Allen & Heath Xone PX5

Amazing

Mixer is brilliant, loud as, fx are great especially if your used to a Xone send/return style of doing things and has a great option of using your own fx pedals/machines via its send/return. Also it’s great plug and play with Traktor DVS or with a preferred controller and running ableton via channel A is a great option to have allowing you, for example, a drum machine via Ableton to be played whilst still having 4 available channels for turntables/CDJ’s. Filter is great and typical of Xone mixers all though if your used to the Xone 92 it does take a while to get used too only having one. Overall a great mixer.

Well I bought this mixer from another store because it was cheaper, I did do a price match on this site but this site didn't completely match the price so I continued and bought it from another site/shop. Anyway mixer, well it has excellent sound quality and the faders feel lovely, the headphone output isn't as good sound quality as on a Pioneer DJM250 I also have. The effects on the PX5 are mediocre to be fair, I used to have a Denon DN-X1600 a few years back and the effects on that were way better. The USB functionality of the PX5 is terrible because I still can't get Traktor Scratch to work properly with it, i've set everything up properly and double checked cables and buttons and i've been using Traktor Scratch for about 6 years now so I know exactly how to set that up. But the scratch function in Traktor Scratch is disabled and after much emailing Allen & Heath and them replying they've been unable to help me and have blamed Traktor for the problem. I'd say unless you can see it working with Traktor Scratch in a shop it's a bad idea to buy the PX5 for that. Another thing I hate is the fact that the master vu meters change to cue vu meters when you press a channel cue button. This is stupid to be and pointless to be honest seeing as the mixer already has vu meters on every channel. Also adjusting the master gain control (when no channel cue button is pressed) doesn't make the master gain vu meters change at all. This is bad because it doesn't tell you if the master outputs are being clipped or not. Now the headline, the crossfade curves, well the left hand mixing curve is useless as when you slide the crossfade into the middle the sound level drops A LOT!!! I know mixing curves have to have a dip in the middle but come on not that much it's like half the voume. The middle curve is very different, if you slide into the middle for the first say 6mm or so there's nothing then SUDDENLY it fades in fast and then you have about 25mm or something in the middle where the sound doesn't change. Then as you get near the opposite side it SUDDENLY fades out fast. You have to litterally fade in and out as slow as you can to get anywhere near remotely smooth fades. Both those curves are unusable in my opinion. The sharp curve has dead space as either side for about 4mm and then BANG sound comes in, I got round this by taking the crossfade out and bending two little metal bits on the crossfade and now the sound comes fully in after about 1mm from the side. Overall it's a lovely mixer with a few things that Allen & Heath should of known better than to implement but if you can live with those problems then it's a great mixer.