Mackie Onyx Satellite

Discontinued desktop/portable unit. 24bit/96khz. 4 LED input meters with clip light. No limiter, no onboard DSP. Nice strong metal case on the breakout box. Desktop docking station is well made, too. Good sturdy knobs, nice solid buttons. The only thing that looks like it could go at any minute is the wall-wart, but that's always the case. PLEASE NOTE again that this unit has been discontinued, and for a very good reason: It was totally useless from the moment if left the factory. Read on...

Comes with a nice docking station and very small, very portable preamp breakout box. Firewire 400 output from docking station or breakout box. If you look at the block diagram, plugging into docking station does cause signal to run through more electronics than is necessary, but it's really not perceptable. I don't know if these are daisy-chainable. I am guessing yes. But that's a driver issue more than anything.

Here's the thing, it's a Mackie, so the preamps are suppose to be good, even best for the money, right? Well someone at Mackie's QC fell asleep on the job with this thing. The preamps are nice, yes. Right up until you turn on the phantom power and you hear an unbelievably annoying high-pitched whine ramp up and then stay there--the whole time. Theres no getting around it, I tried it with 5 different condenser mics and the only one that made the whine only slightly less obvious was an AT4050. I am telling you, this sound renders ANY recording useless. It's high, probably around 8-12k, so MAYBE if you were just recording very low bass instruments and using a low pass you could work around it. But it's ridiculous to even suggest we should have to "work around" such a glaring oversight. How did this thing ever leave the factory? At first I thought mine was broken, but I spoke to several owners and they ALL had the same issue. The only redeeming quality is that the high-pitched whine only comes on with phantom power, so dynamic, tube, and ribbon mics are spared. And yes it makes a good instrument DI and does have surround sound mixing capability. No digital I/O except for firewire. Each preamp has a send/return. 2 headphone outputs, control room out, and a nice little talk back mic built-in. But ALL of this is moot when you consider it can't be used with condenser mics.

Can be bus powered or powered through included wall wart, though bus powering will not offer completely sufficient phantom power for condenser mics. Nor does the wall wart, actually. But all that doesn't matter because the unbearable high pitch whine you get when using the phantom power makes condenser mics unusable with this unit anyway.

24bit/96kHz. Used on a PC. Monitoring is a joke. There is direct monitoring, but only of the source alone, and you can't mix it into the playback (even the lowly Firepod can do that), so you are left to deal with the latency. Even worse, I swear it made everything I recorded sound like it was getting to the hard disk 100ms too late. The drivers I had to DL from Mackie's website, the ones that came with the unit were old. This whole unit, except for the outer build quality, really stinks of a rush job.

Comes with Traktion (never touched it, still in its case). No turntable input, no ground lift, I think it has standalone operation with the wall-wart, but that's not saying much.

Piece of junk. I can see why this was discontinued. I cannot recommend it at all. I'd like to destroy it myself but have to figure out what else to get first. I honestly can't believe Mackie let this out the door producing that horrific sound. I got duped and bought it on name alone. Don't make the same mistake. Even if you find this used (which I AM SURE you will) don't get it, no matter how cheap. The first time you go to record an acoustic guitar with your condenser, you will feel my pain and regret you paid a DIME for it. Shame on Mackie for rushing to jump on the firewire bandwagon with such a POS product.

As said above the Mackie onyx satellite is a portable unit (sturdy, metal, no plastic) that comes with a docking station that gives you some extra outputs and controls, however you're free to leave that in the box if it doesn't fit on your desk like in my situation. I havent used the docking station because for my purposes it's still a little unnessescary, though i might want to use it for hooking up my compressor later or adding an extra set of hifi speakers for mixing.

At the moment i use 2 active studio monitors. I connected my electric guitar to channel 1, and a mic to channel 2. The whole thing runs via firewire to my macbook, i record in logic 8 pro.

The main unit carries 2 hybrid inputs (jack/xlr) and individual gain controls with clip indicators for each output. There's a guitar button for each channel which acts as a boostser for softer instrument signals like electric guitars and passive bass guitars. The unit carries 2 headphone inputs. The unit carries the famous built-in onyx pre-amp.

The docking station, 2 double headphone outputs, control room / talkback functions, 4 speaker outputs, 48v phanton power, built-in pre-amp..it's a very versatile unit.

FireWire 400 connection. I use an Apple Macbook. Unfortunately Apple recently included some updates to their firewire drivers which makes the Mackie Satellite unable to connect to your Macbook. With a lot of effort i managed to downgrade my firewire drivers to a version that's a couple of months older. It works now, however whenever i start up my mac the units configuration switches to 48.000,00hz in stead off 44.100,00hz...which results in high pitched playback of everything i hear. You can't see this because the menu still indicates 44,1...This can be fixed by simply clicking again on 44,1...but i have to do that everytime i start up my Mac..which is to be honest, quite annoying.

I seem to get the idea Mackie doesnt take full responsibility of this problem and says it's Apples fault. Whatever it is, it's not supposed to be my problem. Their website wasnt a lot of help, the answer was not there. I had to find the answer reading through tons of messageboards.. It took me about 2 hours to get this unit working properly.

2 hybrid inputs with onyx pre-amp. The pre-amp works amazing considering the units price. I record in Logic 8 pro and experimented with different mics and instruments, i got great results with even the cheaper mics.

It's bus powered by firewire but can also be AC-powered. The docking station carries an on/off switch but the unit itself doesnt, that's quite annoying because Macbooks keep powering firewire even when it's turned off (except when it's not connected to a power source). That way i either have to take out the firewire cable, or search on the floor for the adapter.

I get minimal latency and amazing sounds from this unit. Except for the FireWire issues (which i expect to be fixed in a while) i think this is a great unit and i would recommend it to anyone that's looking a recording interface for their home studio.

desktop firewire interface with LED meter, 2 preamps, metal case. The unusual aspect is it has a "base" and then a portable unit which removes from the base. The base has more inputs and outputs than the portable unit. No midi input or output only one firewire port. Physical volume and level controls

firewire only--no optical, only one firewire port

The preamps are what sold me on this thing--they're excellent in this price range, really outstanding. Two XLR preamps in the base unit, two dedicated guitar/bass 1/4 inputs. 2 line inputs, and an effects insert. You can use all four at once but can't control all four levels. No midi in/out. cue/mx outputs, two headphone outs

portable unit is bus powered ith my macbook pro, base requires wall power with supplied wall wart

can operate without computer as input source for powered monitors

no ground lift. I did not use any of the bundled software

This is a very inexpensive unit for what you get--the preamps are the bottom line for me--they're excellent. It can be hot-plugged. It's a little bulky. I would recommend it to anyone who wants a two-preamp firewire interface--the price can't be beat