Sub $1k 24 channel analog mixer? Mackie Onyx24 Review

Mackie sent over the Onyx24 to checkout late June 2022. This video is a thoughts/review after about of month of use in a synth focused studio. This video is not sponsored.

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Chapters:
00:00 Intro, disclaimer, and Mackie board experience
01:30 Lets get into it...
03:56 As an analog mixer...
05:00 Channel features...
06:39 Routing features (or the lack of)
10:15 Channel strip types
11:50 It's 24 channels.... kind've
13:55 USB and SD card outputs (and caveats)
15:44 The USB only has 4 outputs (so no analog mixing directly from DAW)
17:14 No one knob compression (good or bad?)
18:18 The competition (a quick overview, not exhaustive)
20:39 Apple Core Audio Aggregate Audio
21:40 Thoughts on studio use, expandability, and overall use.

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#analogmixer #musicproduction #mackie

[TeftyMeems]

All future technical music related content will be on that channel going forward. All future music 'performance' related content will stay on this channel!

Cheers 🙏
Tefty & Meems

[SmithMyron]

Thank you! Very informative and helpful review before pulling the trigger on this or other equipment.

[chriscutress]

Thank-you for a great overview of a number of mixer options. It narrows my search a great deal.

[xirtus]

Dude I'm so sad my 1640i won't work with my Mac right now. I wish they would open source the drivers or something.

[todds]

Took a few months but I just got mine, so far a big Thumbs Up! Bought it to be my devoted drumset interface as I play a huge kit and will eat up the 18 XLR ins with little compromise. Awesome! No light pipe, no combining interfaces, easy peasy. My main interface is a 4 channel Audient iD44 for vocal/instrument tracking. I'm in home studio heaven! Thanks for this video, I've watched it many times as I waited for it to arrive. Kind regards!

[shepsvideos]

Do you know why my onyx24 is increasing the main volume when I turn up aux volume? Great video it did really help me.

[dracul]

I still use my Soundcraft Signature analog mixer all the time. I tried going without it and I missed the subtle analog vibes it adds to my sound while tracking. About 1/2 time I make the effort to use it for mixing and summing too. I do have “better” 500 series gear… but something about the mixer format appeals to me more. The only thing I use more is my UA 4-710d.

[peterbrandauer]

A lot of your caveats, due to cost, directly apply to the Soundcraft Sig mtk series also.. however at the price I am blown away by the flexibility you mention and agree with you
Thanks T, very interesting as always !

[rupertprice]

Thank you for the professional video. Quick question...does the Mackie stay analog when recording in and out in it's analog use? or does the signal pass through an adc before going to the analog outs?

[neilloughran]

This looks great! I am considering one as the basic inputs for all my synths... shame that the card only record stereo does not record all the channels individually as that would have been awesome. I have the Model 12 and that feature is amazing... I like playing improv and editing after the fact... so a computer will be needed for that...

[kwlzyzp]

Thank you, I'm considering Onyx16 now!
Tascam Model 12 sounds like a perfect solution for me if it had more inputs. And Tascam Model 16 has a different design with inputs on top instead of the back side, which feels significantly less neat for the home studio setup.

[Kingrules-gs]

Thanks for the review. I have a doubt. Can we record each channel's audio seperately into the DAW?

[michaels]

I love my Mackie..I do know they have limits, yet not where it counts, the transparent, clean sound..

[niclaswingstrom]

Is it correct to assume that you can get a wet recording with eq and fx engaged if one records to an sd card or through the usb send?

[Hoodyhoo]

Love your vids. Hoping that you do a video with this and the MPC. I'm not sure it'll work but I am curious. Had a Profx10v3 and it didn't play well so want to see if this plays better. The Onyx16 would be great if multitracking works.

[ReginaldCurrie-im]

@TeffyMeems thanks for this video! I happen to have a 1640i as well and I am wondering how exactly do you use it for routing??? Also, how would you add this new Onyx into your setup with the 1640i???

[jasonstokes]

Just happy to find something that records 24/96 on as many tracks. Everything else I've looked at that does is over 3 to 5 grand and up.

[Hysteric_Subjects]

So after about a month with my Onyx24, I am missing my Tascam (updated from Model16 because wanted more ins and outs in my small synth studio setup). This thing sounds awesome don't get me wrong, but that's the only thing I like about it. What I miss from Tascam:
- Inputs outputs on top vs in back (mixer on Jaspers stand against a wall, so reaching back there and figuring out what's what in my middle age is no fun)
- More selectable routing with push-button function
- One knob compressor: for me it's become a necessary item since I'm new and not great at gain staging, but also I intend to mostly do live stuff and all my recordings will reflect that for the most part.

But like he says everyone has their own workflow, and others have said here, I might be too ignorant to know what it is I want and need (I've been through a few mixers since I began this journey three years ago).

Awesome review, though. Love your style bro.

[cloud_noises]

My main issue with a lot of these mixers is that it takes a huge amount of space with features that I don't need or want. The EQ section is the worst offender because I'm only interested in recording and I'm always gonna EQ in the DAW, so I would prefer to not have so much space taken up with EQ knobs. My current interface/mixer is a KMI K-mix, which solves this problem in an interesting way with a really flexible interface. The Zoom LiveTrack stuff has a similar cleverly designed interface to reduce the number of knobs and physical real estate. I wish there were more "compact" products like that.

[AlexThorpe]

Always love your review videos! Have you talked about your new rack/shelf setup in a video yet? I know you did one recently on the keyboard slat wall but I don't believe you touched on that in that video.