Anyone used a Zoom Livetrak L-20 for gigging?

Jonathangus

On the face of it, it looks great.  Plenty of channels, five monitor sends (which you can switch between stereo IEM or balanced wedge feeds with a button press), compression, FX, and actual faders.

Something like the Soundcraft UI24r is obviously more fully featured, but it means you need a screen/iPad/WiFi, etc.  For the average small pub/beer garden gig, would we miss the extra features?  Does the immediacy of being able to adjust manual faders win out in this scenario?

mudslide73

We've been using the L20 for about 4 years. I don't set up the monitor mixes but we haven't had any problems. My favourite feature is the multitrack recording to SD, which is fabulous imo as you don't need to take a laptop.

Musicwolf

I used to have an L-12 which I gigged with a few times.  I found it to be great for capturing multitrack recordings of the band in the rehearsal room (the way that it stores files in seperate folders after each take is a really nice feature), but a bit of a pain to tweak on the fly during gigs.  In the heat of battle it's not easy to see whether the faders are controlling FoH or a monitor mix and, of course, the faders themselves are not motorised making it harder to control (you have to slide the fader until it reaches the 'set point' before it has any effect).

I ditched it when I got my first XR-18.  Impossible to say which will work best for yourself as we're all different.

vasselmeyer

I use a Livetrak L12 which has similar capabilities to the 20. I looked at the digital only stuff, but I wanted physical faders and knobs and the Zoom checked all the boxes. I like the ability to have five individual monitor mixes, on-board compression, decent EQ and basic FX. For the pubs and small clubs we play it's perfect.

Some additional nice things are: the ability to save different scenes, so I can just recall particular settings for certain venues; recording all inputs straight to an SD card; its USB is configurable as an audio interface so it appears in Reaper as a 12 track mixer or as a USB disc to pull the recordings off.

You need to understand the design philosophy behind how to change the EQ, FX, monitoring etc but once you get your head around it, it's really pretty simple.

I'd buy another if it got pinched.

Jonathangus

It does look pretty simple to operate.  Select which feed you want, move faders, twiddle knobs.  You just need to remember to look at the lights, not the fader positions when switching.  That's it, isn't it?

Does anyone know if the headphones feeds have limiters for use with IEMs?

vasselmeyer

Jonathangus said:

It does look pretty simple to operate.  Select which feed you want, move faders, twiddle knobs.  You just need to remember to look at the lights, not the fader positions when switching.  That's it, isn't it?

Yes...the EQ, FX and monitoring all use the same panel, and you need to "select" the feed you want to adjust. It's pretty easy to get your head around. When you switch between scenes/monitor feeds, the lights automatically show you where the faders should be and they have no effect until they are mobved back to their original positions.

Jonathangus said:

Does anyone know if the headphones feeds have limiters for use with IEMs?

They don't, so you need to ride the input level on your wedge or the volume control on your IEM pack.

Stuckfast

I've used mine for live sound a couple of times. The only feature I really missed is that there's no EQ on the master outs. As others have said it is a bit easy to end up adjusting the monitor mix instead of the main mix, or vice versa. You'd get used to it. It doesn't have the flexibility you'd get on a full digital live sound console like the X32 but in a sense that's kind of the point.