Yes, it’s a mixer. Yes, it’ll make you want to throw out whatever you’re currently using. Just don’t blame us if you suddenly need more room in your setup.

The elara.6 is calm and clean with a brushed metal front, and there are no flashing lights screaming at you. It has a minimalist faceplate that seems to whispers “let’s go”. We were supposed to just test it and give it a fair spin, but now it’s 1am and we haven’t left the office all day.

Let’s start with the feel. The knobs matter, the surface matters, the texture, resistance, even the sound the fader caps make when you flick them too hard.

The elara.6 feels expensive, but not precious. The faceplate is fully machined alloy, smooth but not slippery. Every knob turns like it means it with no wobble. It’s just very confident and intentional, and you get the sense you’ve actually used this thing before.

Each channel strip is laid out with space to breathe, no cramped fingers trying to hit the gain without bumping EQ, and speaking of EQ: it’s a 4-band, musically tuned sculptor of sound. Not the type you get on cheaper mixers that just lop off frequencies, this EQ sings. You can push the high mids to sharpen a vocal or dig into the lows to make a kick feel like it’s really pulsating.

And then you meet the AP Strip and everything starts to wobble. This is where the mixer starts whispering weird ideas in your ear. Each strip includes a filter with resonance, a drive knob that ranges from gentle warmth to complete overdrive, and then there’s the Width control. The mixer starts off with a normal stereo spread and then it dips into mono, which is expected. But somewhere along the dial it slips into this warped, reversed, room-folding thing where the sound doesn’t just widen, it bends. The low end doesn’t become muddy and it stays rooted. The filters are toggled on high pass or low pass on each channel and you’ll be doing stupid things with it in no time.

The elara.6 is also a super flexible mixer. If you want to send the AP strip to Aux Send 1, pre or post, you can.  If you want to route a return (with its own 4-band EQ and two aux sends) directly into the crossfader, you can. You can even push mic input through the filter, back into an aux loop, and out to a reverb pedal.

The faders are weighted and smooth, and you can feel the linearity with no unexpected bumps or dead zones. The crossfader is an Innofader, with adjustable curve, and it’s got that luxurious glide you get on high-end boutique mixers. If you’re into cutting, it’s responsive. If you’re not, it just feels nice to move. And if you’re one of those rotary heads, you can swap the whole thing out for rotary faders in under a minute. It’s modular without making a fuss about it.

The layout still makes sense and it never gets in your way.

Before we crack on with some more love for the mixer, you can get an overview of what we mean in Union Audio’s full mixer demo:

Some other things we noticed is that the AP filter slightly saturates at high resonance but not in a bad way, more like it’s encouraging you to break it.

You can EQ the returns so they become an ambient loop in themselves and the Width control, at extreme settings, seems to make the walls feel further apart.

There’s a proper balanced XLR booth out and the internal universal power supply means no clunky adapters.

We took this mixer out a few times to our events at The Golden Lion, Todmorden and The Social, Fitzrovia and it sounded and felt absolutely immense. The engineers loved the sound and the vibe, and all the DJs loved the double headphone cue for b2bs or DJ changeovers. The quick change to switch out the faders for the rotary was also a hit.

The Specs: Under the faceplate, here are the numbers:

– Maximum Output Level +27dBu Balanced, +22dBu Unbalanced
– Output Impedance <1R Balanced, 100R Unbalanced
– Noise (Line In to Line Out Unity) -80dBu Un-weighted, 22Hz to 20kHz
– Residual Noise -92dBu Un-weighted, 22Hz to 20kHz
– Dynamic Range >114dB
– Frequency Response 10Hz – 50kHz +0/-1dB
– Distortion (THD+N) 0.03% Line In to Mix 1 Out, 0dBu Unity Gain
– Control Attenuation Better than 80dB
– Inter-channel Crosstalk < -100dB
– Left/Right Crosstalk -80dB @ 1kHzMaximum Headphone Output 850mW RMS into 45 Ohms (Cue 1)
– Power Consumption 40W maximum

Pictured above, Dresden (Ivan Smagghe & Manfredas) at the Golden Lion, Todmorden – Using the elara.6

Final Thoughts: If you like a mixer that sounds immense and just feels right,  the elara.6 is a bit of a dream. Beautifully built and utterly fun. Just don’t expect to get anything else done for a while.

Go get one. Or don’t. But seriously, you’ll regret it.

Find out more on the elara.6 and Union Audio HERE:
And on Instagram HERE: