Rave! Mixing Console

Until now, a low cost radio console was an oxymoron. The companies who make consoles really want you to buy their expensive stuff. Really. If your budget is slightly less than that of a crown prince, they give you side eye and point you toward their “cheap” offering. The cheap console is only there for the upsell.

Yeah, no. We don’t do bait and switch. A tight budget shouldn’t mean compromise. So we built RAVE! for you. While the other guys were cutting corners, we were cramming everything we could into it. Studio-grade audio. Real broadcast logic. Built like a tank. RAVE! is now in more than 200 studios and counting.

Most low-cost consoles give you two mic channels and call it done. Great, if you have exactly two microphones. If you have one, you’ve got a wasted fader. If you have three, you’re shopping for an outboard preamp. The only studio their console actually fits is the one they designed it for. We think you should create the show you want and the console should just follow.

Eight flexible fader channels. The first four can be set up as mic or stereo line inputs. The next two can be set for pro or consumer levels — useful when somebody hands you a turntable preamp or a streaming box. Seven and eight are mix-minus capable, ready for callers, codecs, Skype, Zoom, or whatever shows up next. No wasted faders. No external bodges. An eight-fader RAVE! often feels more like a ten or twelve.

And the audio? Frequency response is ruler flat from 20 Hz to 20 kHz. THD+N is almost immeasurable at 0.002%. Signal to noise better than 88 dB with 20 dB of headroom. All inputs and outputs are fully balanced — rare at this price. The mic preamps are Class-A, the kind of circuitry you’d expect in a recording studio, not a low-cost console. Plug a good source in. Listen. You won’t believe what you’re hearing came out of an analog console at this price.

We didn’t stop at the audio. The control surface is machined aluminum with laser-etched markings — you’ll wear out your fingers before you rub off the marks. Avionics-grade switches. Silky-smooth faders that feel unaffordable. Powder-coated steel chassis. RFI-immune circuitry. External auto-ranging power supply, optionally rack-mounted. Worldwide voltage. No wall wart anywhere. The on/off buttons are carefully recessed so a careless elbow doesn’t take you off the air. And there’s a wrist rest, because operators have wrists.

Wiring? All line inputs and outputs use StudioHub RJ45. XLR for the mics. If you’ve wired a studio in the last twenty years, you already know StudioHub — we own the standard. Shielded CAT-5 instead of soldered XLR. Click click. You’ll get spoiled quick.
There’s a StudioHub RAVE! Connection Kit too — all the adapters and cables you need to wire a console into a typical studio. Sold separately. It eliminates the panicked cable hunt the night before you’re supposed to go live.

RAVE! plays well with the rest of the Angry Audio line. The Headphone Gizmo daisy-chains off the Guest Output for guest headphone amplification — audio and power on the same shielded CAT-5. The 3-Segment Signal Light plugs into the OnAir/User connector for tally and break signaling. The USB Analog Audio Gizmo brings Skype, Zoom, and a computer’s audio into a mix-minus channel. The VoIP Phone Gizmo does the same for a phone call. It’s almost like all those Gadgets and Gizmos were designed for RAVE!

Designed by Catfish and assembled in Franklin, Tennessee. We back it with a two-year warranty and a 30-day “love it or return it” guarantee. Even the consoles. No restocking fees. No forms. If you don’t love it, send it back. That’s an industry first. We checked.

Rave! power supply shown in optional rack mount kit.