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Now that it’s a reality I think TX-6 deserves a dedicated thread for users to share thoughts, questions, and experiences w/ the new field mixer!

While criticism and complaints can form a healthy part of online discussion about tech…my hope is that negative feedback found here can be limited to experiences and impressions shared by those who own & use this new thing (and potentially sell theirs out of frustration/disappointment). Please try to honor that wish if possible :slight_smile:

All available info in summary:

USER GUIDE / DETAILED MANUAL

3rd Party Review

For those who have taken the plunge…how do you plan to fit TX-6 into your workflow??

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The 1010Music Bluebox is described as being able to handle modular level signals. Does anyone know if this can do the same? (Apols if I’ve missed it somewhere!)

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The specs say “max level 8 dBu, 2 Vrms”. 2 volts RMS is about 5.5 volts peak-to-peak, meaning ±2.75V maximum voltage swing before it starts clipping and/or misbehaving.

So if the specs are correct, it will not take modular level signals which are often ±5V and upwards - you’ll need to attenuate before going in.

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great question @teamoth
until it’s in the hands of more reviewers and users i’d assume no, it cannot

seems like something worth advertising but nothing in TE official documentation seems to indicate it will have that ability

also @anon60283851 (or anyone really) are there similar specs for op1 or opz available online? i’ve been meaning to compare dynamic range of each machine…can’t seem to find the figures tho

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TE have themselves headed down the modular road a bit haven’t they? Perhaps they’ll want to address this themselves so that their machines all work together nicely.

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glad to see this thread! still waiting on shipping, but will happily report back when i get some hands on time :cowboy_hat_face:

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OP-Z specs list dynamic range (115dB) but it’s unclear if they’ve measured that or if that’s theoretical dynamic range of the ADC or DAC. I couldn’t find similar info for OP-1.

Neither seem to have maximum input signal levels or nominal output levels specified, or at least I couldn’t find any. I guess TE sort of wanted to underline with the TX-6 that this is an actual serious device with this kind of actual demonstrated specs. (?)

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excitedly reading this now

they really don’t seem to have sent out units to influencers and media which, honestly, is quite refreshing :smile: i’ve been really frustrated by that trend a few times recently and it’s cool to see TE try something different

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I spent 2 or 3 days mad about the price but this just looks too cool. Preordered this morning.

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Minor enginerding pt. 2: the CDM article mentions it’s a 32 bit USB interface. It’s interesting they’ve gone there and I wonder if that’s for some practical reason or just for fun / for the sake of being able to say that in the specifications.

The ADC and DAC do support 32 bit word lengths, but input signal to noise is more like 18 bits and output 20 bits (if those are measured real world values, they’re very good!), so in that sense a 24 bit interface would have been way more than enough already (like practically anything except precious few field recorders with fancy multi-stage converters and super quiet preamps)

I guess we’ll find out at some point!

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i got my shipping notice today! should be here tomorrow since i live in stockholm.

so funny that this little mixer was released- i had no idea this is what their new product was going to be. but i have been looking for a small mixer for years now. i used the roland M-10MX for 10 years of touring. totally loved it so much! kind of hated the RCA jacks but overall it was amazing. it kind of eventually got worn down from so much touring, and it got replaced with the patchblocks PBMIX-3. obviously not nearly as many inputs as the roland but with one effect send. and damn, i love that little mixer!!! but i only have one and i got it after they stopped making them. now i’m so paranoid that its going to break when i’m on tour. and its only 3 inputs!

and so just last week i had put in a pre-order for one of the tangible waves VMIX-10 that i saw on the minimal mixers thread here on lines. i wasn’t excited about it at all, its about twice as big as the PBMIX-3 but it has of course way more inputs and also 2 effect sends. i did get one of those kvgear vixen mixers from the kickstarter but flipped it as soon as it arrived because it was not at all what i needed… and the VMIX-10 really reminded me of that, its almost the same design?

but then i saw the tx-6… its like a dream come true! and to those people saying that its insanely small, and who would need something that small… well: i was just flying home from paris 2 weeks ago and had the most insane experience at the airport for the return flight. i checked in my suitcase but then had a small backpack and a small handbag which had all my electronic gear in it which can’t be checked in. i get to security, go through the ticket check and then get pulled aside. 2 agents were weighing every bag of carry-on luggage. i had both my bags below the limit of weight easily but they claimed that added together they were overweight and they forced me to check in another bag! i only had soft-sided backpacks… i pulled everything from both my bags and laid it all out on the floor. then i literally did the math in my head of what would be the cheapest things to replace (though, to be clear, none of it would be cheap, i just mean cheap-er!!!) when they get broken from having to be checked. one of the things that didn’t make the cut to get carried on was my stupid big mixer. its some sort of whatever 8 channel mixer blah blah. just huge and heavy compared to all my other gear. if i would have had the tx-6 i could have just thrown it in my back pocket and gone through security!!!

but seriously, i’m always fighting the limits of how much stuff to have on tour. i had 10 suitcases for my one man show off-broadway this february. and for my carry-on stuff i was counting every single item for its shape, size, weight. it sounds silly but at least that’s where i’m at with the market i perform in, the budgets, the logistics of touring. when i write it here it sounds really kind of stupid to be so much on the edge of what is possible in terms of the scope of my touring. like, maybe i should step up my game and work out my life so i can travel with a bigger mixer?? but hey, now at least for the moment i won’t have to once my tx arrives!

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cool

i wish they had more info available but having experienced op1 and opz sound quality, whatever the specs, i was pleased

most of my new album was recorded using opz kinda like a usb mic :slight_smile:
i assume this will equal or exceed the converters there

this whole post is great and i see what you mean
i was hoping people had stories like this to share

it is a useful looking thing not just a luxury paperweight!

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nah
it’s on topic

its hard to honestly assess TX6 w/o acknowledging how special the integrated rechargeable battery is

anywhere you’ve taken your opz you can take a tx mixer and that portability is both liberating & amazingly useful

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I hope the battery is replaceable at least somehow, without resorting to iPhone level surgery - because that’s a definite killer feature, and it’d be great to be able to keep those things still running long on battery once the first one wears out.

I wonder if TE have a word out about this already? I guess for OP-Z it’s relatively easy to change a new battery if you can get a replacement, for OP-1 quite tedious but you can still do it if you dismantle most of it. I guess I’m afraid the miniaturization makes things more difficult here…

(Own a Synthstrom Deluge - it’s both superb you can run it hours on batteries AND there’s a standard 18650 “flashlight battery” inside that you can get from a local store and replace when the old one starts to feel worn out. You can fit the whole set of OP-1, OP-Z and TX-6 in the size of the Deluge though…)

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Brilliant idea. Batteries are shelf stable if they’re not in a circuit I assume? I had trouble sourcing a norns battery this year, perhaps I should have bought two!

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Good move, I saw ifixit had stock and looks like they’re an official TE partner - had stock that is, right now out of stock at least. Seems like it’s officially user replaceable as well which is great. Hope the TX-6 is more like that than the OP-1 (where it looks like the battery is quite standard and can be replaced but needs a lot of dismantling).

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With batteries I’d imagine that it’s not a custom unit as the production cost would be astronomical. I have to assume it’s an off-the-shelf, readily available, relatively cheap unit. It would be product suicide to anything else IMO which means replacing it really depends on whether they designed the unit to be opened by regular people.

Again, product suicide to make it non-changeable easily when there is zero network of authorised, capable technicians to do it (like the iphone has) and terrible press if they expect people to ship units back to them to do it (as well as that being massively unprofitable)

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My worries:

  • The OP-Z battery is easily user replaceable but I haven’t seen them for sale anywhere but TE and iFixit (who are an official TE partner), and the batteries look like they’re TE branded. They might be just some mobile phone or other battery based on the form factor, but I haven’t seen info on which off the shelf battery would work. Maybe someone else here knows?
  • The OP-1 battery looks like the kind that can be found inside Norns or some other battery-powered Raspberry PI setups so a substitute might be available via hobbyist stores, but changing the battery doesn’t look like “regular people” type job. I suppose it’s easy without specialized tools if you have the courage to pop out a bunch of keys and other parts, open a few screws underneath, dismantle ribbon connectors etc., but still not officially “user replaceable”.

The TX-6 looks so miniaturized (smaller than your modern smartphone in footprint) and packed full of things based on promotional material, that I’m hoping they didn’t have to resort to gluing things together or anything nasty like that. The battery might or might not be something easily found off the shelf, changing it may or may not require dismantling stuff out of the way… But at long as it’s at least theoretically easy to get a spare battery and possible to change one without a big risk of screwing up, as an amateur armed with small screwdrivers, tweezers and spudgers, then that’s good enough for me. :slight_smile:

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even though this thing was somewhat annhilated on Mod Wiggler…
:stuck_out_tongue:
i am curious about it.

being an avid user of the Bluebox and it’s wondrous controls and features…

does anyone have more insight on how the TX-6 handles mono signals?
it looks like it allows you to kinda balance the weight of the two incoming signals but NOT independently control them like on the Bluebox.
the Bluebox allows for complete arbitrary assignment of any incoming signal to any destination like a true digital mixer.

anyhow…the TX-6 does look amazing as all TE stuff does!
:stuck_out_tongue:

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Seems to be a lovely device. I truly have a huge soft spot for small and portable aluminium gadgets and this one also seems to be fun, since your average mixer mostly just does it’s job. On the other hand does it need all these features and gimmicks? I for myself think I would playing around with the features at first, but would end up only using the sliders :sweat_smile:

I also don’t get why there isn’t really any mid-range-priced-stuff by teenage engineering. It is either surprisingly affordable or crazy expensive IMO. There are probably more reasons why the TX-6 has it’s price tag than I’m aware of, but no - I even wouldn’t buy it when it was half the price.

I’m still curious though :slight_smile:

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