Avid Mbox Mini Review by Geoff Brecker

Sound Quality
Ease Of Use
Build Quality

Available on Amazon for less than $300 here.

Welcome to my little shrine dedicated to this awesome product. I also own the previous Mbox Mini and I love that little sucker to death, but Avid definitely upped their game here. This Mbox has way better quality AD converters (people have compared it with the Apogee Duet which I’m not surprised by). It comes with Pro Tools 8 LE (Pro Tools 9 soon), more than 8 GB’s of loops and over 70 killer virtual instruments and plugins. They’ve made it more rugged and sturdy now too. It has no annoying wall wart power supply anymore (it runs off USB), and it looks much cooler than the old one I think. I love it.

Update: The Mbox Mini is currently on sale for less than $300 right now. You can check it out on Amazon here…

This is the latest product in the Mbox line since Digidesign was bought by Avid. The first thing you’ll probably notice is the sexy new purple and black design which follows the rest of the Avid product line. This isn’t just an upgrade in the looks department though, the entire product has been reworked for better performance in all areas. The AD converters are now top-class just like the HD system converters (this was a big issue), and the mbox mini’s mic pre’s have much better performance too.

This Is The Best Mbox Mini Review Video Online (So Far):

Get the Mbox Mini on Amazon here (cheapest price online)

The Good:                                                              |

• Great new sound quality and preamps
• Insanely rugged, durable with great knobs
• Comes with Pro Tools 9 (runs without the hardware)
• The cheapest way to get Pro Tools

The Bad                                                                  |

• Some feel it’s expensive.
• One guy mentioned an incompatibility issue on a new Mac – This has been fixed however.

The Mbox Mini is perfect for:

• Singer/guitarists who want to lay down songs easily
• Small bands who need to get their demos out to the world
• Youtubers/Podcasters looking for a simple, powerful setup
• Electronic music producers who love the ease of Pro Tools editing
• Anyone who is sick of the inefficiency of Logic/Cubase or Ableton Live.

Let’s take a look at the Mbox Mini’s features:

• New high quality circuitry AD converters can go up to 24bit, 48 khz – big studio sound
• Superb new preamp identical to their HD systems pre’s – no need to upgrade
• 2 analog and 2 digital ins and outs – stereo recording
• Intuitive and user-friendly installation – get making music quickly
• 1 XLR mic or line input with phantom power
• 2 ¼ inch instrument inputs
• 2 balanced 1/4 inch monitor outputs
• 1 headphone out and a big, smooth monitor volume knob
• USB powered – you’ll never have to worry about an annoying wall-wart
• If you want it, you can get it cheapest at Amazon.com through this link.

This entire unit’s hardware re-design was done by the same engineers that worked on the high end HD systems so no corners were cut. The result is a pristine, crystal clear analog signal path. As of right now, the mini is still shipping with Pro Tools LE 8, however, it will start shipping with Pro Tools 9 any day now. As we all know it’s a vast improvement over all the previous versions. The surprising thing to me though is that the new Mbox line has been made compatible with all the major DAW’s on the market: Logic, Cubase, Reason, Fruity Loops, Ableton Live, Sonar and more. So no matter which platform or DAW you like you can still use the mbox mini in your workflow.

It’s on sale for less than $300 right now. You can check it out on Amazon here…

Many users online have compared the sound quality to the Apogee Duet and if you know the reputation of that unit, it’s pretty impressive. The USB power also means that you can take it with your laptop just about anywhere because it’s so portable. An added benefit of Pro Tools software is that your sessions will be compatible with any major studio on the planet. This is great if you want to record drums in a big room or cut some vocals on a Neumann and Neve combo or just to take some stem tracks in for mastering (this is becoming more and more popular).

Geoff Brecker is your trusty product reviewer. He hopes to make your shopping decisions easier by providing you with relevant, accurate and honest reviews.

Disclaimer: Ordering an mbox mini through the above links will help pay for the endless hours spent creating and promoting this site of mine. Thank you for the support!