Saturday, February 25, 2023

Rides in the Storm XXM

Rides in the Storm XXM is a great simple mixer for the price, and it does more than meets the eye.

Although this isn't listed anywhere in the documentation: A1 is normaled to B1, A2 is normaled to B2, A3 is normaled to B3, and A4 is normaled to B4. At first this "surprise" slightly annoyed me because I wanted to treat it like two separate four channel mixers, where I could leave the levels set, and have the outputs go to two different effect chains, but when I plugged into A1, it would leak over to B1 unless I turned that knob all the way down.  But, after realizing this, what I actually use this for now is sending Channel A to dry output, and Channel B to my DSP effect (usually some sort of reverb.)  This lets me adjust the dry and wet signal separately on up to four sources.

For some people, the presence of the Inverting output on Channel A could be incredibly useful.  Channel A is DC Coupled (will retain a voltage offset, for LFOs or Control Voltages), and Channel B is jumper configurable to be either AC or DC Coupled.

The build quality is nice.  The front panel is thick.  The oval holes give it some wiggle room which is nice if it ends up adjacent to any slightly off modules.

If I could change one small thing, I would re-arrange it so all the patch points were on the bottom end instead of split between top and bottom.

Thomann has this listed for only $52 at the time I'm writing this.

I'll probably get a second XXM in the future.

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