Most people familer with Mackie agree that Mackie pre-amps are pretty
decent. It's the rest of the board that sucks. Mix busses, EQ all
sound bad. I finally bought an A&H Mix
Wizard for my band. It works and sounds great compaired to all the
Mackies we tried.

I've heard horror stories about the larger Mackie automated consoles.
IMHO Mackie is great at marketing....

DaveT