Howdy!

Was offered a Focusrite Liquid Mix for 100 EUR - had some look around ebay and co and figured the price isn't bad, but I don't know if it's still worth to get it?

Anyone made some experiences with it?

Thanks in advance.

Kind regards,
Vertigox

 

8 years ago product,,,32bits only.
Best buy a UAD used

 

Bought one some months ago payed around 90 EUR
I have trouble with that firewire shit sometimes it works and sometimes not most often NOT
It say connect to firewire on the screen on the liquid mix unit and that is on both my Mac Pro and my PC which b.t.w has that Texas chip everyone praised years ago and that driver dont work at all with Liquid Mix i had to choose the win driver called "legacy"

I have only tested a few of the EQ:s and some Compressors before it started to struggle they sounded good not WOW good but good i also liked the fact that it dont eat cpu
But as the unit dont work everytime i start a DAW and i can´t trust that it starts and is working i have not used it for some weeks so now it is collecting dust they should have made a pci card instead

 

yes, UAD Apollo twin duo is on top of my shopping list. BTW: Focusrite Plugins don't really kick my ass.

 

Thanks for your input everyone!

I've got 2x UAD duo, but I thought it could be a fun and fair prices piece of gear I've never used. I think I'm more keen on testing something I haven't had my hands on yet.
Guess I'll try my luck, in worst case it gets dusty and just looks good lol.


@ovalf

Did you refer to 32bit DAWs?

If yes, I've read on the Focusrite homepage, that Liquid Mix 3.0 software seems to work on 64bit DAWs (except Sonar)

But yeah overall it seems like Focusrite kinda failed with that product from what I read here and other forums, but for that price I'll take it I think.

Thanks again. Have a great weekend!

 

..your welcome and if you wanna relieve your daw don't forget to think about an access virus ti. The by far best VA hardware synth on the planet !

 

It's surely on the to-buy-list, but it's not that important to me, to be honest, still, every studio should have a virus ;). I work mostly with real instruments and libraries. I'm at the moment just on a "vintage trip", so the Liquid Mix kind of got me, as pretty much any UAD plugin costs over couple hundred bucks.

Kind regards,
Vertigox

 

The device was quite interesting at the time.

So it isn't bad.. but as stated here, it IS old, and has been surpassed by now, and you might run into driver issues (FireWire has also been a pain IMHO.. the latency is just so nice of it :P).
Doesn't mean the device is bad or there is some descent stuff in there (or at least fun to be had), but it's not a sleeper-hit-UAD-alternative or something, just to set your expectations .

The (even) older Liquid Channel on the other hand I still find interesting, but since it actually does a lot (well, some, input stage, most important I think) of the 'modeling' in the analog world it's still something special.. and I think pricy (don't really know to be honest).

 

I'd pass. the plug-ins don't sound amazing.
and it's all outdated.

 

Well this isn´t exactly Focusrite plugins as you mean i guess you compare them to what we could find here and if you buy a focusrite audiointerface
This is emulation of old hardware using dynamic convolution and is not released as Vst:s or other plugin format they can only be used with the Liquid Mix unit however there is a HD hard drive version for Pro Tools HD

On the Focusrite website you could years ago take a liquid mix challange where you could listen to audio clips and guess if it was liquid mix or the real hardware and won a liquid mix unit i did it and was right about 85% anyway i think the emulation sounded very similar to the real unit but not exactly the same (Those old hardware units is hard to emulate)

So for 90 EUR i get 32 instances of vintage emulation which sound close to the original outboard unit of compressors and EQ when mixing without using any CPU on my computer i thought it was a bargain to bad that firewire shit everyone praised years ago is exactly just shit

Yeah a liquid channel would be awesome they are becoming more and more affordable right now i saw two on e-bay for 600 eur that is of course 600 eur for one two months ago

Q/A on Focusrite website

Is the Liquid Mix EQ the same as The Liquid Channel EQ?
No. The Liquid Channel (TLC) uses a digital filter based EQ which is modelled upon Focusrite's legendary ISA 110, whereas the Liquid Mix EQ uses dynamic convolution to emulate the unique sonic qualities of 20 vintage equalizers. TLC provides one unique flavour of distinctly Focusrite style EQ, while the Liquid Mix provides 20 very different EQ flavours which emulate other vintage hardware units.

 

Thanks for all the input. Really appreciate it.

 

Dont be put off by that firewire struggle i have it might work fine for you and is just a matter of my machine and my liquid unit it is second hand and there is warning sign saying that never put in a cable bla bla so my unit might be broke or some chip is bad or similar as it sometimes work and sometimes not
My unit was very cheap so i guess the seller did know about the trouble and just wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible

 

Yeah I took a shot, seems like some have had the problems, some not.. Can't go very wrong for that price I guess, worst case I'll sell it again or it gets dusty here

Thanks.

 

Hey,

So the unit arrived and since then I've got only problems

I've connected it through an extra FireWire card (Texas Instruments) and no other FW-devices are connected.

I have tried it on Cubase 7.5 64bit and Studio One 32bit, on both DAWs it's not possible to get a connection to the unit, from the LM software.

Though, I saw on other forums that there are people who apparently made it work on a Win7 64bit system with a 64bit DAW.

I'll keep trying, if I find a solution I'll let you know, just in case if someone would run into same issues.

 

So just in case someone runs into problems with it I will just leave this here:

To make it work I SIMPLY just had to change the default Texas Instruments FireWire driver to legacy, now it works like a charm without jbridge, on Win7 64bit and Cubase 7.564bit.

 

Vertigox..how did you get on with the Liquid Mix? I am soon to get an apollo duo twin and as you know it has some incredible plugins. I also have a Liquid Mix 32 unit that i bought some time ago like yourself for a very good price. But it is only now i am thinking of using it.The thing is i don't want to use it if it paels in comparison to the apollo twin stuff. SO would appreciate your thoughts on how you found /find it.Thanks !

 

Hi! To be perfectly honest, I sold it again. The compatibility was a pure hassle, after lots of tries and tests I figured out that the firewire port drivers had to be set to legacy-mode, then it would work. But overall, the workflow just wasn't for me. Stick to your UAD, nothing comes close to that anyway (expect hardware :P )
I'd say the idea behind the Liquid Mix isn't bad, but how they've done it and the fact that they don't support it anymore were just not to my taste and slowed down my workflow, which is a no go for me. Sound wise: To make it short; once you had some UADs in your hand/ears, you won't go for the Liquid Mix.

Hope that helps!