mackie 32x8 vs. MAckie Hui

[John Mayes]

Ok So I have a friend who is setting up his studio. He has a lot of nice outboard pre's (vintech, great river, Sytek, Earthworks, ect) and compressors (RNC's, distressors) he is running it through a Apogee AD16 into Pro tools mix system on a mac. Question is which would be more benifical to him the 32x8 or the Hui. He does not need to bring in moree than 16 channels at a time and he has the preamps to cover that so my thought was the hui would be better...he could just control everything h e has recorded with it, but a few guys have suggested the 32x8, and I'm not sure I see the reason. What are ya'lls thoughts?

[Blue Bear Sound]

The question really becomes - does he like digital summing and want to stay entirely in the digital realm, or does he want analog summing from out of his DAW..........

[Son of Mixerman]

Why a 32 channel? If yur only bumping 16 tracks at a time into the box, the only reason to use a 32 channel mixer is if you have 32 channels comming out of the box. How many DAC outs does he have? How many tracks are being recorded? Like Blue mentioned, you need to decide where you mixing is going to happen. If your going to be doing only 16 in, you might consider the 16/8 Mackie mixers, the little brother to the 24 and 32 channels version, not the micro stuff.
See what number of DAC channels he has before getting an Analog mixer of any kind.


SoMm

[John Mayes]

The only reason I mentioned 32X8 is beacause someone has one for sale we know and it is a really good price. He only need to bring in 12 channels (drum kit) max, so no need for 32 channels at all...just the good price. What are the reasons why someone would want to do the summing analog? I take it the 32x8 would come into play before it got to the pt mix. Sorry for the ignorance here

[Jerry W]

I have thought about this question myself. I have a Mackie 24/8 and I am wondering whether I should dump it for a Mackie Control. For me, the main reason is becuase I have a MOTU 2408mkII and a 24 i/o which, in 44.1 khz gives me 32 analogue ins and outs. Since I only have a 24 track board, I have not utilized the extra 8 from the 2408 mkII.

Anyway, in considering the question, some of the problems associated with just a midi control are monitoring and auxilliary sends and returns. Becuase you do not have the auxs in the mixer, you will need to use up some of your trakcs to do this. Furthermore, if the midi control does not have a monitor secion, you are going to need to add one.

In the end, the 24/8 is, for me, a monitor control that helps me to sum up all of my keys and modules and whatever else I have recorded (a barking dog last night). So I have kept the mixer.

I think the question about summing in analogue or digital has to do with sound quality and headroom. Summing all of those tracks in analogue, I guess, would be more foregiving whereas, summing in digital might prove difficult to avoid level problems and nasty digital distortion. But, if you get used to it, the digital summing with the type of preamps you mentioned would probably sound best and cleanest.

I am no expert to be sure but, for me, if I were in that position, I would probably want to take a stab at the midi control without the mixer. For one thing, you will get a much better sound from the preamps mentioned and there are seperate monitor sections being made by some companies to fill the gap. That could do the trick. As for the aux sends and returns, it should not be too hard to accomplish this through use of patch bays and/or internal bussing and routing.