so I need suggestions on a starting point for a new mixer. I currently
have a mackie onyx 1220 which only has 8 faders and 4 mic pres. I
should have skipped the firewire card and bought the bigger mixer but
that was my error. I need a bigger mixer for the front end of my ptle
setup. As it stands i can only run 8 signals through it to the
interface. The interface has much more i/o (maudio fw1814) but there's
no convenient way to monitor while tracking without a real console.
I'd like at least 12 mic pres/channels and 16 is more than I'll ever
use, so somewhere from 12-16 channels would be good. I'd want the pres
to be at least on par with the mackies, but hopefully better- not too
concerned about eq because it's just for monitoring purposes, but of
course the less muddy the monitor mix the better. I do have a few
channels of RNP outboard pre and I'll probably in the future buy some
more decent outboard pre to augment the board's pres, but i still want
dcecent pres in the board for the obvious reason. Then I can get an
outboard converter for my interface and utilize those extra daw inputs
that way.

So... where to start? Do I get a 1604 or is that a step backward.
What about the allen and heath mix wizard or the soundcraft spirit m12?
the soundcarft looks like it has great features at that price point.
But I odn't know how it sounds. If I hear "it sounds ok, you should
audition it" i will, but if i hear "it's a dog it sucks" then that
narrows my choices. What other choices do i have? I don't record rock
or pop music- I do acoustic music, mostly jazz, so the most important
thing to me is cleanliness in sound and less color. Anyway, where
should I start?

Nate

Nate Najar wrote:
so I need suggestions on a starting point for a new mixer. I currently
have a mackie onyx 1220 which only has 8 faders and 4 mic pres. I
should have skipped the firewire card and bought the bigger mixer but
that was my error.

So... where to start? Do I get a 1604 or is that a step backward.

Yes. An Onyx 1640 would be a step forward. The preamps are fine (you
aren't likely to find any better built into a mixer anywhere in this
price class) and you have 16 of them. It'll take the Firewire option
card that you presently own, so you can continue using that if it's
convenient, or not - your choice.

They never really make what you want, though. The six independent
auxiliary sends take up a lot of real estate and unless you want to
make a separate headphone mix for everyone in the band plus a couple of
effects, you probably don't need them all. But take it, or leave the
mixer.

The Mackie 1620 might work out better for you. It has only 8 built-in
mic preamps, but with another four pairs of line inputs (that are also
routed to the direct Recording outputs) you have the option of using
some outboard preamps - you might find a combination of mic and preamp
that works well with your guitar, leaving the Mackie preamps for the
drums and bass.

What about the allen and heath mix wizard or the soundcraft spirit m12?
the soundcarft looks like it has great features at that price point.
But I odn't know how it sounds. If I hear "it sounds ok, you should
audition it" i will, but if i hear "it's a dog it sucks" then that
narrows my choices.

Nothing really sucks any more, but some things sound better than
others. And sometimes (more often than we'd like to admit) it doesn't
matter as much as we'd like to believe it does. A&H mixers have a lot
of fans but it's usually more a matter of ergonomics than superior
sound (everyone likes the longer faders than what Mackie uses).
Soundcraft has gotten a little chintzy lately, but I guess they're
still OK.

I don't think that auditioning mixers is going to sell you on one over
another, but it's a good idea to look at them, get your hands on the
controls, look at the type of connectors it uses and whether it has all
the inputs, outputs, controls, and switches that you need, or
anticipate needing. Study the block diagrams to be sure that you
understand what comes out the connector with which label. Most people
who want to cuss at Mackie do so because they expected the Recording
outputs to be post-EQ and maybe post-fader (which they aren't).

There are a couple of cheaper mixers that are of the same concept as
the Mackie Onyx now, but I'd be willing to bet that soundwise, Mackie
is still at the top of the heap. But one thing that you should
understand is that most mixers built today are really targeted toward
live sound, not recording. At least the Onyx provides a solid,
dedicated direct line level output from each input so you don't have to
worry about plugs halfway into Insert jacks falling out, and you still
have access to inserts if you want to use them in your monitoring or
live sound path. I think this is a pretty good idea. But if you want to
use the mixer to mix your multitrack recordings, you'll need to
re-cable or at least re-patch, and of course you can't use the Onyx
Firewire card since it has only two "recorder returns."

Nate Najar wrote:

the soundcarft looks like it has great features at that price point.
But I odn't know how it sounds. If I hear "it sounds ok, you should
audition it" i will, but if i hear "it's a dog it sucks" then that
narrows my choices.

You needn't fret over the sound quality of Soundcraft ( or for that matter
Allen & Heath ). They are both excellent brands with good reputations.

Graham

If you could boost the budget a bit you could get a used Crest XR20 for
$1200 or so. Quite a difference. But the 1620 sounds good and are
availble around $600 or so new. thats the gap. I think the 1620 is
maybe the best of the low cost.

good luck

Mike Rivers wrote:

I'd be willing to bet that soundwise, Mackie
is still at the top of the heap.

Why do you rekon that Mike ?

And why *still* ? Early Mackies were utter pieces of **** !

Of course their glossy ads didn't say that so ppl went and bought them.
Mackie's probably better at advertising than making good audio products.


Graham

Pooh Bear wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

I'd be willing to bet that soundwise, Mackie
is still at the top of the heap.

Why do you rekon that Mike ?

Because I have some Onyx mixers around here and they're good enough so
that I'm not tempted to worry about whether something else might be
incrementally better.

And why *still* ? Early Mackies were utter pieces of **** !

But they were not as big pieces of **** (or were at least different
kinds of **** than early TASCAMs, and let's not even mention the Alesis
1622. Back in the days of the CR-1604, you couldn't buy a mixer for
under $1,000 that wasn't a piece of ****. Today you can buy a lot that
are, and a lot that aren't.

Newer Mackie mixers were significantly improved over the originals. And
even the original 1604 had better mic preamps than anything else at
even double the price - because at the time, even at double the price,
you still got something that would be considered pretty poor by today's
standards.

Of course their glossy ads didn't say that so ppl went and bought them.
Mackie's probably better at advertising than making good audio products.

Acutally, they're pretty good at both. The one thing that they weren't
very good at was market research, and they didn't figure out soon
enough that they had to find a cheaper way to make their products
without lowering the quality. They were behind the power curve for four
years or so while they worked that out. But I can assure you that a new
Onyx is better in both sound and quality than the old 1604.

Are they twice as good as the similar Behringer at half the price?
Depends on what you consider "twice as good."

Mike Rivers wrote:

Pooh Bear wrote:
Mike Rivers wrote:

I'd be willing to bet that soundwise, Mackie
is still at the top of the heap.

Why do you rekon that Mike ?

Because I have some Onyx mixers around here and they're good enough so
that I'm not tempted to worry about whether something else might be
incrementally better.

And why *still* ? Early Mackies were utter pieces of **** !

But they were not as big pieces of **** (or were at least different
kinds of **** than early TASCAMs, and let's not even mention the Alesis
1622. Back in the days of the CR-1604, you couldn't buy a mixer for
under $1,000 that wasn't a piece of ****.

Not so. The more modestly priced Soundcrafts were there and indeed
Studiomaster has always made competitively priced mixers.


Today you can buy a lot that are, and a lot that aren't.

The Chinese still can't innovate for sure.


Newer Mackie mixers were significantly improved over the originals. And
even the original 1604 had better mic preamps than anything else at
even double the price - because at the time, even at double the price,
you still got something that would be considered pretty poor by today's
standards.

There was nothing special ever about Mackie pres. Simply copies of what had
gone before ( mainly from British companies ).


Of course their glossy ads didn't say that so ppl went and bought them.
Mackie's probably better at advertising than making good audio products.

Acutally, they're pretty good at both. The one thing that they weren't
very good at was market research, and they didn't figure out soon
enough that they had to find a cheaper way to make their products
without lowering the quality. They were behind the power curve for four
years or so while they worked that out. But I can assure you that a new
Onyx is better in both sound and quality than the old 1604.

Are they twice as good as the similar Behringer at half the price?
Depends on what you consider "twice as good."

In comparing them I'd look to facilities rather than the quality of the
electronics or its build mainly.


Graham

Pooh Bear wrote:

Not so. The more modestly priced Soundcrafts were there and indeed
Studiomaster has always made competitively priced mixers.

Studiomaster wasn't big enough here in the US for me to be aware of
what they were doing (or for many others to, either) so I don't
consider that to be reasonable competition. At the time of the CR-1604,
there were no small Soundcrafts. The 200 was the bottom of the line and
it was several times more expensive than the Mackie (for justifiable
reasons). The Spirit series came later, in the days of the VLZ series.

There was nothing special ever about Mackie pres. Simply copies of what had
gone before ( mainly from British companies ).

The VLZ Pro is a pretty good circuit. Looked at it lately? The Onyx is
similar. It's difficult to be innovative when your job is to make a
microphone signal louder and you don't want to use a transformer in the
front, so I would expect there not to be huge differences among
comtemporary, price-competitive circuits. But Mackie at least used a
solid steel case, some EMI filtering, grounded the shields right at the
jacks, and other than a few rare cases were the installation problems.

In comparing them I'd look to facilities rather than the quality of the
electronics or its build mainly.

Well, my advice to Nate was to look at features and functions as well
as interfaces (human and otherwise). For example, for someone who
doesn't have a cable budget, the D-sub connectors for the direct
outputs on the Onyx might be a deal-breaker.

"Nate Najar" wrote in message
oups.com...
so I need suggestions on a starting point for a new mixer. I currently
have a mackie onyx 1220 which only has 8 faders and 4 mic pres.

Could you keep the Mackie, use 4 mikes and output them through Firewire, and
add a second mixer with 8+ mike channels aconnect the eight inserts/direct
outputs to the 8 line inputs of your M-audio.

One of the mixer's monitor outs would have to be input to the other mixer,
with that mixer's monitor outs used for monitoring.

You have to decide for youself whether the mixture of Mackie pre-amps and
new mixer pre-amps would meet your quality needs.

Tim

Tim Martin wrote:

Could you keep the Mackie, use 4 mikes and output them through Firewire, and
add a second mixer with 8+ mike channels aconnect the eight inserts/direct
outputs to the 8 line inputs of your M-audio.

Actually, he could do that with the Mackie Onyx 1220 that he has now.
The four pairs of line inputs (which could be fed from up to eight
channels of outboard mic preamps, for a total of 12) appear on the
Recording output connectors and as Firewire outputs as well. There are
no Insert jacks for those line inputs, so he'd need a cable with a
25-pin D-sub connector on one end to connect to them rather than using
Insert Sends.

But I thought he said he was looking for up to 16 mic inputs.

Mike Rivers wrote:

Pooh Bear wrote:

Not so. The more modestly priced Soundcrafts were there and indeed
Studiomaster has always made competitively priced mixers.

Studiomaster wasn't big enough here in the US for me to be aware of
what they were doing (or for many others to, either) so I don't
consider that to be reasonable competition. At the time of the CR-1604,
there were no small Soundcrafts. The 200 was the bottom of the line and
it was several times more expensive than the Mackie (for justifiable
reasons). The Spirit series came later, in the days of the VLZ series.

I don't recall that being the timeline myself.

When does the CD1604 date from originally ?

There was nothing special ever about Mackie pres. Simply copies of what had
gone before ( mainly from British companies ).

The VLZ Pro is a pretty good circuit. Looked at it lately?

Actually, the most recent mic pre of their's I've looked at is the Previous VLZ
version. Is there much difference ?


Graham

Pooh Bear wrote:

The VLZ Pro is a pretty good circuit. Looked at it lately?

Actually, the most recent mic pre of their's I've looked at is the Previous VLZ
version. Is there much difference ?

Yeah, they improve a little with each edition. One thing they got to do
when designing the Onyx is use the parts that the designer really
wanted to us instead of having to make some compromises to meet
Marketing's price point. You'll find a better grade of IC and large
enough bypass capacitors so that the low end stays flat to 20 Hz at
full gain.

Mike Rivers wrote:

Pooh Bear wrote:

The VLZ Pro is a pretty good circuit. Looked at it lately?

Actually, the most recent mic pre of their's I've looked at is the Previous VLZ
version. Is there much difference ?

Yeah, they improve a little with each edition. One thing they got to do
when designing the Onyx is use the parts that the designer really
wanted to us instead of having to make some compromises to meet
Marketing's price point. You'll find a better grade of IC and large
enough bypass capacitors so that the low end stays flat to 20 Hz at
full gain.

Intruiging. I've recently been looking at increasing the inter-emitter coupling cap
to do that too. I suspect that's what you're referring to in fact. The alternative
trick is to DC servo the input pair and delete the cap totally. Neotek are the only
bunch I've seen to do that. Given the higher cost of the larger cap, the DC servo may
actually pay for itself ( ah but the trimpot's pricy - so maybe not ).

I doubt that a different IC has changed much though unless it's really exotic.

Do you have a schematic ?


Graham

Nate,
The Spirit M12 is a very nice mixer, with excellent preamps for the
price. It may be a little limited with 3 band eq and only 12 pres.
The 4 stereo channels are a plus but the stereo returns are unbalanced.

I don't think the Mixwizard 3 can be beat for the price. 4 band eq
with sweepable mids and it sounds MUCh better than the Mackie EQ. Pres
are on par with Mackie - maybe a little less clinical. Great faders,
tons of aux sends and routing options and most importantly built like a
tank. It's got internal effects too, if you care.
We recently replaced a Mackie 24 8 bus with the MixWizard 16:2 and in
spite of losing some amenities like tape returns, busses, and built in
talkback I'm happy with the "downsize". Pres and EQ make all the
difference.
Spirit FX16 is in the same range. IMO it sounds petty decent for the
money and has usuable eq but the construction is very ... feeble. Pots
have way too much play for me to be comfortable with and the faders
feel like something that cost 99 cents in the drugstore toy aisle. If
your needs won;t be putting the board in any harms way maybe you should
check it out. It also has built in effects and a L and R Subgroup.

Good luck.

Dan Fox

I never heard micpre worse than Allen & Heat.... Sorry
F.


"Pooh Bear" ha scritto nel
messaggio ...

Nate Najar wrote:

the soundcarft looks like it has great features at that price point.
But I odn't know how it sounds. If I hear "it sounds ok, you should
audition it" i will, but if i hear "it's a dog it sucks" then that
narrows my choices.

You needn't fret over the sound quality of Soundcraft ( or for that matter
Allen & Heath ). They are both excellent brands with good reputations.

Graham

Federico wrote:

I never heard micpre worse than Allen & Heat.... Sorry

You must never have heard the mic preamps in the Alesis 1622?
Why are you sorry?

--
================================================== ======================
Michael Kesti | "And like, one and one don't make
| two, one and one make one."
mrkesti at comcast dot net | - The Who, Bargain

Michael R. Kesti wrote:
Federico wrote:

I never heard micpre worse than Allen & Heat.... Sorry

You must never have heard the mic preamps in the Alesis 1622?
Why are you sorry?


I never heard the mike preamps in the 1622 either. I could never get
the trim controls to work for long enough to find out what they sounded
like.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Federico wrote:

I never heard micpre worse than Allen & Heat.... Sorry
F.

How old an A&H ? What model ?

It's hard to take that seriously since almost all modern desks have very similar
mic pres that boil down to only a few very similar design variants.

Pls tell more.

Graham

Pooh Bear wrote:
Federico wrote:


I never heard micpre worse than Allen & Heat.... Sorry
F.


How old an A&H ? What model ?

It's hard to take that seriously since almost all modern desks have very similar
mic pres that boil down to only a few very similar design variants.

Pls tell more.

Graham

I agree.... recent desks all sound VERY similar to me and it boils down
to quality of components and the rest of the signal path. Oddly enough,
I liked the older A&H mic pres I used and I never liked Mackies...
I think the new range from A&H seems well spec'd and would edge towards
them rather than mackie.

I've made a multitrack recording using a A&H GL3300 and using direct
outputs.... I used "good" mics...
The pres were really less good-sounding than, for example, the mackies..
I really can't describe the sound but it was "in the face", without life and
with a sort of "distorsion". No "space"...
The same sound you hear from crappy mics into a crappy PA.... Something like
a "on or off" thing.
I didn't use EQ because IMHO it sounded even worse...
(no, I don't think the console was in need of repair).

Buy, yes, I never heard Alesis pres....




"david morley" ha scritto nel messaggio
...
Pooh Bear wrote:
Federico wrote:


I never heard micpre worse than Allen & Heat.... Sorry
F.


How old an A&H ? What model ?

It's hard to take that seriously since almost all modern desks have very
similar
mic pres that boil down to only a few very similar design variants.

Pls tell more.

Graham

I agree.... recent desks all sound VERY similar to me and it boils down
to quality of components and the rest of the signal path. Oddly enough,
I liked the older A&H mic pres I used and I never liked Mackies...
I think the new range from A&H seems well spec'd and would edge towards
them rather than mackie.