MACKIE ONYX 400F (audio interface)

[Anderton]

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Well, as I said, the headphone amps sounded realllllly good. We'll see what happens when the outs really get put to the test.

 

It seems like an odd statement, though, because DA is pretty much cut and dried these days; the hard part is AD conversion. I'm much more likely to hear differences between units on the AD side, not the DA side.

[Pleasant]

I'm familiar with the thread that Barry mentioned, and am also concerned with the D/A conversion on the 400f.

 

It won't prevent me from getting one -- I've already decided the feature set is great for the money.

 

However, I do plan to use outboard gear during project mixdown/mastering, and I'm curious how the 400f conversion will affect the sound during a couple of D/A/D cycles.

 

Thanks for the review. This is just what I've been waiting for.

 

- P

[mandoman]

Was all set to buy a motu traveler as a portable interface for when I am away from the studio and my mackie onyx 1640 w/firewire card. However what I found with the onyx board is I really love the sound of the onyx pre's, they sound really nice. So I am now considering the 400f as an alternative since I am almost certain the pre's are going to sound better than what motu uses.

 

Question for Dan. Any reason why you guys left off lightpipe io, seems as though you could sell more 800r's if you had included it? That expandability would have been nice and I would have liked it for integrating spdif optical consumer devices.

 

Also, I've noticed with my 1640 that there are performance issues when running with Digital Performer 4.61 on a g4/10.3.9. I have to set work priority to 'low' to avoid cracks and pops. Have you resolved this issue with motu in the 400f (and in the 1640 for that matter)?

 

Thumbs up on including two headphone jacks instead of one as well as standalone operation, these are two big selling points.

 

I guess all the remains for me is to know how the AD converters compare. I'm guessing they are similar since they are both 24/192k capable?

 

For me, I see the following:

Traveler:

Advantages: Works well with DP

Has lightpipe in

Can change settings standalone from front

panel away from computer.

Bus powered and very portable

Disadvantages:

Cheap plastic front with front panal LEDs that are prone to failure

Mediocre mic pre's

 

400f:

Advantages: Mic pres, 2 headphone jacks,

all steel and aluminum construction

Disadvantages:

DA quality in question

Not as portable as some units

No lightpipe io

Possible performance issues with some host software (DP in my case, WDM drivers for others).

 

I hope some mac users who has used both Mackie and Motu units will chime in with some comparisons.

 

Thanks for the review!

Mandoman

[clasam]

Mr. Steinberg, I read a while back on another forum (forget which one) that Mackie was planning to enable DSP effects functionality (ie: compression, EQ, etc) at some point in the future for the 400f. Is this true and if so, what is the time table for that?

 

Thanks,

 

Jon

[Anderton]

Quick update: Sorry about the delay between posts. As some of you know I moved not too long ago, and I could only find a couple of my mics for testing!! So I'm frantically searching through boxes.

 

I'm also learning a new camera and want to take some pictures of the inside to illustrate what I said about the construction.

 

I did use the 400F last night for recording some vocals with an SM58. I gotta say the preamps do sound very good, more on this later. I also don't hear the "brittleness" to which people allude, but I'll see if I can push things somehow to find out what might make that happen.

 

So far so good. Again, sorry for the delay, I'll be back in full in a day or two.

[ticohans]

Let me chime in with the chorus of "thank you's" for this review. I have been looking long and hard at the 400F, and it is wonderful to finally get a serious review on the product. I, too, am familiar with the seemingly infamous "brittle D/A" thread, so to get another qualified opinion on this will be great.

 

(Side note on the "brittle D/A" thread: the poster compared side-by-side the 400F, RME FF800, a MOTU unit -Traveller, I believe?- among others. His general conclusion was that the 400F outshone all other units on everything but D/A, and that the D/A was so brittle that he sent it back, despite it's superior quality to the other interfaces in basically every way - ease of use, mic pre's, cost, A/D, etc... If this review shows the D/A to be of better quality, that will be a significant factor as to whether or not I purchase the 400F. Unfortunately I can't audition all the different interfaces before I buy )

 

I anxiously await further posts!

[Anderton]

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I have limited options for comparison here as well. I will be evaluating the 400F on its own merits and compare it to as many devices here as possible.

[Anderton]

Okay, got my nice new shiny digital camera working so here are some photos that illustrate what I've been talking about with respect to construction. As there can be only one photo per post, the next four posts will each have a photo.

 

This one shows the FireWire interface and power supply modules. The power supply is toward the right. You can see all the insulation around the "live" AC connections.

[Anderton]

This photo shows what I mean about the mic pres (at the bottom) being as far away as possible from the power supply and FireWire interface cards.

[Anderton]

Here are the four rear panel mic preamp connectors, which accept XLR or 1/4" jacks.

[Anderton]

The Onyx 400F has two mic preamps with front panel 1/4" jacks and a "Guitar" button for switching to a high-impedance instrument input. (Hey, thanks Mackie for recognizing that some instruments have stereo outs.) This photo shows the plastic ground sleeves used in the 1/4" jacks, which insulates them from the metal front panel and improves grounding (thus reducing the possibility for noise and ground loops). You can also see the instrument input button, metering, and sexy brushed aluminum know with setscrew.

 

The other two mic pres don't have the instrument input option or front panel 1/4" jack.

[Brittanylips]

 

Originally posted by Anderton > It seems like an odd statement, though, because DA is pretty much cut and dried these days; the hard part is AD conversion. I'm much more likely to hear differences between units on the AD side, not the DA side.

 

I don't know that I agree that all DAs sound alike any more than all ADs sound alike. I have several DA converters and they all sound different. The fancy one sounds better than the mid-priced one which sounds better than the plain jane one.

 

FWIW

 

-PL&B

[Anderton]

Yes, I think you're right. But I think the differences are far more subtle than with A/D converters.

 

As an aside, I was having a conversation with a manufacturer of AD converter products (not Mackie) and he said that in A-B tests of converters with zero jitter and with a slight bit of jitter, some people preferred the ones with a little jitter. He was kind of baffled, but figured it was something similar to how some people like sound with a little bit of distortion.

 

This is all so subjective...I guess that's part of what makes it fun.

[Brittanylips]

 

Originally posted by Anderton Yes, I think you're right. But I think the differences are far more subtle than with A/D converters. As an aside, I was having a conversation with a manufacturer of AD converter products (not Mackie) and he said that in A-B tests of converters with zero jitter and with a slight bit of jitter, some people preferred the ones with a little jitter. He was kind of baffled, but figured it was something similar to how some people like sound with a little bit of distortion. This is all so subjective...I guess that's part of what makes it fun.

 

Interesting - I know you've mentioned some similar points before regarding the old analog vs. digital debate.

 

Re AD vs. DA: perhaps since what comes out of the AD converter is the stuff of our work - our raw clay to mold into whatever we mold it into - maybe we care about it more than what comes out of the DA, which is what goes on the shelf.

 

Compounding that is that the differences in AD converters are something that can be more easily measured and appreciated "in the box" whereas the differences in DA are spit into open air by God knows what!

 

-Peace, Love, and Blips

[mandoman]

Can you please tell us more about the planet-earth supply? Mackie advertises this supply can be used anywhere in the world.

 

Does this mean it is safe to use a ground lift 3 to 2 prong plug with this supply? Electrically speaking and in terms of ac noise getting into the audio?

 

Thanks.

[Anderton]

>

 

Like many other supplies these days, the power supply can handle 100-240V at 50 to 60Hz. The unit itself has a standard IEC receptacle, and ships with two different AC line cords for different markets. The only issue for interfacing with power anywhere around the world is to have an appropriate physical adapter to match up with the physical socket.

 

>

 

This is a separate issue that relates to safety. I highly recommend that you always use a grounded plug. If you have only a two prong socket, then you can get 3-to-2 adapters with a wire lead you can screw to a ground (like the faceplate screw on the socket, which typically screws into a grounded metal box).

 

Does that help?

[mandoman]

Yes, that helps, thanks for the quick reply.

[mandoman]

Hi Craig,

 

Can you please tell me if the rack ears are removable? Seein' as you are so good at taking things apart on the 400f :-)

 

Thanks!

[Pleasant]

In the "distance" jpg it looks like he has removed one of the rack ears.

 

- P

[mandoman]

 

Originally posted by Pleasant In the "distance" jpg it looks like he has removed one of the rack ears. - P

 

 

Yes, but will the cover go back on nicely with the rack ears removed? Reason I ask is I'm lookin' to make this unit a little more portable, ie, something I can toss in a bag with my laptop.

[Anderton]

Okay, so WDM didn’t perform well with Sonar…but it’s not that big a deal, because ASIO works fine with Sonar. But what about Adobe Audition 1.5, which at least as of this writing is WDM-only?

 

Well, I loaded the Audition theme demo file (which uses eight tracks of digital audio) in Multitrack view. Granted, Audition 1.5 doesn’t put a lot of strain on your CPU owing to their clever pre-mixing method for dealing with multitrack audio, but I was nonetheless shocked to find that it performed superbly with 64 buffer samples! That's only 1.5ms of latency - wow. I decided to push things and see if it could handle 32 samples; there was a little bit of crackling. Any crackling renders a latency setting unuseable as far as I’m concerned, but even then, the crackling was relatively minor, and happened only sporadically.

 

I then wanted to see what would happen with ReWire. I tried rewiring Reason 3.0 into Audition, but for some reason it didn’t work…possibly I need to install the 3.0.4 update, because I never had problems rewiring Reason 2.5 into Audition. Anyway, I rewired in Project5 V2, and was again shocked to find that the combination worked perfectly with the 64 buffer samples as well. This was particularly surprising because when I had tested P5 earlier, I had a hard time getting latencies under 40ms. What?!?

 

I quit Audition, and tried Project5 V2 by itself. This time, latencies around 6ms worked just fine. It wasn’t a hugely tough project – several digital audio tracks and several Dimension synth tracks – but with 10ms of latency you could handle just about anything.

 

At this point, I started to suspect my previous tests. I tried Sonar; same problems as before. Then I loaded a stereo file into Wavelab, and it didn’t work too spectacularly either – about 70ms of latency was required before the crackling went away.

 

So why the differences? Here are my theories:

 Sonar deals with WDM differently compared to Audition.

 Wavelab doesn’t use pure WDM, but an MME-WDM based protocol.

 Audition follows the standard WDM protocol really closely, and that’s what the Onyx 400F is optimized to handle.

 Project5 doesn’t like to have any other drivers open or available. This time I completely disabled all the other audio in my computer, so that might have made the difference.

 

Bottom line: If you use Adobe Audition 1.5, not only does the Onyx 400F work well, it works extremely well. And it works well with Project5, too, but you’ll probably want to use ASIO with it.

[Anderton]

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Yes, you can remove the rack ears - check out the attachment. Note that this leaves about a 1/4" gap, but if you're really concerned about that, you could tape it over.

 

Removing the ears doesn't degrade the structural integrity; note the two screws above where the rack ear goes that bind the top rear panel to the top front panel. There are also two screws on the bottom that provide a similar function. Having said that, adding the rack ears does add just a bit more structural strength, but I wouldn't worry about removing them.

 

So yeah, you can take off the rack ears

[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.

[mandoman]

 

Originally posted by Anderton Yes, you can remove the rack ears - check out the attachment. Note that this leaves about a 1/4" gap, but if you're really concerned about that, you could tape it over.

 

 

Sweet, thanks for the picture. Looks as though the rack ears aren't meant to be left off, but I could probably tape over the gap if I really wanted.

 

The 400f is the front runner for me right now over the Traveler, basically boiling down to mic pre quality vs. portability. Looking forward to reading more as the review continues to help me make my final decision.

 

Thanks!

Mandoman

[thie1210]

About the preamps, did you had a chance to test them with a ribbon mic? Would you find the preamps adequate for this type of mic? Thanks.

 

Nice review and great pics!