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ericthegreat « i love it »
Published on 09/25/11 at 23:03I have a lot of experience with Mackie mixers over the years. I still own a 1604VLZ Pro that is now 12 years old and still working very well. I had worked some with the previous version of this board, the Onyx 1640 and was impressed with the sound and feature set. But this version takes the whole experience to another level. With the firewire fully integrated into the design of the console, it makes external interfaces unnecessary (love that!) and the fact that you can bring your recorded tracks right up on your faders is just great!. As with the
UTILIZATION
Onyx 1640 before it, the preamps are squeaky clean and extremely quiet, the Perkins EQ is a very noticeable improvement over the EQ in my VLZ pro (as you would expect). It definitely has better headroom and lower noise overall. The routing is very flexible overall. All 6 Aux sends are Pre-post selectable, there are EQ in/out switches where the VLZ series just had detents on the EQ gain pots, it has a built in talkback mic with provision for an external, phantom powered mic to be plugged in in its place and more. The headphone amp sounds much better too!
SOUNDS
The Rotopod feature, where you can turn the inputs/outputs end of the console facing up, down or out the back is a great feature. I will be using this to record live music exclusively and I am thrilled that I will no longer have to travel with a 16 channel firewire interface box! About the only thing I wish Mackie had done was to add insert jacks for the subgroups rather than just for the main output. I like being able to compress a group of vocals once in a while. Of course I can simply plug the subgroup outs into my compressors and return the outs of the compressors to one of the dedicated stereo returns or faders if available. Not a big deal,
OVERALL OPINION
overall. Other than that, to say I am happy with this purchase would be the understatement of the year!
UTILIZATION
Onyx 1640 before it, the preamps are squeaky clean and extremely quiet, the Perkins EQ is a very noticeable improvement over the EQ in my VLZ pro (as you would expect). It definitely has better headroom and lower noise overall. The routing is very flexible overall. All 6 Aux sends are Pre-post selectable, there are EQ in/out switches where the VLZ series just had detents on the EQ gain pots, it has a built in talkback mic with provision for an external, phantom powered mic to be plugged in in its place and more. The headphone amp sounds much better too!
SOUNDS
The Rotopod feature, where you can turn the inputs/outputs end of the console facing up, down or out the back is a great feature. I will be using this to record live music exclusively and I am thrilled that I will no longer have to travel with a 16 channel firewire interface box! About the only thing I wish Mackie had done was to add insert jacks for the subgroups rather than just for the main output. I like being able to compress a group of vocals once in a while. Of course I can simply plug the subgroup outs into my compressors and return the outs of the compressors to one of the dedicated stereo returns or faders if available. Not a big deal,
OVERALL OPINION
overall. Other than that, to say I am happy with this purchase would be the understatement of the year!