chessrock said:
In an earlier post, Harvey mentioned that I shouldn't lump your products in with "bottom feeders" like the Mackie. I'm glad that Harvey can say things like that without Greg Mackie jumping all over his statement saying: "Who 'you callin' a bottom feeder?"
I guess that statement needs some clarification. I doubt if Greg Mackie would take serious offence to my statement, but I wanna set the record straight. The preamp section of a Mackie mixer is a great value - very low noise, and pretty clean; actually quite good, considering the cost. But it's a very simple device, and the rest of the mixer has some serious problems for use as a recording board (the eq section and the summing buss in particular).
It's not on my short list of recomended products for serious recording, although it's a good deal if you just use the preamp part and go from the inserts directly into the recorder, bypassing the eq and the summing buss. But that just buys you a simple preamp with a gain control and some overall phantom power. It's a clean, if not very exciting, signal source.
The VTB-1 has a lot more going for it, but it's more money per channel than a Mackie. The impedance switch lets you tailor the sound and provides a better match to a lot of different mics, and the starved plate design actually works as advertised.
Adding a DI, output control, polarity reverse, i/o metering, and balanced outputs makes the VTB-1 a better unit than the Mackie, if you're serious about recording and can afford an outboard preamp.
If you need six "plain jane", but good, preamps, a used Mackie 1202 is the way to go, but it's in a different league than a dedicated preamp like the VTB-1.
In my opinion, Alan hit a home run with this unit - it's very good and the equal (so far) of preamps costing a lot more than $179. I haven't found any major "gotcha's" yet and if there are some, believe me, I'll let everybody know, in no uncertain terms.
Over the course of a year, I've become good friends with Alan (at least I hope I have), and I still maintain a good friendship with Wayne at MXL, Dan Kennedy at Great River, Taylor Johnson at the Sound Room, and Mark McQuilken at FMR Audio.
I think that's possible because they all recognize that I will be fair in testing any unit they want to send me and that my friendship with the other people won't cloud my judgement. I've never talked to anybody at Behringer, but that didn't stop me from giving a strong recomendation on the ECM8000.
In the final analysis, buy whatever you feel comfortable with, and if a manufacturer's style of promoting his products bothers you, don't buy his products, but be aware that you may be missing out on a good deal.
But that choice is, and always has been, yours alone to make.
For me, substance takes precedence over style, and if the manufacturer stands behind the product, and the product deserves consideration, I'll consider buying it, regardless of how I feel about the way the manufacturer represents the product. Even though we're friends, you've seen me nail Alan here publicly when I felt he may have over-reached on some of his claims in the past.