After a long online campaign and a lot of anticipation in the content creator community, the new company, BEACN, has made a huge splash as they have released their first three products today. Among them is a beautiful, simple audio controller designed for users who want a less complicated audio experience, The BEACN Mix.
The BEACN Mix comes in white or black, and it sports a crisp 5” screen and four infinite scrolling knobs which are also clickable for muting each source. It’s powered and connected via a USB-C to USB-A 2.0 cable. Out of the box, it’s a clean, simple design. It’s in a light plastic body, but it doesn’t feel cheap. It feels sturdy, and the knobs turn smoothly. There are no clicks when turning the knob, so you need to pay a little more attention when adjusting the volume as you can’t feel those small adjustments.
The device sets up incredibly fast, with no drivers to install. All you need to do is plug it in, and it is ready to go. The USB 2.0 cable is also great because you aren’t limited as to where you can plug it into your PC. If you have a free port, you’re good to go.
The magic in the BEACN Mix, however, is in its software. When the BEACN app is installed and fired up, the device is recognized as soon as it is plugged in. The BEACN Mix appears in the profile window on the left, and you will see that a default profile has been created. You can create multiple profiles with completely different configurations to customize your experience for different use cases.
“The magic in the BEACN Mix, however, is in its software. When the BEACN app is installed and fired up, the device is recognized as soon as it is plugged in.”
To the right of the profile window is the device column. Here, you’ll find icons for your device, the mixing software, and the settings. When selecting the mixer, it brings up the mixing window to the right. You will see the same four sources that are available on the screen but represented with faders instead of knobs. Below the faders, you will see empty windows and below them is a list of assignable sources.
You can take any of these sources and drag them into the window of your choice. That source will now be tethered to the channel that you chose, and you will see it populate on the screen of the BEACN Mix instantly. What’s interesting about this is that you can assign multiple sources to a single knob. When doing so, you need to keep in mind that each of those sources will always be the same level, so only assign sources that you want to have the same volume to the same knob.
When you’re all set up, you have a device that controls the volume of your computer at an application level.
Speaking of knobs, you will probably notice that the four sources are generically named. You can change that by double-clicking on the name of any of the channels and change it to whatever you prefer. This will also update instantly on the BEACN Mix. The coloured rectangle under the names can also be customized, so you can colour code your sources as desired.
When you’re all set up, you have a device that controls the volume of your computer at an application level. In one place, you can turn your music down while keeping the game volume loud, you can turn your mic volume down (or mute it) in your streaming software, and you can do it all without interacting with the apps themselves. No more opening the sound settings on your PC. No more hitting alt+tab in a game to get out of your game because your music is too loud.
It’s worth noting that the software that I tested on was a beta software and there were some issues. I have spoken directly with the people at BEACN and not only were the issues known but are already being addressed for future builds. There was no issue that was a showstopper, though.
