Phonic Helix Board 24 Universal 24-Input 4-Subgroup Mixer with USB 2.0 & FireWire Interface

It is a great board for live events but we bought it for recording and the USB port does not work at all. We can still use it.

This mixer just died two days after the one-year warranty expired. I opened a support case on Phonic's site, and they replied after two days. They paid for a repair, and it's as good as new again!The issue was with some capacitors in the power supply. They died, and ended up taking a voltage regulator with them.Other than this issue, the board has been fantastic. The preamps are nice and quiet and I get really great-sounding recordings from this board. It is as good or better than my friend's much more expensive Mackie board.

Pros: You can't find anything else at this price point that does 24-bit/96khz recording over 16 channels (18 counting the master bus). The nearest competitor product is over twice as much in cost. The pres are relatively transparent, and the live feature set is exceeds the Mackie VLZ-pro 1604 (16 channels, 4 simultaneous AUX groups per channel, 4 sub groups) as this includes an internal FX module, a crossover on the mono-output, and multiple routing options from the PC back in. Without exaggeration, it is INSANELY feature rich at its price point.Cons: I have had a nightmare getting the thing to behave in my studio. It is finally stable, but I had problems with dropouts (when the digital stream to a DAW craps out), audio clicks and pops, bad firmware updates, etc. The first one I bought did not even connect to a PC, although all the analogue features worked. Luckily, there was another one in stock that did not have this problem.So here are the solutions to the problems I had: First, you have to have a unit that is devoid of manufacturing flaws (at this price point, manufacturing tolerances are much looser, resulting in less consistency off the line). Keep your receipt. Once you have a fully-functioning unit, make sure you have the most current driver for your Windows system. If you use a Mac, and you use the USB 2.0 port (it has both USB and Firewire options), it must have the most current firmware installed on it or the Mac won't recognize the USB device. Firmware flashes are supported from Windows systems only, so if you must update the firmware, you will need a Windows machine.Once you have the most current driver and firmware in place, you want to make sure that you plug the device into a USB 2.0 port rather than a USB 3.0 port. While 3.0 is supposed to be backwards compatible with 2.0, this doesn't seem to always apply to audio interfaces (http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/06/usb-3-0-backwards-compatible-in-theory-but-some-audio-drivers-arent-cooperating/) and this was certainly the case for my setup. I had irreconcilable pops and clicks in audio that resolved when I moved from a 3.0 to a 2.0 port on a Dell XPS 17 running Win 7. If your system passes latency tests (check with http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml) and your buffer settings on the interface control panel are reasonable, then you may be experiencing the 3.0/2.0 issue.Now that I have the darn thing connected and running without pops and clicks, I LOVE it. But I'm an experienced audio engineer as well as an experienced IT engineer, so figuring this stuff out is something I am willing to do. This does well as both my live and studio console, so it is worth it to me. If you want everything to work out of the box, you will want to spend the money for something like a Mackie Onyx or Presonus Studio Live (if you are okay with a max sample rate of 24-bit/48 kHz).

I've owned this since 2011 and haven't had any issues with it. I primarily use it for recording. One thing I did do was set it on a 2 slot rack box which elevates it up off the table. Noticed in the beginning it was a little warm underneath it. Decided it needed more air space to keep it cool. Sitting up on the rack box ensures that the sides are open to air and don't get blocked even when stuff gets placed on the table adjacent to the console's sides. Since then its ran cooler which is probably why I haven't had any power supply issues. Been doing this music thing for 25 years and know the importance of keeping electronics cool. Use it every weekend for jamming and recording, 6 years and still going strong. Would replace it with the same exact model if it quit working tomorrow. It originally replaced a fairly noisy M-audio 10 channel digital audio/1 channel midi PCI interface card. You can't beat it for the price, its just not a console you would drag around to gigs, but does great for recording in a project studio.

I've been running my home recording studio for 6 years. Recently I bought myself this Phonic Helix Board 24 Universal. I had the mixer for only 2 months when it started giving problems. The music files sounded distorted when played back, and the recorded audio were badly damaged. I returned it to the store where I bought it and they got it repaired as it was still under guarantee. Turned out to be a power supply problem. When I got it back I only used it for 3 months when it did the same. Phonic then sent me a brand new mixer. This time I only had the new mixer for 3 weeks!..I have no choice now but to request my money back. The quality on the mixer is not bad. It has no noise whatsoever on the recorded files and the live vocal-sounds are crisp and clear over the monitors. So apart from that power supply problem it is a good mixer, but I won't recommend this specific model to anyone as it seems there's some kinda factory flaw...

I bought a Phonic Helix Board 24 Universal and was very pleased with everything until the power supply went south. I took it to my local repairman and since it was still under warranty they simply sent me a new board. All was fine until the power supply failed just like the first time. The unit was now out of warranty and my regular repairman wouldn't work on it. I took it to a different shop. There are frequently power supply failures on this model. Now Phonic was under a new company and they weren't any help. The repairman replaced all of the capacitors with newer better ones. He said that the capacitors used in the power supply were real low quality. He replaced them all with better ones and now all has worked fine for many months now. If you purchase this unit plan on getting your power supply rebuilt! Don't let Phonic send you a new board because evidentially all boards of this model have this problem.