Allen & Heath vs Mackie vs Soundcraft

[whattaguy]

All 3 of these boards are similar in pricing. I'm looking for something that's functional, durable, and nice sounding. I've worked briefly with the Allen & Heath, have an M-Series console at home, and have worked with the Onyx in other events. They all seem pretty functional, but I've used them all at different venues with different bands, so I can't really tell which is better.

Any input would be great. We're going to make a purchase for our portable church (don't have a permanent place). IIRC, each channel on the A&H is on it's own circuit board to make serving and repairs a little easier. Is that correct?

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GL2400-32/

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Onyx32x4/

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/LX7ii-32/

Thanks!

 

[Treeline]

All I can tell you is that my experience with a Mackie Onyx has been great.

 

[suprstar]

I can't give you any 1st hand info, but watching everyone else around here talk about em, the A&H and Soundcraft pre's generally get more good things said about em than the Mackie ones.

 

[isfahani]

To me the A&H board (MixWizard 16), especially the eq, sounds better than the Mackie. The Mackie boards that I have used sound ok, tho... But the 808 series' quality sure did change when production went overseas.

 

[mattr]

I'm assuming we're talking about a board solely for live use?

I'm a bit of a sucker for A&H desks I've spent many, many hours behind both a GL2200 and GL2400 and find them a pleasure to work. One thing it offers which the others don't is the ability to flip groups and auxes, which I've found to come in handy in several situations. And to top it all off you get the direct outs on every channel which makes it easy to set up for live recording if needed.

 

[dastrick]

+1 for the A&H.

 

[Mark Hicks]

Yeppir, another +1 for the Allen and Heath. Nice preamps for the price.