Yamaha DM3S Standard Digital Mixing Console

I've only had a day with it so far. The preamps are stellar with a wide dynamic range and utterly quiet. For the first time in the studio I don't have a faint annoying background of digital noise.As an audio interface configured at 48KHz into Reaper, it operates reliably in low latency mode with 128 sample buffering and a reported latency of 3.6ms. You have full 18:18 I/O at 96KHz if you wish.The lack of 44.1KHz as a sample rate precludes plugging it directly into devices like Akai's MPC or Force as an external audio interface though. You'll need a PC or Mac to use it as an audio interface, not sure if you could use an iPad.The flying faders are quiet and precise and the touch screen is crisp, bright and responsive.The printed manual is very superficial and the ... MoreI've only had a day with it so far. The preamps are stellar with a wide dynamic range and utterly quiet. For the first time in the studio I don't have a faint annoying background of digital noise.As an audio interface configured at 48KHz into Reaper, it operates reliably in low latency mode with 128 sample buffering and a reported latency of 3.6ms. You have full 18:18 I/O at 96KHz if you wish.The lack of 44.1KHz as a sample rate precludes plugging it directly into devices like Akai's MPC or Force as an external audio interface though. You'll need a PC or Mac to use it as an audio interface, not sure if you could use an iPad.The flying faders are quiet and precise and the touch screen is crisp, bright and responsive.The printed manual is very superficial and the downloadable PDF isn't Yamaha's finest moment in documentation. Everything's there but nothing is conceptually explained so if you're not already familiar with modern complex digital mixers you might find yourself scratching your head for a while.There is a downloadable block diagram which really ought to have been included in the printed manual and printing out a copy would probably be a good idea.It's a lot more intuitive if you take a moment in setup to configure the home screen to cycle through the main views when pressed. This makes things much easier to figure out and I have no idea why Yamaha don't just ship it configured that way. You may also want to reconfigure the custom keys to stop the annoying flashing on key 6 which is tap tempo by default, it's just annoying having it flash constantly while you're learning the machine.There are a series of videos on Youtube from Yamaha which walk through scenarios and although the background music and the presenter are super-irritating, they do highlight useful features you might otherwise miss.In a home studio setup annoyingly only four inputs (and no outputs) are on combo jacks, with the rest on XLRs. This is a minor issue of course but you will want to look at rewiring in a lot of cases. Why all the inputs couldn't use combo jacks (and indeed the outputs) is a mystery only Yamaha know the answer to. For live mixing of course you're using XLRs but not necessarily for other applications like podcasting or home studio use.A very nice feature is the front panel USB port intended for plugging in a thumb drive or USB storage device to capture the main mix and record it.It's not cheap. But frankly when I think of all the less than adequate mixing and audio interface solutions I've grappled with over the years, this really is a superb product and the quality is very high.

I like the form factor and capabilities of this board. The I/O options are great for what we're doing. I want to buy 7 more copies for other studios but we've just run into an issue where, it seems, the noise gate is introducing a digital glitch in the analog outputs. I'm hoping it will be resolved with a software update.

I really like this mixer. It's compact and has lots of pro features. Very similar to the Tf series. Here my my few complaints. The usb port is for flash drive only. It will not play music from iPhone or iPad for playback or break music. I ended up using channels 15/16 for stereo playback for break music. It would also be nice if it had rca jacks as an option but it doesn't. Also, there is only 4 combo xlr/ 1/4 input jacks. Overall it's pretty easy to get around (I'm not the most tech qualified person) and getting a decent band mix isn't that hard. I'd totally recommend this mixer. Just wished it had better playback / music player options.