MACKIE ONYX 400F (audio interface)

[mandoman]

As this pro review draws to close and is no longer a 'sticky', I will post my final comments.

I had a chance to hook the 400f up to an amd64/xp machine and had no issues with drivers. Got really low asio latencies too, 5ms, without sweating it at all. Also, no firewhire whine that I noticed. I wish the latency was that good on my Mac!

I don't think I mentioned how nice the DI sounds on this unit. Acoustic instruments plugged direct sound amazingly good.

I too get a loud 'popping' when I turn off the unit. My self powered monitors are not cranked up too high, so I don't feel like the tweaters are being damaged. I do try and power the speakers off first just in case, but sometimes I forget or turn off the master power (turning off everything simultaneously) and I still get a pop.

Oh, looks like my return window is passing, so yes, I am keeping this unit. Though I threatened to exchange it for a Traveler many times, the overall sound of this unit is so good I will overlook the very small issues I'm having with this unit (ie, low line level, firewire whine, power off popping, etc). Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this unit.

Now I just hope Mackie will turn it up a notch working on the 400f Intel Mac drivers and console software - hope they don't lag getting those out!

OK, NAMM is almost here and I'm sure something cooler and better will come out, but that's just how it goes.

All the best,
Mandoman

[Devnor]

First post; long time lurker.

I was all ready to pull the trigger on the 400F until I came across this thread & others like it. There seems to be a significant number of unresolved issues; especially on the mackie forums:

1. "whine" (seems like it's the luck of the draw)
2. Not enough gain with inputs 5-8 (using DI boxes into mic inputs for synthesizers is not acceptable).
3. No ADAT (not an issue but a feature that should be on this unit)
4. Outputs popping at power down.

Get it together Mackie!

Mackie already left me out in the cold with my failing LM3204.

I'll bite the bullet on the RME Fireface...in the end I feel like the Mackie would end up costing me in the same in lost time, frustration, returns & other issues.

[DemoKing]

Once again, there is NO gain problem with the line inputs. They are perfect for WHAT THEY WERE DESIGNED FOR, mic preamps.
there is gain on the 1st 4 inputs if you need it. I cant possibly see anyone needing gain on all 10 inputs, thats ridiculous.

Pluf the keyboard into inputs 1-4 and you are set, whats the problem?

[DemoKing]

By the way, I personally cant imagine a more rock solid device. Unless it just blows up in the next few weeks, I'm totally happy. A BUNCH of 10-in projects all week, and not one single solitary problem. The routing alone has made my life so much better. Being able to turn down the monitors without affecting the send to the headphone box, or being able to turn my monitors down when I want to tweak something in the headphones without the people in the room with me being able to hear what I'm doing... things like that are nice. I can affect headphone volume without affecting my own or the monitor volume. I love it. The Delta 1010 didnt give these kind of options. THe Delta happens to be one of the most solid boxes I know of. The 400F is no different in that respect as far as I can tell.


Funny thing about a lot of you guys, is one person says "I thought the AD sounded weird or brittle" and suddenly everyone is spewing it everywhere like its fact and they've heard it for themselves. It sounds good. Very good. Spew that around instead guys.

[DemoKing]

And one more thing... MOST and I said MOST, devices hooked into and feeding signal to powered monitors will pop when you turn them on or off. Duh. Monitors go on last, go off 1st.
The 1st thing I learned years ago was, "board on 1st, board off last." Common sense guys. Don't plug your mic into the compressor before the preamp. Little things like that we should all know and do without thinking about it.
IMO, its not a problem with the device, its the user.

[Lizardness]

Hiya Folks,

This is what initially brought me to this forum. Based on my best friend's adamant recommendations (Rodney Gene, who I've known since we were in our teens back in Santa Barbara) I ordered the Mackie Onyx 400F, a pair of Warfendale's, RNC, and another condenser mic.

While, I can play a number of instruments, write and sing; I know precious little about gear. Rodney, bless his heart, gave me a mixer, MXL condensor mic, an awesome verb, a rockin' J-Station, compressor, cords galore, a book, told me about VSTi's and all that cool stuff. He patiently brought me up to speed by telling me tricks of the trade like "cut before boost", explaining balanced and unbalanced and other nifty things I never considered. I had recorded things on a very primitive level but when I had played live, sound guys did all the tech things.

Rodney recommended a book by Mr. Anderton Called, "Home Recording for Musicians" which I bought off Amazon.com.

I got some positive feedback but all that gear and good advice can only go over so well with my sound blaster. Time to upgrade!

Before buying anything, I googled reviews (which led me to this site), called the companies and spoke to their tech people (who were ultra patient and very nice), visited the music stores, basically did my homework. I came full circle and ended up buying everything Rodney recommended, though I nearly bought a Motu 865HD.

I was surprised to find Rodney's messages here, as he didn't mention anything about it or this site. But he always has a lot of irons in the oven and probably had his field of thought directed elsewhere.

Even though I've been a long time composer I wasn't that interested in the technical side of of recording, preferring to look upon music from the composer/performers perspective. Maybe I was paranoid... superstitiously thinking that knowing too much technical wizardry would destroy my creativity?

I realize that now, that's not true and I'd better get my hands dirty, train my ears to distinguish frequencies, and learn how to really press the red button or at the end of my life I'm just gonna have a lot of demo-quality work collecting dust.

My ears are untrained and my "musical engineering ability" is nearly up to par with Koko the gorilla, but once I get the 400f I'll let you know my take on it.

I appreciate the forum and reading through the messages, opinions, positive and negative. Everything can have merit.

John

[composer]

Originally posted by mandoman I too get a loud 'popping' when I turn off the unit. My self powered monitors are not cranked up too high, so I don't feel like the tweaters are being damaged. I do try and power the speakers off first just in case, but sometimes I forget or turn off the master power (turning off everything simultaneously) and I still get a pop.

I did that a few times as well...used to be you could just turn down the console and all would be fine - doesn't seem to be the case with the 400F CR knob, anyway, it only happened twice, how would I know if the system (monitors (Blue Sky)) where damaged? I'm one of those paranoid people that think everything is broken sometimes.

Everything sounds fine..monitors on last, off first, I know I know...

My return window is about 35 days.....so we will see. After tracking a D16 and some vocals though (via a Rhode NT2A), I was like...hmmmmmmmm, most realistic sound I have heard 2nd to being in the main studio (PT HD) and sounded warm, accurate, sweet.
Latency about 4ms.

So, would I know if they where damaged?

thanks

[mastersrhythm]

Need kindness from a stranger. I need your old 1.02 drivers. I spoke to tech support and emailed twice yesterday and today requesting the old drivers. I guess they are really busy.


I have a version of the 1.02 drivers that came on disc, but Mackie inadvertently sent out some that had only the ASIO. The ASIO works for me, but I need WDM and GSIF (at least WDM to test) as well because I’m running GigaStudio on the same machine as Sonar. The 1.05 version of ASIO and WDM do not work on my machine and I was hoping to test the old version of WDM and GSIF to see if they work. The 1.02 ASIO drivers work for me so there is a slight chance all of the 1.02 's will work as well.

Can someone please send me their version of the 1.02 drivers? Please send to mastersrhythm@gmail.com

Thank you so much! in Advance

[tjs]

Originally posted by Anderton They’re as good as people say they are: Dead quiet, excellent detail on high frequency transients, clean…basically, what you want out of a mic pre. And hey, you get four of them! The real test for me came when compressing vocals. I kept lowering the threshold, but the noise didn’t come up because, well, the noise just isn’t there to bring up. These pres provide excellent bang for the buck, and perform superbly with condenser and dynamic mics. What I don’t like is that the +48V phantom power switch applies phantom power to all mic pres simultaneously. Granted, the odds are remote that applying it accidentally to a modern dynamic mic will cause any damage, but it makes me nervous anyway. The LED VU meters are adequate; there are four LEDs for -40, -20, -10, and OL (overload). For live, stand-alone use, there’s what I feel is a big gap between -10 and OL. Obviously, this isn’t an issue when feeding a DAW, where you usually have very high resolution meters. But for live, I would have preferred the four LEDs to be “activity” (anything below -20), -10, -6, and overload. No big deal, and maybe someone will post if that’s a dumb idea. I also have to say something about the Instrument input mode. Man, my PRS sounded great! (I mean, even greater than usual ). I’m very used to the sound of direct guitars, and as with mics, the Mackie pres deliver an incredibly clean, full sound with plenty of gain and a suitably high impedance. They come very, very close to my favorite direct box of all time, the Radial Engineering JDV Mk3 – which, incidentally, lists for half the price of the Onyx 400F. There’s really not much else to say: These are great mic pres that provide outstanding quality at a very fair price.

 

How would you say the mic pres compare to the Presonus Firepod and Focusrite Saffire 26 Pro pres (which are the closest competition to the Onyx)?

[gappie]

Originally posted by tjs How would you say the mic pres compare to the Presonus Firepod and Focusrite Saffire 26 Pro pres (which are the closest competition to the Onyx)?

 

 

and to the rme fire face.

 

out of interest. my eyes started to hurt on page five. so much reading. so if this isue was already there dont mind answering. ill read this thread again. first post on this site of hc to say that this was an interesting read. thanks:thu:

[mrdosun]

I read the whole 15 page on this thread and finally bought the 400F yesterday. I've used avalon, telefunkin, amek preamps, apogee a/d, digi 002, etc in the past. I must admit, I'm quite happy with the 400F right now. However, there is a HUM I can't get rid of. After some detective work, I pinpoint it to the phantom power supply. When it's off, no hum. When it's on, the room monitors gives a quiet but still audible hum. When I turn the control room volume all the way up, it goes away. It's not affecting the a/d since it's flatline on record. Do I need to isolate the power lines or do I have a defective unit? Any advice is appreciated, thanks...

[mrdosun]

Upon further testing, everything unplugged. I plugged my headphones into the left channel of the CR output. Turned on the phantom power switch, the hum is audible! I really hope it's just my unit, because it has been perfect except for this hum. Is anyone else experiencing this?

[strathound]

Sorry for the totally newb question ... but if you don't want to hook this thing up to a laptop, what other options to you have for storage of the tracks? Is there a cheap HD solution out there that integrates easily over firewire or other?

Thanks,


Michael

[MikeRivers]

Originally posted by strathound if you don't want to hook this thing up to a laptop, what other options to you have for storage of the tracks? Is there a cheap HD solution out there that integrates easily over firewire or other?

The 400F is a computer (though not necessarily a laptop) interface so you have to hook it to a computer. In fact given its rack mount format, I suspect that most of these will get used with desktop computers, though they might get pulled out of the rack and taken on a remote with a laptop occasoinally.

 

The 400F isn't smart enough to stream directly to a Firewiere disk drive. On the other hand, you can put together a computer mighty cheap these days if you're modest about your requirements.

[Frank-ProSounds]

Thank you for this review Craig. I've been glancing at this model in a few catalogs for couple days now and was curious. Good to see someone discussing it in such detail.

[Music Calgary]

FWIW the 400F doesn't have to be plugged into a computer, you can use it as a standalone front end to any type of recorder.

Anyhow I just bought mine. Not bad but there are a couple problems which should not be in a unit of this price:

1. A seriously loud pop whenever powering up or powering down, loud enough to damage monitors. Seriously unprofessional performance on this point. I see others are experiencing this same problem.

2. Some bus noise or "whine".

3. Flash settings not saving properly. (DSP mixer)

4. Firewire is not hot-swappable. If you add a firewire harddrive to the second firewire port while audio is on, the whole system glitches out.

5. Sometimes the unit is not found by windows and/or the software can't initialize the driver.

I think I'm going to have to return this unit to the store. The 400F has some great features but this unit has been a bit of a disappointment. The one thing I was impressed with is the latency. I ran Akoustik Piano through it at very low latency settings with no problem. If only it wasn't so noisy...

[Anderton]

>

True, but you can't set levels and routings without hooking it up to a computer. I think the concept is "program the thing at home then take it to a gig," e.g., as a keyboard mixer.


1. A seriously loud pop whenever powering up or powering down, loud enough to damage monitors. Seriously unprofessional performance on this point. I see others are experiencing this same problem.>>

Yes, it was noted here. Definitely turn on the power amp last.

>

That was a mixed bag. Some people reported it, others didn't; some reported it with other interfaces, some didn't. There didn't seem to be any consistent pattern that related to specific laptops, gear, etc. The mystery never really was solved here, although I can say that mine didn't experience these issues.

>

Interesting. If I saved into the computer, it was there.

>

Actually it seems that in general, hot-swapping FireWire is not a recommended practice. M-Audio was the first to point this out, but my Panasonic Camcorder states very specifically to make any IEEE 1394 connections to a computer with both units off. It's too bad, because one of the features of FireWire was supposed to be hot-swappability (is that a word?!?). Doesn't seem to work that way in the real world, though.

>

It just occurred to me -- are you aware there is an updated driver on the Mackie web site? That may answer your concerns in (3) and (5).

[Music Calgary]

Hi. I have the latest drivers, see attached. Here's my position on this Craig, the loud popping when powering up/down indicates unprofessional quality. I've never heard of premium gear which does that.

I appreciate your response but it's little solace that others are not experiencing noise, etc. The unit I bought has problems which are not consistent with the product I was advertisted, i.e. nowhere in the Mackie marketing lingo does it mention a loud pop or Flash memory which doesn't work.

Anyhow I don't want to be negative, I bought it hoping it would live up to the quality claims but unfortunately luck wasn't on my side this time. But I'm happy for the people who are having less problems than me. Rock on.

[claveslave]

FWIW, Mackie have acknowledged that some units exhibit the "whine" and have identified its source. They are prepared to replace the unit if they can't solve the problem over the phone. See this post on Mackie forums

[Music Calgary]

Hey thanks claveslave! I'll check that out. If Mackie support is committed to making things right then I will probably keep this unit. I'll keep you posted, again thanks very much for taking the time to share that link with me.

[MikeRivers]

Originally posted by Music Calgary Hi. I have the latest drivers, see attached.

Hart to tell, but that looks like a Windows screen. Mackie has a new Mac driver that they're opening up for beta testing.

Here's my position on this Craig, the loud popping when powering up/down indicates unprofessional quality. I've never heard of premium gear which does that.

Everyone is entitled to a postion, but I disagree. Lots of "professional" (whatever that means) gear causes a pop when it's powered on and off. Professionals know to turn their speaker systems on last and off first. And even many "professional" power amplifiers make a pop when turned on and off. Some do not. But this has never been a distinction between "professoinal" and not. I can sympathize with your disappointment if it doesn't work very well as an audio interface, but not your disappointment that it doesn't meet your standards as "professional." You're of course free to buy something else, but you must have had a good reason to buy the 400F - like it had the features you wanted, and cost what you were willing to pay. You can spend more or get less. Or simply get into the habit of turning your power amplifier or powered speakers off before you turn off the 400F. Besides, why would you want to turn it off when other things are on anyway?

Anyhow I don't want to be negative,

Sure sounds like it to me.

I bought it hoping it would live up to the quality claims but unfortunately luck wasn't on my side this time. But I'm happy for the people who are having less problems than me. Rock on.

Of couse. We all expect that something we buy will live up to the expectations that we've been led to believe. Sometimes it does, sometmes it doesn't, sometimes we discover things we never thought to ask about that we aren't happy about. Some are deal-breakers, some are not. It's your choice.

What will you buy to replace it?

[Anderton]

>

PLEASE let us know how making treats you and whether they can solve the problem.

I don't feel you're being overly negative, just disappointed that certain elements didn't meet expectations. I've run into the occasional computer thing that seems to work for everyone else on the planet but has some weird incompatibility with my system, so I sympathize.

The pop thing -- here's the deal. Anything that mutes or delays the onset of audio puts something in the signal path. If it's a reed relay, that's sort of pricey. If it's something like a FET or switching IC, then one could argue it might degrade quality. A lot of "purist" gear I've seen does not include turn-on delays for precisely that reason, so I've just always gotten into the habit of turning on monitors last. That doesn't help if you have a brief power outage though, unless your system is on a UPS.

Hey manufacturers, here's an idea: The Monitor Safety Box. It plugs into the wall, you plug your monitoring system into it. If the power is interrupted, it turns off power to the monitors until you turn it back on again manually. That way all hell could be breaking loose in your system, but your monitors would stay off while it was happening.

[Music Calgary]

Thanks very much for the info Craig. I see your point. I will definitely keep you posted. I'm going in now to trade in my unit for a new one so hopefully that will solve things. The Mackie retailer I'm dealing with is top notch. Great bunch of guys who always go the extra mile.

I installed Traktion. I must say that I'm fairly impressed with the performance although the GUI just absolutely kills me. I'm wondering if you have am opinion of the quality of recordings done via the 400F into Traktion vis-a-vis into Cubase/Nuendo?

I'm currently looking for a permanent non-ProTools recording solution (400F into a PC) and I would dearly love to avoid Steinberg given their utter lack of support and dongle system. Do you think that with some careful project management Traktion can give me the same end results, sonically speaking, as Cubase 3.0 SX for example?

Thank you for taking the time to offer me advice, that's very kind of you and I appreciate it.

[Music Calgary]

BTW one more question. Does anyone here have any insight or predictions regarding the development future of the Traktion software?

I notice here that the current build is over a year old, which is often a sign that there's no development team actively working on the product. For example I work for a software company and we release new builds every 2-3 months for all our products with major version upgrades every 12-18 months.

[Anderton]

>

Didn't a new version just come out recently? I know that it has most certainly not been abandoned.