Powerful, versatile and battery power
My first criteria was portability and battery power. For my purposes, the L-8 is like a field recorder on steroids. Very versatile. And of the negative reviews I’ve seen two things seemed be an issue for some users:Some called them cheesy and cheaply made – I don’t see it – I have two of these things and they are pretty solid. The other is that the Rode unit is better for Podcasting – maybe true, but this one doubles way better for small PA work.

What a convenient mixer!
If you’re a content creator, like me, you can’t go without this one. It runs on batteries or you can plug it in. It’s got onboard effects, and 48 V power for your mic. It’s just a great mixer! The price is also right! Everything else I have used has not been good.

Great value, control and effects
Love this mixer, it has all the features of a pro-level unit (backlighted buttons, effects, presets, recording, different input options) and a battery backup to boot. No issues are 12 months of use.

Good standalone unit for podcasting – definitely not what you hoped for music production
so first off, this is an *amazing* little package. it’s so small and light, really does run off batteries (amazing!) and has an excellent mixer (with sliders!), an excellent recorder, multiple ways to plug stuff in, the 4 headphone outs alone are a standout feature as well.without a doubt for someone looking for a mostly portable way to do podcasting this thing is unbeatable, especially at the price. worked really well with my MXL990, SM-58 mics + direct input from a keyboard, and ipad, and acoustic guitar.however, be aware of the following *severe* limitations for music mixing/recording which eventually made me return the unit and get a separate mixer/recorder setup (please be aware that i am not an experienced sound engineer, don’t know the lingo, i just know how to move sliders, turn dials, and go “hmm, that sounds good”):* 80 ohm headphones are not going to perform their best. even at max volume they are at most running at half the volume i’d want when recording music* the unit cannot seem to handle deep bass very well. there is noticeable popping distortion when hitting loud low frequence notes, especially sustained (such as from a synth bass). at first i thought this was only through the headphone but when i hooked up external rockit 5 speakers i noticed the same. note that there is no clipping going according to any of the meters / lights. i had to lower the master volume to 60% for it to go away (and crank up my speakers). given this and along with the above headphone limitation you end up not having enough power in your ears for a proper sound stage.* there is no effect out/send! unless you put effects BEFORE you plug an instrument into the board you are stuck with the onboard effects only. this may not be a problem for an electric guitar since the effects are usually part of the performance but for a vocalist these are brutally limiting. basically you have to either record dry (or onboard effects only) in order to have a clean vocal track. this sucks for the vocalist who can’t get an approximation of what they will sound like. most vocal remixing is a very subtle art and not having a raw vocal track to work with is a deal breaker.* in combination with the above lack of effect send, there’s no onboard compression. this seems a really bad oversight for a podcast unit – compression is one of the most important effects for spoken audio. not a big deal for me because i do compression on recorded tracksso ya, an impressive unit – but in my opinion you will be *sorely* disappointed if you use it for music production.

The mic pre amps sound amazing. Very low noise and make my shure beta 58 fuller. Very impressed with the quality of the inputs and outputs. It is highly configurable. Recording capabilities exceed my expectations with all separate tracks and very intuitive interface. The effects sounds very good… For vocals, try the vocal 1 setting and about half 2/3 of the way on the knob and use efx slider to add more or less. Now the only flaw I find is that only one effect can be used and that goes for all tracks. So you can’t combine effects or even use a different effect on a different track. If it could do that I could do away with an external fx. That said, the vocal 1 effect is good enough for most vocal recordings.Highly recommended!

Cumplió la expectativa que yo tenía, para producir, hacer Lives, trabajar fuera de una estudio, dentro del estudio, es altamente recomendable. Tiene muchísimas funciones, prácticamente limpié mi escritorio pues es una interfaz, un preamp, etc.

I produce podcasts for a living – at work we have the “looks like a death star super sexy looking” originator of the “podcast recorder” market. I’ve been using that beautiful piece of hardware since not long after it was released. When I need to buy a podcast recorder for my home studio, I choose the Zoom LiveTrak L-8.1. Audio is great.2. Mic pre-amps are classic Zoom (and the pads are nice)3. You can record ONLY the tracks you want to4. You can see settings “at a glance” (no menu surfing during operation)5. Getting 2.25 AA batteries recording on 4 channels with dynamic mics6. Headphones have separate mixes (seriously? so good)7. Seven mixes (“scenes”) – show presets!8. You can manage the pads internally.9. Did I mention you can run it on AA batteries or USB power pack10. When connected to a computer, it’s a very capable audio interface11. The audio out from the XLR is very good12. AA batteries…I mean…record walking down the street (awkward) or front steps (cool)13. Light14. Almost $300 cheaper than competitors?!!?You’ve probably noticed I love it. I do. That said, cons, light means plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap. That’s about it.