Product: Mackie Onyx 800R
Price Paid: Australian 1500
Submitted
04/24/2008
at
02:19am
by
Silvester The Cat
General
:
9
I bought the Mackie 800R as a mic-pre expansion unit to run through my Digi 003 rack.
It's a nice looking bit of kit, conservative, but nice. 1 rack space high and quite deep...
If you're looking at this review you probably know enough general information on the unit so I won't bore you.
Connectivity
:
9
Check the Mackie site out for this, got a lot of pro looking connection options that i'll never use, I myself only use the optical output. Has everything but a Firewire/USB for direct connection.
I/O
:
10
It's an 8 channel mic-pre strip, with a heap of pro style output options. Each channel has an Onyx mic-pre, phase switching, high pass, phantom power, mic/line selector, and a gain control.
Channels 1 and 2 also feature a mic impedance control with 4 different settings - this basically changes a mic's tonal characteristics, a very useful feature - I couldn't have cared less about this feature when I bought the unit, but it now feels like I have access to a much wider collection of microphones.
Channels 7 and 8 also have a front-mounted guitar jack in.
Power
:
7
Powered from mains, seems to get quite hot, but only chews 45 watts which is quite efficient. Phantom power is seperate for each channel - great for preserving ribbon mics!
Technical specs
:
10
Supports all sample rates from 32 to 192kHz, bit depths of 16/24. I use this things as my master word clock, although it can be slaved to something else.
Other
:
No Opinion
Overall
:
10
The sound of the Onyx mic-pre amps are very, very nice indeed. They're very clean and clear, the headroom is second to none, a very musical, yet uncolored sound. I prefer this tone as I tend to color things up via looping signal through channel strips or plugins - too much initial character limits your tonal options. It's perfect for those with a DAW focus.
Another thing that's impressed my greatly is the word clock on the unit - I've got it set as my master clock and every aspect of my critical listening has improved; the stereo image has come alive, bass detail and high end shimmer can now be heard like never before. This has improved not only my recording and producing, but listening to things on iTunes is like hearing things for the first time.
