New Music Gear Monday: Yamaha AG08 Live Streaming Mixer

Most people use their home studios for far more than just creating music these days. Whether its hosting a podcast, giving lessons, gaming, ASMR, or collaborating with other players or songwriters, we expect our gear to extremely versatile anymore. That usually means there’s a lot of extra single function gear around your studio that you have to constantly connect and disconnect, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The new Yamaha AG08 Live Streaming Mixer is designed to be the hub of your studio no matter what kind of content you’re creating.

It’s A Mixer And More

At it’s heart, the AG08 is an 8 channel audio mixer, but it has a host of other features specially incorporated just for online streaming. Sticking with just the audio for a minute, there are two inputs on combo plugs with phantom power, input gain control and pad. Both channels have access to built in effects, compression (called a Maximizer here) and EQ that’s mostly controlled via a software app (reverb and delay can be selected and the amount controlled from the front panel as well).

Channel 1 also has access to a Voice Changer, which allows you to change both the pitch and formant of the input via controls on the front panel, plus you’re able to set the channel to one of 4 different presets. Channel 2 still has access to the effects, but not the presets or voice changer. It does have a built-in amp simulator though.

Assignable Inputs

Channels 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8 are different in that they can receive either stereo analog input or digital signals from your DAW. That means you can have a channel just for a Zoom input, another for a music app like Spotify or even from your phone, and a third for playback from your DAW all mixed together in the stream. What’s especially cool is that there’s a built in Ducker so that any of these stereo inputs can be automatically attenuated when you speak into your mic on channel one.

Yet another unique feature is that the AG08 comes equipped with six customizable sound pads that allow you to easily add sound effects in real time to liven up your broadcasts. Using the AG08 Controller dedicated app, you can simply drag-and-drop existing sound files and assign them to the pad of your choice, or record your own samples and trim them to their desired length within the app.

Even More

There are two headphone channels each with its own level control and a Mix Minus option, and a Monitor Output control. Connection to your computer is via USB-C, which also can power the unit if you’re going mobile (you can use a power supply too).

Yamaha has also bundles Cubase AI, Wavelab Cast, and Cubase LE.

The AG08 retails for $629.99 and is made for streaming so it only operates at 48kHz/24 bit. It can connect to both Mac and PC platforms, and the suppled software works on both as well.

This little powerhouse can do a lot more than just what’s mentioned above, so you’ll want to dig in to see all its features here. You can also watch the video below.

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