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Don’t buy this unless you hate yourself
On paper, the DIGIPAD 8 looks fantastic: compact size, touchscreen, motorised faders and plenty of processing. In actual live use, however, I found it incredibly frustrating.
The motorised faders feel slow and make quick adjustments unnecessarily difficult. The EQ controls are also sluggish and unresponsive. Worst of all is the gain control. I found it so unpredictable to operate that I would be extremely cautious adjusting gain during a live show. A preamp gain control should feel precise and predictable. This doesn’t.
The workflow is equally frustrating. There appears to be no way to copy a channel – or even copy an EQ from one channel to another. If you EQ one microphone and want the same starting point on another channel, you have to enter the settings manually. On a modern digital mixer, that is hard to understand.
There is also no proper sends-on-fader workflow and no mute groups.
The frustrating part is that the basic concept is genuinely good. A small digital mixer with a touchscreen and motorised faders could be an excellent tool for compact live setups. But the current software and control implementation make the DIGIPAD 8 much harder to work with than it needs to be.
Most of these problems could potentially be addressed through firmware. Until then, I can’t recommend it for serious live work.
The motorised faders feel slow and make quick adjustments unnecessarily difficult. The EQ controls are also sluggish and unresponsive. Worst of all is the gain control. I found it so unpredictable to operate that I would be extremely cautious adjusting gain during a live show. A preamp gain control should feel precise and predictable. This doesn’t.
The workflow is equally frustrating. There appears to be no way to copy a channel – or even copy an EQ from one channel to another. If you EQ one microphone and want the same starting point on another channel, you have to enter the settings manually. On a modern digital mixer, that is hard to understand.
There is also no proper sends-on-fader workflow and no mute groups.
The frustrating part is that the basic concept is genuinely good. A small digital mixer with a touchscreen and motorised faders could be an excellent tool for compact live setups. But the current software and control implementation make the DIGIPAD 8 much harder to work with than it needs to be.
Most of these problems could potentially be addressed through firmware. Until then, I can’t recommend it for serious live work.
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