First off Bruce, I am "giving" the preamp a better rap then anything else about Mackies. Great, so you got some decent enough preamps.
Now lets hear those mixes you are going to do through that sterile, cold, low headroom 24/8 you got! I wanna hear them.
Eq's a matter of taste? Are you suggesting you like the flavor? Yes or No. Nothing in between. The eq's on a Mackie are mostly unusable!
The next deal I am going to approach is that the console makes a BIG difference, even in the tracking environment. You are possibly going to monitor back through that Mackie, and with how horrible it handles a lot of volume, you are going to make subjective decisions about mic placement, mics, source sounds, etc....based off of a flaw mixer! Who the hell cares how good the preamp is if you can't hear what is really there while monitoring!
I want to hear the tracks. I want to hear them MIXED through those great Mackie gain stages! And those "matter of taste" eq's that nobody seems to care for (okay, nobody I normally associate with!)
Give it up buddy. I have yet to hear your work. Sneak up a mp3 to xdrive or something with a bogus name. That way you don't have to worry about the artist knowing about it. Hell, send it to me via email and I will post it descreetly on my xdrive account. I will claim that I broke into your place and stole a copy! No excuses now. Back your claims!

You should have long ago to end the debate. As it is, you only have words and no tunes.....Let all decide for themselves. That IS the nature of having strong opinions, that you can back them up...
Ed