Would a digital mixer improve the quality of your sound?

[DanG2006]

I am looking at replacing my powered mixer with a separate mixer and amplifier because I don't think that there is a powered mixer that can match up with my new EV ZX1's. I chose passive speakers because the last place that I used the ZXA1'S that I use to have, I was getting a hum in the speakers due to the fact that I had to plug the speakers into the same power strip and I believe that it was because of a ground loop hum. I didn't have the humwhen I was able to plug the speakers into their own outlets or when I was running a passive system. Granted you could only hear the hum when the music wasn't playing which was when I was calling the next singer up to sing but it was annoying enough for me to choose to go back to a passive speaker system. I have the amplifier picked out but am seriously considering getting a Soundcraft digital mixer which will allow me to stay in the audience unless I need to work with my DJ playlist, the player I am using's playlist is super sensitive when it comes to moving around songs and I don't want to accidentally start a special request for playing in my inbox between sets by just touching the song name in the list. Yeah, some may say that winamp isn't the most professional of players but I really like the ability to tell it to stop play after the current song when it's time to go back to karaoke plus I personally don't need a real DJ software because I don't consider myself a real DJ, just a Karaoke Host that will play regular music between rotations or to fill in the night with no karaoke requests, which for me almost never happens except for one place that I no longer do, I told the bar owner basically that the only crowd that they were getting due to lack of promoting the karaoke show were people who only wanted to drink, play pool and listen to music and that if they really wanted to pay a person who will just play music to hire a real DJ, which I am not.

[wiseguy]

The Yamaha EMX512SC would certainly power the EV speakers and it's one of the best powered amps around. It also has the onboard SPX Digital Effects which are second to none.

[DanG2006]

Unfortunately it is 2u's too big. It needs a 12u rack and my rack only has 10u rack space on top. I think that I am going to stick with separate components.

[wiseguy]

If it were me I'd upgrade my rack. That Yamaha is one hell of an amp.

[DanG2006]

I have decided to go with a separate mixer and amplifier combination. The mixer I chose is most definitely an upgrade, a Soundcraft Ui24X. It gives me the ability to rack mount it and I can connect the sound from the computer to the mixer audio wise by USB cable effectively creating an all digital signal. I can also run my shows without having to go back to my system for just about anything.