Don't need a new mixer, but...

[Joey-T]

I don't really need a new mixer, but one came up in an estate sale real cheap...
It's a Mackie SR56-8. Huge. They have it set up and everything seems to work as it should.

I looked it up through Google for problems, and it seems everyone pretty much dislikes the old 8-busses because they seem to be unreliable on the road. Would this be a decent mixer if used in a stationary environment? Do they sound OK?

I am only considering it because I'm able to get a super-low price on it (think about a third of what they seem to be going for), because the owner of the estate owes me money. Should I bother?

 

[Chili]

If you don't need it, can you flip it on eBay and make a profit??

 

[Joey-T]

I'm sure I could, but I don't really have the time or desire to do it. I'm just wondering if it would be worthy of having and using in a home studio setup. If I recall, it has direct outs on all the channels.

I seem to get mixed feelings on this thing when I search the internet. Seems the common complaints are about reliability when traveling the board. Haven't seen any complaints about reliability when it is used in a stationary environment.

As for the sound, it seems opinions fall into two camps: 1) Person actually has it or has used it and says it is a good sounding board, and 2) Person is anti-Mackie, but doesn't post anything to support his claims of why he doesn't like the 8-bus series.

I do have an A&H Zed 436, but I was thinking that if this is a decent board, I can set it up for studio use and use the A&H live. I would really like to have two mixers, rather than having one pull double duty between studio & live use, but is this Mackie the one?

Has anyone used the 8-bus series that can advise me?

 

[Chili]

I don't use a mixer in my studio and I haven't done live sound in eons.... but I bet it would serve you well to get it if the price is as good as you feel it is. Having direct outs is a nice feature on mixers. It gives you a lot of mic pres that you can run into an interface.