Citronic have a strong presence in the DJ-mixer market with their highly pocketable and well-made range of products for the demons of the cross-fader. Now they're hanging with the homeboys with a new desk that promises the same high quality at a not-so-high price. Roger Brown plugs in his noise machines to see if the Ephos 16:2 can handle them.

The mixer market is hotting up, with new products aimed at the small live PA user which also are of a high enough quality for putting together demo tapes (and even finished recordings) at home.

All of these products are coming in under the £1,000 barrier, making quality mixing highly affordable. In the last year the Mackie 1604 has virtually defined the market, along with the GS4 from Allen & Heath and the Spirit Folio range by Soundcraft.

Now Citronic have taken a determined tilt at the same turf, with their new Ephos 16:2 coming in at under £800. You only get two aux returns instead of the others' four, but they are in stereo, and the £100 saving could go towards a second multi-effects unit to compensate for the difference in specifications.

Almost switchable send & return

These aux sends are where the dual nature of the beast is exposed, with the second send being switchable (by a qualified Ephos service engineer) between pre-fade, for use as a monitor send for live work or post-fade, where it can be utilised along with its accompanying stereo returns for a second reverb or multieffect unit.

The review model supplied comes with this configured as a pre-fade send. As the primary use for this desk must be for a small/home studio set-up, I would have thought it would have made more sense to send the desks out configured for post-fade, leaving live users to request a pre-fade send if so required. Surely even in live use this would be more useful. The Ephos, being designed for sub-monitor mixing, would not really be called upon to actually send a feed out to the monitors.

Citronic certainly seem to know their stuff in the DJ mixer market, with their excellent SM150 and SM250 selling in droves to the musical biscuit boffins, so just how well have they read the small mixer market?

Build quality

The Ephos 16:2 is solidly constructed, with plastic grab handles on either side to facilitate easy carrying. Too wide for rack-mounting, the Ephos is designed for desktop use, and the handles certainly make it easy to move this well-made piece of kit about.

With all insert points easily accessible from the front of the unit, the Ephos would sit nicely in a home set-up right next to your sequencer. Both the Aux sends and two stereo returns sit on the front too, with the balanced XLR outputs above them at the top of the right hand strip which also include the LED monitors for prefade monitoring of input signals.

These monitors are highly visible and very accurate at monitoring levels. The PFL button on every channel makes it a simple job to keep a check on input levels. Having said that, the Ephos has loads of headroom, and I had to pump a lot of noise through all channels before I induced clipping at zero gain on all strips. Pushing the gain up to the max finally produced the result you don't want to hear, but even then I could only discern very low amounts of distortion. Citronic seem to have done their homework.

Sound impressions

So, what does it sound like? Well, in the interactive style we've developed here at The Mix, the demo and sample loops for the Control Synthesis Deep Bass Nine were put together using the Ephos 16:2 feeding straight into our DAT machine.

Listen and let your own ears decide. The loops were simply fed straight through the desk onto the DAT, with very minimal EQ and no effects added, while the demo track used both aux sends, one feeding the drums out to a Yamaha FX500 and the second piping the Deep Bass Nine into the Quadraverb 2, to take advantage of its 'stereo widening' user patch.

Gosh, that's actually three pieces of gear we've given you audio snippets of, to judge the gear by or to use as possible sample source material. So listen and decide for yourself, I'll just leave the rest of this review blank, and you can write your own (only kidding).

As you can hear the desk is very quiet, and pumping everything up to the max with all channel faders up only exposed the quietest of background noise. Very respectable for a desk rated at a modest -82dBm of Nominal Noise at the main outputs.

This is the level I would expect of a live desk, but it is surprisingly quiet and is certainly low enough for studio recording. Maybe not quite digital quality in the strictest engineering sense, but certainly quiet enough for all but the most discerning listener.

All things being equalised

The first thing that impresses about this desk is the quality of the EQ. It's three-band, non-sweepable in any band unfortunately, but Citronic have set up the bands very carefully, with each one providing ±16dB of cut or boost on the first 12 channels and ±6dB on inputs 13 to 16, which are configured as a stereo pair, plus a pad cut which allows a further -10dB cut on these last four channels.

The High EQ is a shelving type operating at 10kHz, as is the Low EQ, providing boost or cut in the 60Hz range. Midrange comes in at a very workable 600Hz and slots in very nicely with the other two ranges, allowing detailed shaping of the sound spectrum. For the Deep Bass Nine loops, I simply added +6dB of boost in the 600Hz range, to give the acid tones a little more presence, leaving the upper and lower bands set at zero to allow you to hear the DB9 sounds as unadulterated as possible.

For the demo track, a further +2dB was added to the top end to make it stand out in the mix, with a +4dB boost given to the bottom end for more low end punch without interfering with the sampled 909 kick, which was given some +8dB of boost for that big end welly. And very efficient it was too at providing the detailed tonal shaping I required.

EQ is or course a very subjective thing, and the usefulness of any desk's settings will often depend upon the gear you are running through it. But my partner in dance here at The Mix, Rob Green, ran some of his trancey piano tunes through the desk, and found it just as good at handling those cleaner tones as shaping my grungier techno sounds. Full marks to Ephos here for a well thought-out set of bands.

Tape to tape

To the right of the main faders, are the extra controls. LEDs for main power and the Phantom +48V (which is activated automatically when you insert an XLR into the mic inputs on each of the first 12 channels). Below are the RCA input and output points, for tape send and return. This send is derived from the main stereo output after the output faders, and is ideal for final mixdown, with the tape return inserts being used for playback through the unit.

These playback inputs are routed to the main stereo output before the faders, and so can also be called into use as an extra stereo input. Providing you have two tape decks, the whole thing can then be routed through the master outputs and onto the second deck for final mixdown.

The level setting for this 'playback' function is situated immediately below the switch which activates the return, and is a single level setting for both channels, so there is no opportunity to alter any stereo imaging. You'd better get it right first time, but it is still a useful function which expands the versatility of the Ephos.

Verdict

Every so often something comes along to remind us of the truth in old sayings. If ever there were an item that is 'more than the sum of its parts', it is the Ephos. A handy, versatile little mixer at an affordable price which seems to deliver audio results beyond its specifications, largely due to Citronic's attention to detail and build quality.

There's no cheap circuitry here, and the solid feel of the rubber coated knobs and firm response of the faders inspires confidence beyond the initially modest impression the mixer makes. If you're looking for quality at a reasonable price, you could do a lot worse than the Ephos.

The essentials...

Price inc VAT: £706

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