The Mackie Onyx Blackjack is a very small interface that is a 2 in and 2 out USB unit. The latency is suppose to be zero but I could hear a very small amount of latency while listening to play back and it was really irritating me. This unit is very inexpensive costing around 150 dollars, if you are a musician that has used some good interfaces. Then this one will not work for you, the preamps are average at best and they are not very quiet. You will hear a small hissing sound from time to time and with the latency during play back makes it unusable to me. I do not recommend getting this interface unless it is your first interface and you are just starting out. UTILIZATION Setting it up was a breeze on a Vista computer, but when trying to install it on a XP system gave me a world full of issues. No matter how many times I installed the driver, it just would not recognize the interface each time. GETTING STARTED The Blackjack does have phantom power but with the pre amps being so bad you just really can only do so much with this interface. The design of it is pretty sleek, and rugged; but if you were to drop it one good time I think the knobs would break off completely because they are made out of cheap plastic. Which is expected because of the price of this unit. When you purchase this interface you will not even get good production software with it. It comes with Tracktion 3 which is not even close to making my top 10 of software production programs. OVERALL OPINION For me there are just too many issues that I could not over look with this interface. It was looking for something small and affordable that I could just throw in my laptop bag and take with me. But the pre amps on this unit are so bad compared to other interfaces that I have used that cost just a little more than this one does.
