The masters of minimalist styling at Sweden's Teenage Engineering have added a feature-packed but tiny pro audio mixer to the company's lineup, which packs built-in sounds, beats and sequencing and can also serve as a USB audio interface.
The palm-friendly TX-6 field mixer wears clean and smooth CNC-machined aluminum housing and measures just 90 x 62.5 x 15 mm (3.54 x 2.46 x 0.59 in), though a 6.3-mm audio adapter increases the length to 102 mm and the encoders raise the height to 23 mm.
The six-channel stereo mixer – though users could opt to use it as 12-channel mono – sports its own three-band equalizer, rocks custom-designed faders and encoders, features a 48 x 64-pixel monochrome OLED display, and comes with a bunch of filters, an adjustable compressor and eight digital effects to apply at will, including reverb, chorus and delay.
Out of the box, the sweet-looking knurled control knobs are used to tweak EQ but each one can be individually programmed to custom parameters and settings. Channel volume levels can be monitored on the LED VU meters, an included DJ mode enables crossfading between channel five and six and there's even an instrument tuner.
There are six stereo inputs and three stereo outs, the device benefits from a quad channel Burr-Brown analog-to-digital converter, a Cirrus Logic amplifier for the main and auxiliary outputs, and a Cirrus Logic DSP with smart codec for the cue feature.
Teenage Engineering has also included a rechargeable battery for up to eight hours of continuous per-charge use and a built-in sound generator with four oscillator waveforms and four synth drums to generate grooves while out and about.
The TX-6 can serve as a 32-bit/48-kHz USB audio interface with MIDI capabilities as well, Bluetooth LE is cooked in for wireless control of BT MIDI devices, it's MFi compatibility with iOS devices and it supports microphones on headphones too. Optional accessories include a carry pouch, strap and cables.
Tiny in stature and built to last, the TX-6 comes with a rather high price tag of US$1,199. The video below has more.
Product page: TX-6
Maybe a separate remote input box and multi core connecting cable to mixer might have been the answer.
The electronics seem interesting, its just the total lack of practical usability that lets them down in a very big way, Lots of good small mixers out there with a lot lower price tag, they are of course bigger but for very good reasons!
Perhaps a revamp, put the electronics into a box with decent standard connectors and use a smartphone/tablet as the main control surface, now that would be interesting.
Soundcraft and Behringer both make remote digital mixers with similar features and (mostly) standard inputs, that sell for less than 1/2 the price.