Twelco TW-LP4S ENG Portable/Location Audio Mixer

I have the four channel and six channel versions. They are very good value and do the job although they are quite traditional in their design I have used mine on numerous live TV broadcasts. OK they are no sound devices but they have a lot of features for the money.

Istvan makes them and he is a good guy to deal with, they are modular so repairs are easy.

Here is a picture of the inside of one of mine:



And my two on location:

 
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Thanks, Gary.
Traditional design is something I like. Also the fact that in each module there are lot of discrete transistors, on top of an IC or two.
How noisy, or how quiet, the pre-amps are, compared to Sound Devices on one hand and Tascam DR-70 on the other hand?
An extension to the above question; are datasheets noise figures reveal the full picture, or are subjective listening comparisons reveal more than the datasheets figures?
 
Having listened to many location mixers the noise figures are fine, I don't tend to do comparisons but if they were noisy I would have noticed.

The outputs are also transformer balanced and there is XLR and Hirose as well as direct outs.

The PPM meters on mine seem OK for most use and you can calibrate them as well as outputs and the limiters.

I see these more like a lower cost SQN rather than a sound devices.
 
Joshua_G said:
An extension to the above question; are datasheets noise figures reveal the full picture, or are subjective listening comparisons reveal more than the datasheets figures?
Click to expand...

Specs are useful and in general the more something is aimed at a professional market the more "realistic" the specs are. But noise can also be quite subjective in that the number tells you how much but it doesn't tell you how noticeable the noise is to the human ear. Some noise sounds a lot louder than other noise so...

The problem with just using your hearing is that unless you are a young girl you probably have some roll off in the higher frequencies. And if you are asking old fart sound guys that roll off might not be so subtle. It kind of depends on what they have done in their lives. Live mixing for rock bands, that summer doing construction work, hunting, and of course just age.

And some people are more bothered by one type of noise than other people are.
 
Noise can also vary depending on what mic you are using and expecting to be as part of the final mix.

So a radio mic of dynamic may give totally different results to a condenser or higher gain structure mic like my RE50-NDB ot AT875r.

You also tend to find that it is the headphone amps on most low cost recorders that are noisy and the mic amps are perfectly acceptable in normal operation but anyone winding in 60-70db of gain and expecting silence will be asking a lot of even modern kit.

Lab specs mean very little to me and I tend to check out kit rather than just look at a piece of paper prepared by a manufacturer.
 
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