" outputs on keyboards. If you're connecting, say, a Roland RD-700's balanced 1/4" outputs to a pair of 1/4" inputs on the LM-8ST using balanced TRS 1/4" cables, you'll have a quiet, balanced connection all the way.

 

If you have your LM-8ST rack mounted with synth modules in the same rack, you can just used balanced cables to connect module outputs to the mixer inputs (even if the module's outputs are unbalanced). I buy my cables from MonoPrice, and they're so well-made and inexpensive that I just buy balanced.

 

My monitor amps are stereo Motion Sound amps (KPS100 and KPS200 -- only one is used per gig depending on size of gig), both of which have 1/4" unbalanced stereo inputs. I use MonoPrice balanced XLR male to 1/4" TRS cables to go from one set of the LM-8ST's XLR outputs to the Motion Sound amp's 1/4" unbalanced inputs. This works great, and I can use these same cables for other purposes, too (e.g., 1/4" balanced out of the RD-700 to XLR mixer inputs for recording.

 

Overall, this mixer sounds really good -- it's high headroom, low noise, easy to adjust and is well-built (Made in China, but apparently to TASCAM's high standards).