Allen & Heath Xone 43

By far the best mixer I have owned. Easy to use and a build quality unmatched. All I can say is Buy .....you won't be disappointed

I've had a Gemini PS-626 mixer for about 22 years and when it started giving up on me I started shopping around for a new mixer. I knew I needed at least three channels and four would be nice but there didn't seem to be that many 4-channel club mixers about. A friend of mine has a Xone:23 which I thought was amazing when I used it. All of the controls are solid and have a reassuring resistance on them (with the exception of the crossfader, which is smooth as butter. I loved this little mixer but as I was going to use it at home with a Pioneer DDJ, a laptop and a pair of 1210s plugged into it, the little 23 was not going to cut it. I bit the bullet and coughed up what I thought was a lot of money for the Xone:43. A massive box arrived. When I opened it, I was overjoyed with the build quaility of the product. It came with a little packet of spare knobs and two different power leads (UK and two-pin European if I remember rightly. I was also very pleased to see that the build quality and feel of the Xone:23 was also here in the 43. I spent the evening cabling all my gear in and having a play with the mixer. Everything felt immediately familiar. Everything was in the right place and ergonomically, it felt like an easy transition from my old Gemini mixer to this new beast (and it is a beast at about 30 centimetres wide and slightly more front to back). My final favourite feature about this mixer is the Innofader compatibility. I may never have a use for a replacement crossfader, but I have heard good things about Innofader and was pleased to find that you can swap out the standard unit on the Xone:43. That said, the OEM crossfader (and the three curve options) that comes with the mixer is so incredibly smooth that you'll probably never need to. Once the balanced XLR outputs were connedcted up, the sound coming out was awesome. All I have to do now is get the hang of the effects controls, which brings me on to my only complaint and that is more about the support for the mixer that the unit itself. Not being familiar with the world of external effects units, I found that there was a dissapointing lack of information about compatible external effects units for use with the Xone:43's effects send/receive connections.

bought as an upgrade from the Xone:42. the channel faders are quite a bit shorter which i prefer and the knobs have a nicer feel to them, feels a bit smoother to mix on. there is no button/switch to assign the filters to the cross fader, like on the 42, which i was a bit disappointed about. also the lights for each channel are more difficult to read than the blue ones on the 42 but got used to it after a few weeks. i found that the trim/gain doesnt need to be turned up as much to hit 0 on sound level. if you are looking to upgrade from the 42 like i did then i would suggest keeping the 42 as there isnt a massive difference but it is a good quality, well built mixer