Mixer of choice

[Mick]

Has anyone looked at the Mackie Onyx? I seem to remember Coffey/Trew doing an AC/DC conversion a while ago. It looks pretty flexible and I happen to be a fan of Mackie mixers. Any practical experience anyone? And by the way thanks for all the helpful input.

Mick

[studiomprd]

David M: " a true competitor to the 01v96 in digital "

Soundcraft Si Expression.

Mick: " Has anyone looked at the Mackie Onyx? "

of course, they are very popular, though not in our circles; they might not be up to our typical standards in several respects, including heavy duty location ruggedness...

" Coffey/Trew doing an AC/DC conversion a while ago. "

guess you have to speak with...

(and it might also be possible for some others, too...)

Edited December 14, 2013 by studiomprd

[RPSharman]

Have a look at Steve Morrow's credits.

He seems to do just fine with a Mackie Onyx. And he works almost exclusively on location. No issues regarding ruggedness.

Bob Wald used a Mackie Onyx for several years before retiring. Loved it.

I used the 1642 VLZ, and also loved it. I moved to a Solice primarily for the form factor and power consumption.

People here seem to label Mackies as inferior. But if they work for you, then use them.

Robert

[Mick]

Anyone know if Steve uses an inverter or a DC conversion?(

[Bash]

Mix Wizard is a much older, more mature, analogue, series from A&H. QU-16 is the latest digital goodness. It certainly works well for my ears....

Kindest,

sb

Hi guys,

I recently used a A&H mixwizard on a corporate gig where I needed to handle a small PA as well as recording. I was impressed overall with the mixing and routing capabilities of this little board and everything sounded great...until we went to post. Then, we discovered that the quality of the preamp were painfully inferior to my usual 552.

My cos-11 sounded harsh with too much sibillance and the 416 used for Q&A was muddy lacked clarity and dedinition. Nothing horrible but just not as good as usual.

[Philip Perkins]

There are a lot of mixers new and slightly less than new that would work fine for location dialog work, but you'd have to mod them to get good talkback/slate etc, they'd need AC or an invertor setup and they tend to be rack-width and even longer than that front to back.  Many of them also have the connectors on the top.  All these things are kind of a compromise for location work I think, hence the Solice  and Sonosax for folks with that kind of money--no compromises.  If you aren't really going to be that "mixy", then a setup with rotary pots might work out fine with a far smaller footprint (Nomad+extra fader thing, 788+CL8, 664/CL6 etc) and DC power.  

 

philp 

[BudRaymond]

I'm a big fan of control surfaces for recorders. Eliminates a gain stage, and if you're using an analog board you are invariably introducing noise, however small. 

Also, the 788 supports digital microphones, full com routing with 2 returns for boom op communication. 

Simple and elegant, imho.

[Phil Palmer]

Hey Mick!

 

+1 on the Yamaha.  Works great for me.  Lots of info on the users group too.

 

http://o1v96psug.proboards.com/index.cgi

 

P

[Tom Visser]

I'm a big fan of control surfaces for recorders. Eliminates a gain stage, and if you're using an analog board you are invariably introducing noise, however small. 

Also, the 788 supports digital microphones, full com routing with 2 returns for boom op communication. 

Simple and elegant, imho.

 

Inherently, I'm the type that likes control surfaces too, but at the end of the day, have stuck with an analog board in front of a digital recorder.  The immediate response of truly analog faders is hard to give up.  There's no firmware, no overheating or lockup possibility, and 20 years from now, with a bit of normal maintenance, my mixer is still going to be mixing, and might find a relevant utility for me even then, where I presume any control surface is only going to be as useful as the device it is attached to.  I'm taking sort of a split approach - since I use Zaxcom QRX for my receivers, I can set 1 output as analog to go into my mixer and the other output I can set to AES digital, to be recorded direct in the digital domain.  I retain the digital > digital signal flow for my wireless mics.  I don't notice a noise floor issue with my mix, although I do cede that one purely in the digital domain has better noise performance - just hasn't been an issue so far.

[pkautzsch]

there weren't enough outs once you plugged each channel Iso into your recorder. There wasn't anything left for camera feeds, comteks PL's etal. Too bad because it looks interesting

 

I guess desks like the QU 16, StudioLive, or 01V96i can work very well in a Boom Recorder setup, working as USB/FW audio interfaces. You have real faders to mix on, all the desk's analog/digital outputs are left for comteks, hops, playbacks, whatever.

BR records isos and mix, 702T records backup of mix from main outputs.

 

Agree that it's not that great in front of a dedicated recorder - especially the 788T. With the 788T I very much prefer CL-8 or CL-9 mixing since I can have all 8 inputs going to isos.

[GJD]

I've never used any of the Cooper CS mixers but I'm assuming they have much better sounding preamps than that of say the Allen&Heath Zed series?

I'm apprehensive about using the same mixer I'd use for mixing a band, for a panel and even reality tv.