Mackie Onyx mixer w/ Firewire...reviews?

[The Lost Souls]

Hey everyone! This is my 1st post. I just want to say that this is a great forum and I'm happy to be here!

Right now I use a Lexicon Omega break out box to record and I'm thinking of upgrading my mixer to a Mackie Onyx 1620 0r 1640. This seems like a good way to bridge a good analog mixer via firewire with my computer which I use Sonar.

I would like to know if anyone's used these yet and what they think? Any reviews are appreciated.

Thanks Everybody!
Rock On!

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I have not actually used an Onyx in a "real world" situation, but I have messed around with them a bit in a couple of showrooms, and I have a ton of real world experience with almost every other Mackie board made. With those caveats...

I find the Onyx boards to be quite good. The preamps are of excellent quality for the pricepoint and the EQs and (to a lesser degree) faders are much improved over older models. I personally think that the FW option is a bit pricey - Mackie is definitely making money on those - but the utility of them is excellent. I'd bite the bullet and pay the price, though it would leave a little taste of lead in my mouth for a day or two .

The biggest misunderstanding about the Onyx mixers is that FW interface only provides full multitrack capability in one direction; from the mixer to the computer. The only outputs from the computer back to the mixer are a stereo mix feed meant mainly to drive the control room monitors. You can pump 16 or so channels into Sonar (or whatever multitrack software you want), but if you're expecting to be able to send those tracks back out to the Onyx for analog mixing, you'll be disappointed; it won't do that.

But if you understand that feature and it still gives you all the functionality you're looking for, then yes, the Onyx series is a very good mixer for it's class, IMHO.

G.

[The Lost Souls]

Kewl!

Thanks SouthSIDE Glen!

Rock on!

[4-Man Takedown]

It does suck that the firewire option is about half the price of the mixer itself, when you know they can't be that much to make... but it still seems like a pretty good deal. i wonder how the a/d conversion is.

[slipmip]

I hear the Phonic Helix Firewire mixer uses the same FW chip
as the mackie and is way less money. Though i don't know if the
pre's and other features are nearly has high quality.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by slipmip

I hear the Phonic Helix Firewire mixer uses the same FW chip
as the mackie and is way less money. Though i don't know if the
pre's and other features are nearly has high quality.

Sonically speaking, what FW chip is used is really rather irrelevant; all it's doing is packaging the digital signal for transport, but it's not really processing the signal itself. The difference is in the quality of the A/D//D/A converters feeding to and from the FW circuit. This is where the "justification" for the rest of the cost comes in (though they're still making a good gross profit margin on it ).

The converters on the Onyx are , IMHO, quite good. They're no Apogees, of course, but they're no Soundblasters either . I have a MOTU 2408 at my project studio, and though I have not done any scientific comparisons or anything like that, my impression was that the Mackies are in a similar class as the MOTU, give or take. In other words, they are very servicible converters, pretty good for an all-in-one solution like the Onyx, and you could do a lot worse with a cheaper interface box.

G.