Crest Audio XR-20

- The original version of the XR-20 "XRack", manufactured by Crest, is superior to the latter Peavey owned era model.
- It sums VERY clean.
- It has a pretty good sound. Perhaps Midas Venice 320 league but better low end, more solid and defined.

- Mind that these are OLD now (in 2020) so probably it will have old capacitors.
I had to fully recap mine and it was 4 days x 8 hours work, but the results were brilliant.

- EQ is good, useful. Cool frequency bands, low distortion. Better than Midas equivalent by far.

- The HP filter is very well chosen, it is silent and sounds good.
Everything is pretty good in this mixer really!

The XR20 has a sound very close to a big console. Punchy, great transient, good headroom, great highs, and quite transparent summing.

It is a great submixer for drums. It takes saturation very well without losing low end, and produces clean punchy mixes. Plus it is great also to perform in the studio, layout is great.

The thing is that the designers went for a minimum phase shift between channels, and achieved a good low end integrity. Solid!

I cannot think of other equivalent mixer or even close, and I have tried all classic options (Soundcraft, Midas, Ramsa, Mackies, etc.). This one is the very best! I have it paired with a D&R Dayner (my main console) to handle all my drum duties and some effects, and it kicks ass.

The original model XR20 is the same like current APB DYNASONICS "ProRack". APB was indeed founded by the members of the Crest design group who developed the XR-20. They decided to split and continued developing their concept a APB, adding a variable HPF to what already was a good design.

I spent only 150 euro for my XR20, but then I had to spend another 180 euro in capacitors, plus a LOT of work.

But hey, there is something to going the hard route, right?

Now I have a unique sounding piece that I helped to bring to life in 2020, with audio-grade capacitors in it.

Church rock / blues / modern rock / classic rock

Don't know it was already there when I joined the church.

For a small unit, it has lots of Aux sends (6) that can be set either as pre or post in groups of two. Two parametric midrange tone control per channel (plus treble and bass control)is useful. The sound is pretty clean. In my opinion it's cleaner than the Crest's larger HP 8 series board.

For a 20 ch board designed for live sound it makes you wonder why they didn't put a global mute switch. Every channel must be muted individually. There's no connector for lights. It's pain to use the board in a dark place. All the connectors are on its back side, so it becomes obligatory that you put it on a rack that has tiltable feature (which means more money). $ 2K price tag seems high in this day and age. You can probably find a comparable unit for lot less money.

Construction is solid. Quality seems high too. The unit we have is less than a year old, so we don't know how good it will put up to on the road usage.

If you must have six Aux (pre or post) send on a small rack mountable mixer, then this unit is definitely one choice to consider. By the same token, if you must have two sweepable midrange tone control, this unit has it.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

yes it is rack mountable, but beware, the plugs are underneath, it takes a fly with a tilt rack console to make connections from below.

20 channels, 6 to, 4 subgroups, LCR outputs, and the whole lot in XLR, there are even opportunities to put inserts on everything, including the master, and the subgroups, the routing is very comprehensive for a compact analog .

UTILIZATION

Very simple, with phantom and phase inverter for each, it's a console, modular, with a map, a slice. You can even connect two cascaded with a cable to connect pin 5 dyn buses between them ....

SOUNDS

So here we are in good console preamps are monstrous, as the EQ, and 100mm faders are, in short, a nice little console, versatile, pro quality, and comprehensive. The problem are the outputs, which are very fragile. Be careful when making connections, the connectors are on the underside of the beast, was not to force the xlr, on pain of having to re-open the seams of XLR output sockets, it's really the only flaw in this pretty little granny.

OVERALL OPINION

4 years in benefits (3 failures on outs, this is starting to do well)
I think it has had its day in benefits, and can even save your life, in small config, the sound is simply stunning: it is in a class of its a MH soundcraft, that of a mackie anemic with all its cardboard. Fiablité on its output is not really solid (problème..) His place is better for the studio because the grain and EQ are just perfect, and we avoid too much travel with .... In fixed she's great.