Allen & Heath Xone:43C 4 + 1 Channel DJ Mixer with Soundcard

I did a huge research before buy it. I don't regret it at all. This mix met all my expectations. I just have it for a month without any issue. Maybe the only disadvantages are its size, it is a huge mix compared to the normal 2 chanel scratch mixers. And the needs of pay for the DVS activation package ($100 additional of the mix costs)

Have had this for about a month now and I like it so far. Excellent sound quality for analog, mid level sound quality using the buiilt in DAC.Has a few quirks that I am getting used to, since its by first Allen & Heath, but easy to use for the most part.

This mixer is exactly what o thought it was going to be. A perfect mix of analog sound and a digital sound card to make connecting to a DVS and recording, very easy. This is a mixer you have for life.

The best.

TL;DR review, but if you're about to spend $1000 you might want to spend a minute reading up on some of its pitfalls.For me, the Xone 43C mixer was meant to be a big step up. I've used a Rane TTM56 for the past 8 years and it has served me very well, but the promise of 1. Integrated Serato support (sans external pass-through SL box) 2. High quality usb output built into the mixer for recording vinyl / streaming live sets, and of course 3. THAT ALLEN & HEATH FILTERm were enough to make me switch.What a terrible, terrible mistake. Here's the problems I've found over the past month or two.1. BUILT IN SOUND CARD ISSUESYou'd think a high quality, high priced Allen & Heath mixer which specifically offers a built in usb soundcard would be great for recording audio?? Nope, not the case. Since the soundcard is primarily built for DVS integration via Traktor / Serato, the default of this mixer's built in soundcard is to send every channel at extremely extremely low volume level, meaning vinyl will have to be boosted ~ 20dB after the fact. That might be OK if you're doing one-off recordings (well, maybe not. - no idea what additional effect this might have on the noise floor of the recording or sound quality vs actually recording a pre-amped source). But if you had any hopes of plugging the mixer into your laptop for real time audio use (live streaming, etc) you can forget about it,In theory, there is way to reroute some of the audio outputs and have it send a "record out" signal, but this requires opening the whole mixer up and physically moving jumpers around on the circuit boards. Yeah, sure, let me get right on that, so Icanh open it back up an hour later and flip them back when I want to use it for DVS again.Even if you do switch it over to send record out through the USB, I'm guessing the record out is next to useless and has similar line level issues because.2. THE RECORD OUT RCA CHANNEL SENDS AT AN UNUSABLY LOW LEVEL AND HAS NO GAIN KNOB.This is in contrast to the booth output, which has a gain knob. Thus, the easiest workaround is to use that output instead for recordings. Still, I'm guessing some people might want to use BOTH simultaneously? Here, even if you were to try to use an external USB sound card to record via the "record in" RCA output, you'll have similar gain issues.Regardless of that, you might want to hold off recording any mixes with this for a while after getting it, because you're mixing might sound a bit jumpy due to3. TERRIBLE AND INFLEXIBLE CROSSFADE CURVESSimilar to the 4 channel Pioneer mixes which the Xone43c seems "inspired" by, there's 3 fixed crossfade curves on the Xone43C. Two extra sharp ones for scratching, and one linear for smooth crossfades. Only the linear one isn't smooth at all - it's basically silent 1/2 way to the center (1/4 way across the crossfader path), then jumps up massively in volume over the next half an inch.I realize most people don't use the crossfader for smooth mixing; I do since I like to adjust the pitch faders with one hand while slowly moving the crossfader across with the other, rather than bouncing between two volume faders. But I can't imagine why ANYONE would want this particular crossfade curve, where a solid 1/2 of the total crossfade distance doesn't do anything?Oh yeah, Allen And Heath's Response to this: No big deal, you can just spend an extra $290 replacing their terrible crossfader with an "Allen & Heath Innofader". You could try to buy a standard innofader but despite claiming to be Innofader compatible, they botched that up and their mixer is not directly compatible and standard innofaders require several tweaks before being sent by the manufacturer in order to work.I guess this expectation for throwing more money at an already not-cheap mixer shouldn't be surprising given that4. SERATO DVS SUPPORT REQUIRES AN EXTRA $160 PURCHASEThis wasn't a huge surprise and is noted in some reviews, but yes despite this being the DVS-compatible / digital ready version of the mixer, with a big fat serato logo on it, you'll have to pay $160+ to buy DVS control in Serato DJ. At least give us a discount or something???Speaking of Serato DJ Support, one more infuriating feature is the:5. INFLEXIBLE DVS / ROUTING OPTIONSIf you're buying a 4 channel mixer, it sure would be nice to keep 2 channels assigned for vinyl and 2 for digital, right? No flicking the tiny signal faders back and forth between vinyl and digital? Yeahhhh, NOT GONNA WORK HERE. Whatever channels on the mixer your turntables are plugged into, have to be the channels which the DVS controlled serato is sent to. So if you have your turntables plugged into 2 and 3, those will have to be the channels which serato DJ sends audio back through (provided you want to control it via DVS). End result? mixing 2 channels of vinyl and 2 channels of digital on a 4 channel mixer, you're left using 2 channels, constantly toggling tiny plastic switches from "usb" to "phono" and back over and over throughout sets. At least the TTM56 had solid transform switches for this!!Speaking of those shoddy plastic switches, let's talk about the6. SHODDY DESIGN PLACEMENT OF FX SEND KNOBSTake a look at the picture of the front of the mixer. Notice the 4 largest rotary knobs running across the center of the mixer, dominating everything else? Surely those are for a crucial feature, maybe used for those famous Allen & Heath filters? No, those are actually just fx send knobs which control the signal strength to the FX send. Without having an effect actually plugged in (as most users won't) they basically sit there waiting to be accidentally knocked with your wrist while moving the actually-useful 3 band EQ knobs above. When this happens, you might not even notice at first, but that channel will suddenly start sending at a slightly lower volume level until the knob is moved back to the "DRY" position. So, basically they're a giant nuisance and a mixing error waiting to happen.One last thing:7. OTHER SOUND CARD ISSUESWith latest OSX El Capitain, after a while the USB stops registering in either Serato DJ or in a DAW over time. This is intermittent and might just be for some users, but it happens to me and I've received no replies from Allen and Heath over it after initial contact....but hey, at least the filter sounds good?TL;DR: at least for my relatively simple purposes, this mixer is a complete waste and I can't wait to sell mine and get anything else.

This mixer is Traktor Scratch Certified as of Traktor Pro version 2.11.3 so this mixer now supports BOTH of the major DJ software platforms used by professional DJs. If you thought you had to buy a Pioneer Nexus mixer to get a mixer that supports DVS Traktor and Serato, think again.For Serato, you can upgrade to the Serato Club kit for $160 (unless you get a deal in one of their semi--annual sales). Serato supports a lot of controllers but I suggest Reloop's Neon, which is affordable and supports four decks, as the most affordable option to pair with this mixer.For Traktor, two X1 mk2's (which each include a $50 credit you can use for the $99 price of Traktor Scratch) you have a ~$1300 option that is extremely full featured.It's very important to understand that the large knobs on each channel are dry/wet knobs for effects send and return, not a 'combo hi and lo' filter. The combination of a low and high pass filter on the same knob is a feature that only digital mixers / controllers offer because software enables that kind of feature. Allen and Heath's Voltage Control Filter is analog (it can still be integrated into the send and return loop to be controlled by the knobs) so there are inherent differences based on the underlying technology (analog integrated circuit versus a sound card + midi control features)The bottom line for a Serato or Traktor user is that for ~$1200+ with Serato or ~$1300+ with Traktor you can have a great analog mixer with nearly all of the key features that digital mixers have, plus the benefit of analog summing so that you can have a true 'jacking' sound when beat-matching two (phrasing too?) tracks and then mix in and out a third.I also want to address a low review score from a couple years ago which would mislead you because I think the perspective of the person who reviewed this mixer didn't understand the difference between an analog mixer, which the 43C is, and a digital mixer, which all of Pioneer's DJM series are as well as Allen & Heath's DB series, because the reviewer describes a 'sound card' issue which is simply inherent to the design of an analog mixer with a signal path where the sound-card does a Digital to Analog conversion before sending audio to four different analog sound channels. Yes, this means that you must specifically address how to record your set but if you use either Traktor or Serato you probably should just record in the software and remaster/refine those tracks in a DAW if you want to release the best possible sounding 'live' mix.This is a professional DJ mixer so you need to understand whether you want a digital mixer or an analog mixer before purchasing.