The mixing desk is more than a practical studio utility. At the risk of sounding romantic, I’m going to suggest it’s also a symbolic piece of kit, steeped in the history of hands-on audio engineering ...

An analogue mixer is an extremely simple device ... So I’ve conspicuously failed to make a cheap live mixing desk out of a thousand-dollar laptop and ten dollars’ worth of cheap sound cards.

There comes a point in every engineer’s life at which they need a mixing desk, and for me that point is now. But the marketplace for a cheap small mixer just ain’t what it used to be.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Raúl Aliaga Lewis developed a reputation as a first-class session percussionist in Chile’s ...