There is also the popular Zoom R16 mixer/recorder/interface, which runs on USB power or batteries. It’s surprisingly light weight and flat and works great as a stand-alone mixer and eight track recorder. I’ve been using mine for years
Good point! In fact That’s what I’m currently looking into. Unfortunately most of the power solutions I can find online are pretty hard to find here in Italy.
This one (mentioned also in the minimal mixers thread) should work with a 9v battery:
https://en.uraltone.com/uraltone-tube-sounding-micro-mixer-rakennussarja-15515.html?___store=english
My bandmate has one, I like the design! Not what you would call a transparent sound though.
Now that I think of it, the TC Helicon Blender basically has 3 stereo AUX busses, hmm… that is starting to sound like a very interesting thing to me!!!
I’m giving this little “cheap and cheerful” box a chance: “Moukey Ultra Low-Noise 4-Channel Line Mixer” (Amazon) (Aliexpress). For power it asks for 5V/1A over micro USB.
For a quick and dirty 4-channel stereo-capable “mixer” it’s …fine. Utilitarian, that’s it. Haven’t pushed it to see where it really falls apart, but all I wanted was an option smaller than a K-Mix, 3 line-level instruments in stereo, battery-powered as an option (not passive), and in stock (at the time). If I’ll need proper balanced inputs, metering, etc, then I’ll need the K-Mix or larger anyways.
I have one of these and haven’t really used it because the dang thing doesn’t have a headphone out. which you wouldn’t think would be such a problem, but who wants to have to adapter out of the LR outs and into a BT speaker or whatever. it’s not like nady didn’t have a headphone amp circuit floating around.
I’ve owned the Behringer Xenyx 1002B for a few years now and it’s served me well. I personally haven’t used it with batteries so I can’t attest to the battery life, but (I think) Luss is running it on batteries in this jam video. I believe it takes 3 9V batteries.
Cool little mixer. I also have the Nady one mentioned above, I wouldn’t recommend it based on mine, which starts to self oscillate after about 20 minutes of use.
Correction - The Nady mixer I have is a different model, I have the MM-141
There’s the MyVolts MickXer (5 channel, passive, iirc), unfortunately the site is down atm.
There’s a trendier, flashier Blender (well, it’s round, like a fat hockey puck) from someone else, but I can’t remember the make. Istr it had a built-in speaker, can be managed from a phone app… Not being much help
The Field Kit has a built-in mixer plus all the other FK goodness!
And there’s the Yamaha AG ones:
This is my favorite mixer so far. I used it with batteries for years. Never had any problems, love it forever!
i have the zoom r16 and it’s great. it also lets me record my hardware jams without a computer which is even better. the only ding is the level metering is not very high resolution but most of the other suggestions miss that too
@klingklangmatze since you seem to have the Blender, how does it work with mono signals? Does it split them to LR or do you get signal only on one side?
No, it remains mono (one-sided) in standalone mode.
Alternative: I know you’re not a big fan of these apps…but you can connect the Blender via USB to an IPhone/IPad, send it through the eg Garage Band or another DAW, define the input as mono there, and do stereo monitoring with the Blender. This way you can use 12 mono inputs.
After using the Moukey 4-channel line mixer for about week now, I’m quite happy with it for the price. It’s ‘clean enough’ to be a live mixer, and 4x stereo inputs hits what I need. It runs just fine off of a typical battery bank.
The One Annoyance to keep in mind is that it will make a pop when power is connected, even when output and all inputs are turned down.
So I have bought TC Helicon Blender (thanks @klingklangmatze) and so far happy with this one. Built quality is indeed very plasticky but it is quite compact and just really great to connect to AUM and record some jam on the floor without AC outlets. Using buttons and one encoder turned up easy too.
I got a Moukey MAMX1 4-channel and have to give it the as well. Super tiny, exactly the features I wanted (stereo or mono on a per-channel basis, per-channel and master level control), easy to power off of either a USB power bank or wall wart, built like a tank, and basically noise-free. I got the 4-channel and I think they have a 6-channel one too