I've recently decided to invest in some half-decent recording equipment and get an exceptional home-studio up and running. I'm an amateur to the world of home-studio building/recording and looking for any comments/experiences on Mackie mixers. Unless someone wants to point me in another company's direction, I'm fairly set on purchasing a Mackie.

So my question is, when comparing an Onyx 1640 (or even 1620) and a 1604-VLZ3, which is the better purchase?

I would like to have 10-16 mic-pres (which both obviously provide) and need something quiet (Onyx mic-pres or XDR2s?) that will help me produce more professional-sounding recordings. My price-range is about where these two mixers fall.

Any advice you can provide my newbie-ass is appreciated.
Thanks.

I've only used the Mackie 24 8 Bus console [http://www.mackie.com/home/showimage.html?u=/products/24-8bus/images/ZOOMED_24.8.jpg], so maybe my input here is useless, but if they have the same or similar preamps in all their consoles then I'd say look elsewhere.
I think their preamps are really weak. There's no real juice.. no POW! Everything just sounds really flat and dead. So if you want a bit more professional sounding, I'd definetely pick something else.
This is all in my humble opinion, of course..

How many simultaneous inputs do you need?

I think there are other questions that need answering...and a statement or two.

What format (cumpooter or tape) are you recording onto?

In your home studio that is to be built / assembled what exactly do you hope to record ? or rather ...Do you really need 10 -16 mic pres off the bat or might you want to start off with the something more basic to learn on without spending money on things you do not (will not?) need.

Have you already budgeted for microphones , cables, acoustic treatment, comfy chair, monitors, outboard compressors, etc.?

If I am asking obvious things I apologize but you mentioned amateur and newbie more than once. I have seen far too many people jump headfirst into an equipment buying frenzy (that usually starts with a medium size Mackie mixer) and soon find out that they 1.) Hate recording or do not have the patience for it. 2.) Have purchased things that are never used, unneeded, or worst of all ...the absolutely wrong thing. 3.) end up in the hole and selling things on craigslist.

Start small with equipment and don't buy anything unless you have used it and like it or it is so cheap that you are taking little risk.

Thanks for the input.
I'll initially be recording to a computer (PCI interface) but would like to eventually switch to tape. I'm sure I'll need 10-16 mic-pres because I have a 7-drum-mic package, 2 cabinet mics and 1 Lg.Di. condenser mic I use for vocals (obviously adding them together to do live recording).
I have done a lot of unproffesional digital recordings with friends on laptops/desktops and have experience with digital audio interfaces, but I just decided I would like to step it up a bit and venture into the analog world. As for acoustics and outboard gear, a friend of my father's is a musician with quite a bit of experience in those areas (not so much with mixers), so he has been guiding me.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I suppose I'll just need to spend hands-on time with some different brands of mixers. Thanks.

If you want budget Mackie gear, dont touch anything but Onyx range! They are nice pres with headroom and enough of that "pow" for budget recording. I agree witht he others though, start out small and learn from your mistakes on cheap gear, then build up to your dream studio!

Do NOT get a 1604-VLZ3.

At least, for a little while.

Our professor bought 3 or 4 of these for our school's electronic music studios to upgrade the old noisy 1604's he's had in there for the past 5 years or so, and the first run of the VLZ3 models seem to have had a huge manufacturing "oops." I don't remember exactly the issue, but it was something about losing all sound out of the master output, and it happened to all 3 the exact same way. I think he said he spoke to Mackie and they were getting a lot of calls about this issue on the new VLZ3 mixers.

I forget whether our professor took one apart or not, but he reached the conclusion that there was an error in the design (something was disconnected) before they went to mass manufacture it.

I don't know if the issue has been solved, but we're definitely still using the noisy old 1604's in the electronic music studio. Maybe new ones will be there by Fall quarter, but that depends on Mackie.

Most importantly, do NOT get a 1604-VLZ3 on ebay. At this point, I'm inclined to say ever. You never know who could be selling their broken unit.

oh, maybe they got it sorted out.

http://forums.mackie.com/scripts/forum/ ... 4;t=002002

About ten years ago, I was looking for a mixer for pretty much the same reasons you are now.

The choice at the time seemed to come down between the Mackie and an Allen & Heath. I ended up going with the A/H. Here's why -

- The channels were more easily servicable.
- Checking with a number of sources, the preamps had a better reputation.
- The faders were 'full throw'.
- The EQ section had sweepable mids (something I didn't end up using very much).
- Comparing the feel of the build of the two, the A/H felt more solid.
- The signal flow of the A/H claimed to be cleaner. From the bit I could discern studying schematics (something I barely understand), this seemed to be true.

I don't have another board to compare it against, but I've been happy with my A/H purchase. It's proved to be very flexible and is nearly perfect (functionally, if not SSL -level sound) for the 1" 8 track in our studio. I have three complaints: small, medium and big.

Small - The thing was designed to fit into a 19" rack space, so some of the buttons are very tight. I keep my tape machine tweaker handy to hit some of the channel assign buttons.

Medium - There's only one set of meters. There are work-arounds for this but it'd be nice to be able to look up and see what's going on with a given channel at any time.

Large - No phase reverse on channels. This is just silly. Why would you have parametric EQ for your 8 main channels but not go through the trouble of putting a phase switch on them? I have occasionally used the inserts to run out to an outboard preamp JUST to use the preamps phase option.

The board I have is a MixWizard 20:8:2. Caveats aside, I'd recommend it.
They seem to run just under a grand in the used market - if you can find one that you'd trust.

= Justin