DAP-Audio IMIX-7.3

As an installer, I am frequently required to generate a feed for a hearing assist induction loop as well as speakers circuits. I have now purchased two of these units and a third may be on the way. The format usually ends up by being something like Zone1: front speakers, Zone2: rear speakers (if a large hall) or lobby, or separate room and Zone3 : The loop.

For this purpose, this unit is absolutely ideal. I would say a couple of things though.

The two mic channels which have parallel inputs on front and rear (nice touch, if you've got a rack mounted radio receiver to plug in with balanced O/P) should be the channels with faders and the music inputs, the ones with rotaries. In this vein, the three Outputs would be better with faders for Volume, or at least a bigger knob to differentiate from the tone controls. (In an installed situation, music sources tend to be "static". Its the mics that are more likely to vary and benefit from a fader.)

To my mind the fact that you can have 10 inputs for the 5 phono input channels is way too many for this device, the A/B input choice is unnecessarily complicated , something I cant see many people using (Who has that many phono terminated devices to plug in. A tablet, a phone, a laptop, a CD player and a spare?. Most folk would probably use the same dangling 3.5mm jack lead for the first three anyway)

The push button, illuminated zone selectors are great, particularly for choosing exactly what gets fed into the hearing loop, but the rubbery buttons, not so. The machine tolerances seem a little tight and on one unit I bought, I had to (very carefully!!) file the paint off the inner edges of the hole so the rubber wouldn't bind. It was a small fix, but annoying and I didn't want to have to send it back just for that. Solid switches could still have LED illumination, or use transparent perspex.
The rubber buttons just dont feel nice!
There could be an improvement in headroom (gain) as when used with a tablet and a phone, with the source volume flat out, the gains had to be turned up full to get a reasonable output (and bargraph signal) out of the the three "Masters"

All this being said, its a tidy and useful unit, fits nicely into a wall mounted rack frame that can then have its door locked and if they got rid of the unnecessary alternate inputs and switches etc they could probably shave a few pounds off the price and make it even more attractive.

It sounds like I have a down on this unit but I dont. For the price it is very good, but with a little extra attention to detail, it could be outstanding!

I use this unit in my mostly DAW-less mini home studio. The in total three masters come in very handy and are worth the slight price lift from the IMIX 7.1. No hum or noise, even with multiple masters/ins activated at the same time. The sliders could been a bit stiffer, they move with the slightest touch, I have no complaints regarding the buttons or knobs.
The flexibility this product offers me is great, I use one IMIX master channels with a mixer recorder, to expand and make routing easier (e.g. effects processing). One master is used for my sampler, which can now also be easily be used as an effects unit for all the line ins. The other Master is used for my hifi system.
The panel is easy to use, routing is very intuitive and flexible, with gain and volume on line ins and master channels with additional tone adjustments and vu-leds are usefull. I've yet to test the Mic ports, but I have other pre-amp options for those. One gripe could be that there are mostly phono line inserts, I don't care about this, most of my connected synths only have line-outs. I also did not use the multiple line selector button for switching to another connected device on the same channel, but cloud see the advantage not having to plug/un-plug, they are exclusive to each other so only one can be used at a time.
Of course I could have bought a bigger mixer/MTR with a ton of routing options, but that would have been too intimidating for me to start my step-by-step journey and learning process.