Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

Re: Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

I like them personally. Ours is about 4 years old and has been rock solid. The layout is very tight and everything is spaced close together, but the overall chassis is very long, you might want to look at the exact depth before deciding to try and rackmount it. Feature wise, you get a pair of stereo groups, complete with inserts which is a nice +1 over the 16:2. All the aux busses are switchable pre/post, unlike the 16:2 which has two fixed pre and two fixed post buses. I don't have the firewire card, but from what I remember the sends are pre-EQ which was an issue to some hoping to use it in a studio setting and take advantage of the decent sounding EQ section.
 
Re: Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

For a good price I would probably bite, so deep in my subconscious I must not hate it, but every time I have used one, I remember the difficulty of patching anything, especially if it is in a rack. The only time I have ever used the recording function it was set up by the house for me.

Nothing wrong with the sound of the board when teamed with similar level speakers.
 
Re: Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

I don't really have an opinion myself, haven't used one for music. But we've got a couple in rentals, and fairly often the customer brings it back with "you know, it actually sounds pretty good". And I've never had to fix either of them in 3-4 years.
 
Re: Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

I was very suprised at how good they sound. I have owned a MixWiz, a GL2400, and a Soundcraft GB4 and the sound is comparable to any of them. Not thin and lacking headroom like the VLZ series and earlier Mackie offerings. The EQ reminds me alot of the Allen and Heath. I have mixed on one 3 or 4 times and had no real complaints for a mixer in that class. For what its worth my only other considerations would be resale value and durability.
 
Re: Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

Is Mackie getting any better at after-sale service? A buddy of mine, who runs a local music store, decided to drop Mackie, because some of his customers were waiting up to 6-8 months for repairs/parts. Of course, the customers were blaming the store, so he got fed up and said bye-bye to Mackie. Mind you , that was a couple of years ago.
 
Re: Mackie's Onyx mixers. What's the consensus?

Mackie (Loud) had a problem with a Chinese Contract MFR that went belly up on them several years ago. That may be the source of your buddy's poor experience, with repair parts for several product lines, if it was around that same time frame.

Stuff happens but I suspect Mackie these days is more like it's marketplace peers for service.

JR
 
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