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List Price: $59.99
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- Premium ultra low-noise, high headroom analog mixer
- State-of-the-art Xenyx mic preamp comparable to standalone boutique preamps
- Neo-classic "British" 2-band EQ for warm and musical sound
- Main mix, stereo CD/tape plus separate headphone outputs
- CD/tape inputs assignable to headphone output or main mix outputs
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I am rapidly becoming a huge fan of Behringer. Their products are very inexpensive yet are of top quality. This mixer is another example of that rule.
The mixer is solid and has a *superlative* sound or should I say LACK of sound it's completely noiseless. Tone controls work wonderfully and the unit is solid, easy to work, and a true bargain at around $40. (I *really* like having an XLR input for my microphone.) I only have three small points that keep this from being a perfect machine:
1. I'd like the output jacks to be on the BACK of the unit rather than on the top. When I have everything plugged in it my cables stick up all over the place. It ends up being rather unwieldy. I bought this unit because I thought it would be a space-saver; it would be except that all my cables sprout up from the top of it.
2. No rubber feet. I put this on a hard table and it slid around a bit. It physically rattled some too, since the table is not perfectly flat. Add the sprouting up cables and you get an unwieldy unit that slides around the table and can rattle. The feet are easy to fix, however go to your local hardware store and buy some stick-on rubber feet.
3. The blue LED power indicator is way too bright. It's almost distracting and can actually make it hard to see/look at the board. A more subtle LED (red, yellow, green) would work just fine, thanks, no need to wow us with the latest Blue LED technology.
Other than that, if you're looking for an inexpensive mixer with an amazing sound and feature set, this is the unit for you. Highly recommended.
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This is an awesome unit. I HIGHLY recommend it! Quality is supreme! I'd say the quality is on par with Mackie! The 1/4 inch jacks are rock solid, the metal frame is extremly sturdy and it is dead silent. This is one of the best purchases I've made for my home studio. I'm sure it has the quality to handle gigs as well with no problem. It's 'beefy' and solid in every way. I cannot believe this was only $45. I don't know how they do it for that price. I run my guitar in stereo, my keyboard in stereo and the stereo tape input lets me run my PC into it as well, and I STILL have the mic input if I need it! Just great! Highly recommended! Well done Behringer!!!
Read Best Reviews of Behringer XENYX502 5-Channel Mixer Here
It's small, it's compact and it works! And what a bargain price..I actually when back and bought the 802 for the band rehearsals and use the 502 for the recording studio. For amateurs this is a good starting point of getting familiar with using mixers. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because the instruction are poorly written; it's like two pages..I just had to experiment. Yet, it's a bargain and I'm pleased.
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I am a bedroom DJ connecting his laptop and a microphone to some my sound system and before I bought this mixer I would have to walk behind my powered speakers to turn down the microphone and input volumes down manually. Now that I have this fantastic little device I can do all of that without walking away from my MIDI controller.
This mixer (or one like it) is a must-have middle-man if you're running a microphone to a powered speaker. Before when I connected my microphone to my APS15, there was an audible hiss coming from the speaker even when the switch on the microphone was off! Now that I connect my mic to the XENYX502 first, there's no hiss so I can just switch my mic on and off without worrying about compromising the music quality at the same time. This is due to the built-in pre-amp in this mixer, which improves overall sound input quality. Plus there are high and low EQs on the mixer specifically for the microphone, so I can turn down the lows if someone has a particularly deep voice to increase their audibility to an audience.
With a good number of input and output slots you can really get creative with what you're using this for. For example you can plug in an iPhone to the microphone jack and use it as a sampler or to just play music through. Or you can use the separate headphone-out port to connect to a computer's mic-in port so you can record what you're playing through the mixer while people can hear it through the speakers.
Finally, this thing is built incredibly well. It looks and feels very professional and is dense and heavy like a real professional audio accessory should. It makes my adjacent midi-controller (the Numark Mixtrack) look like a toy!
Overall this is a fantastic mixer and really does everything you need for a very low cost. Yes the LED light is too bright, but some electrical tape fixes that up just fine. An on/off switch would've been cool too, but there's no reason you can't just leave this plugged in all the time; especially if you cover up the power LED.
This thing really is useful. I started using one as a simple headphone/monitor control for a DAW here and it sits nicely by the computer keyboard. I've since bought a second one and modded the first with some opamp swaps and a less-bright orange power LED (as noted by another reviewer). I also had coincidentally added rubber feet to both of mine to handle that sliding around issue.
Another reviewer mentioned the mic pre going full blast at the very end of the trim knob range. Both mine have this to a degree, but one is way more pronounced. The pot itself is a good part of it (I swapped pots between the two), but it may be the circuit as well. I haven't tried to resolve that yet and it isn't that big of a deal here.
Wishes-Phantom power as others have mentioned. A single clean pre which could also do condensers would be great. Also, there is no easy way to grab the mic signal without including the full mix. A pre-fader direct out for the mic channel, or an insert jack which could be used like that would make it a lot more useful for tracking vocals and stuff where you needed the rest of the mixer for DAW/monitor duty. BTWI don't believe there's a newer 502 with phantom as mentioned in another review. He may be thinking of the 802. I bought one of those a few days ago too. Seems nice too, but there's nothing like the compact size of that smaller one.
Take Care
PSLooks like my first one was bought used in 2007. The second was within a year of that and they're in use most of the day, so I guess they've had ample time to break if they were going to. ;)
**Edit** After some fishing around, it looks like there actually may be some new modded version of this thing with phantom power, but I can't find any hard proof of it on their site, and the downloadable docs and spec sheets look the same as always. Some users mention a sticker added to newer boxes stating "Now with phantom power!", but it sounds as if there is no way to disable it or know that it's on as with the larger models. Someone else mentioned that it only measured 30vDC, but that may not be a problem. If it really has any, good for B!
