Members tradivoro1 Posted December 11, 2008 Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 For those of you that have used Mackie over the years, and are familiar with the older vls preamps and maybe now you're using the onyx preamps, can you hear any appreciable difference in the "sound" between the two or is it a very subtle difference... If you detect a big difference is this using them just as preamps or using it with the firewire? I have an opportunity to buy a mackie satellite, which I'm thinking of buying just for the preamps, but I already have a mackie mixer, even though an it's older one... Any info appreciated... Thanks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Magpel Posted December 11, 2008 Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 m very used to the VLZ pres, and I have had a chance to work with a whole bank of the Onyx pres but not through the firewire. ...And it is really tough to say. The Engineer I was working with really thought the Onyx pres were better. I know that doesn't help much... I knowe a few people who think the VLZs were a step down from the pres on the original 12-channel square mixer. So there you go... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 11, 2008 Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 m very used to the VLZ pres, and I have had a chance to work with a whole bank of the Onyx pres but not through the firewire....And it is really tough to say. The Engineer I was working with really thought the Onyx pres were better. I know that doesn't help much...I knowe a few people who think the VLZs were a step down from the pres on the original 12-channel square mixer. So there you go... The few comments I've heard about the VLZ Pro/Onyx comparison is that the Onyx pres were a little better. I personally much preferred the VLZ to the original Mackie preamps. I thought the original Mackie preamps were a bit thin sounding and lacked dimensionality/physicality. I have a VLZ Pro preamp-equipped mini-mixer right now, although I rarely use it. I have it more for the very rare remote gig that I might do or a backup should one of my usual preamps go down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 11, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 Hi, thanks for the feedback... I managed to get a satellite on loan, and I'm listening to both... Now mind you, this is going to be strictly used for recording vocals... It's not for instruments of any kind... So far... I'm not hearing any appreciable difference on the same song, same level, same vocal... At one point, I thought that the onyx sounded a tad brighter, but I'm talking angstrom units... At another point, I thought I was listening to the vlz track, thinking it was the onyx and it sounded good, so it might have been psychological.... I'm going to try higher sampling rates and 24 bits and see what happens... For those of you more experienced with these systems, under these circumstances, where I'm just recording a vocal, am I going to hear any appreciable differences?? Using the same mic, of course... From what I've heard said about the onyx, I thought that I would hear a difference straight away... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted December 11, 2008 Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 I have both, have used both a ton, and yeah I do notice a difference. I like the Onyx quite a bit better. You may not notice the difference with a vocal, but you will with louder sources such as drums and electric guitars. And also you may notice on very soft signals that you can get more gain without noise. High frequencies sound noticably better to me too... not so much of that brittle/harsh quality as there was with the VLZ's. Another thing to compare is what it sounds like when you stack a bunch of tracks recorded with each pre. Overdub a bunch of tracks with a VLZ and you start to hear the harshness in the high mids. With the Onyx, it remains more transparent across a lot of tracks. So no, you're not going to hear much difference on one vocal track... The only trouble with having the Satellite "teaser" is now I kinda want a whole Onyx mixer. I'm keen to hear the EQ on the mixer, as there's no EQ on the Satellite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 11, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 Thanks Lee... I'm going to try doing some stacked harmony vocals and see how that sounds... The thing is, other than a guitar now and then, all I mostly record is vocals... But the stacked vocal thing should be interesting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted December 11, 2008 Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 Yeah, it should be interesting, but if most of what you record is vocals, you may not find it worth the upgrade. Around here, I record live bands and all acoustic instruments plus electric guitars, percussion, etc. My own band also does live Internet broadcasts where we go through a live mixer... so preamps are pretty relevant in my world. Curious to see what happens when you stack a crapload of vocals though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 11, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 Yes, I'm going to try a vocal line in 3 part harmony, with like 3 voices to each harmony part... I know in the past, the mackie vlz has sounded somewhat cloudy in these circumstances... It will be interesting to see if there is more clarity in the vocals... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted December 11, 2008 CMS Author Share Posted December 11, 2008 On vocals, there's very little difference. The gains are the same, the Onyx (comparing mixers - I didn't compare the Satellite to a VLZ) is a couple of dB quieter at full gain. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between them is that at full gain, the low frequency response of the VLZ-Pro starts rolling off at about 50 Hz, and is about 3.5 dB down at 20 Hz. The Onyx is flatter, being less than 1 dB down at 20 Hz. So if you're recording something with a lot of low frequency content at a distance or with a low sensitivity mic, that's significant. They both have the same input impedance and input circuit, so they'll both affect the microphone the same way. One difference that may make a difference with certain mics is that the Satellite phantom power is only 38 volts rather than the standard 48 volts (which the VLZ provides). Mackie gets away with this since there aren't too many phantom powered mics that won't work at 38V, but some mics will lose some headroom working under voltage. Thing about the Satellite is that it's just so handy. I've used it as a stereo mic preamp in the field, and as an audio interface, it's easy to move from computer to computer. I wouldn't get it just for what small improvement there might be over your VLZ mixer, but if you have some other reasons to have one, go for it. They're cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 11, 2008 Members Share Posted December 11, 2008 Another thing to compare is what it sounds like when you stack a bunch of tracks recorded with each pre. Overdub a bunch of tracks with a VLZ and you start to hear the harshness in the high mids. With the Onyx, it remains more transparent across a lot of tracks. When you use it repeatedly in the same recording, you really start hearing the character of the preamp, or whether it's good or has some shortcomings. I would agree with other people...for a single vocal, you might not hear that much of a difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Another thing to compare is what it sounds like when you stack a bunch of tracks recorded with each pre. Overdub a bunch of tracks with a VLZ and you start to hear the harshness in the high mids. With the Onyx, it remains more transparent across a lot of tracks.So no, you're not going to hear much difference on one vocal track... Lee stole my thunder. This is the case with most mic pres. Obviously there are vast differences but when you are comparing two pres in the same class, you really need to stack up some tracks. When I first auditioned my Avalon 737, I was like "What the ????" (no pun intended Lee). I couldn`t believe Avalon had the nerve to charge $2000 for this unit but then I started to stack tracks... bass, bkg vocal, some percussion, acoustic guitar... and then it was obvious. So record the same song using each respective pre and see which song sounds better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lucky #9 Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Trad...:You may know this already, but there is a review of the Satellite in our Pro Review section here at HC. Click on the link below to fly there. http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1369614 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 12, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Hi folks, thanks for your additional replies. I was inspired to buy this after reading the pro review right here in harmony central. Definitely a lot of good information, which allowed me to work the satellite to an advantage. However, I use mostly synth tracks to generate background, record no drums, no bass, etc. About the only "acoustic" sources I would record would be an acoustic guitar, or a vocal and there would probably be one track of each at any point. And rarely are there background vocals either. So I may find in the end that spending money on a satellite is not going to make the only recorded tracks I make sound better. So, here's my question to you all. Do you only hear the advantage of a high quality preamp when recording multiple tracks? If you're just using it to record single tracks, as Ernest Buckley points out with his Avalon experience with one track, if you have a decent preamp to begin with, are you basically just wasting money? Is anybody going to hear a difference between a $2000 preamp and a mackie recording of just one vocal track?? Inquiring minds would like to know... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 If you're just using it to record single tracks, as Ernest Buckley points out with his Avalon experience with one track, if you have a decent preamp to begin with, are you basically just wasting money? Is anybody going to hear a difference between a $2000 preamp and a mackie recording of just one vocal track?? Probably not. Of course it depends what kind of mic we're talking about, too. And if you're going to get a $2000 preamp as opposed to an Onyx, then you're a little more likely to hear a difference, depending on what kind you get. But I doubt that on one vocal track you're going to hear much of a difference between a VLZ and an Onyz pre. Now on acoustic guitar, you might, just because the Onyx pre is quieter at higher gain levels, so on quiet passages you might notice a difference. And I do think there are tonal differences but they wouldn't be very apparent on vocals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Thing about the Satellite is that it's just so handy. I've used it as a stereo mic preamp in the field, and as an audio interface, it's easy to move from computer to computer. I wouldn't get it just for what small improvement there might be over your VLZ mixer, but if you have some other reasons to have one, go for it. They're cheap. Yeah, agreed! They really are handy things to have. I've done quite a few field recordings with it, and we use it as the audio interface for doing live Internet broadcasts. I think it's a nice bonus that the pre's happen to also be pretty darned good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 12, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Hi Lee, truth of the matter is, I can't afford a $2000 preamp... And when I mentioned decent preamp, I meant something like the Onyx... I mean, chances are, with all this info I've been getting from all of you, I will get the Mackie Satellite, simply in case in the future, I have one job where I would have to an "acoustic" recording where it requires 6 tracks, and all of them were recorded with microphones... It appears I would get better results with the onyx than simply the vlz... This weekend hopefully I'll get a chance to run it through its paces and record multiple vocals and record some solo acoustic guitar and some guitar with vocals... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 If you're just using it to record single tracks, as Ernest Buckley points out with his Avalon experience with one track, if you have a decent preamp to begin with, are you basically just wasting money? Is anybody going to hear a difference between a $2000 preamp and a mackie recording of just one vocal track?? Inquiring minds would like to know... Don`t get me wrong, I was comparing pres within the same category/class. Their are bright sounding pres and warmer sounding ones so... If I had to pick only 1 mic pre, I would use a Martin. Nothing comes close IMO and it`ll cost your around $1800 for 1 channel. If you record the same song with just vocal and acoustic guitar with a Martin and an Art mic pre, you will notice the difference so... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted December 12, 2008 CMS Author Share Posted December 12, 2008 So, here's my question to you all. Do you only hear the advantage of a high quality preamp when recording multiple tracks? This is really getting into magic smoke blowing and misconceptions about advantages of a preamp. The bit about multiple tracks is the same thing whether you're talking about preamps, mics, compressors, equalizers, effects, A/D connverters . . . whatever. Everything adds distortion (including noise). There aren't too many things, once you get over the really cheap junk (like the mic input on your computer's built-in sound hardware) that sound bad enough to use on a single track. But when you compound the distortion of even the best devices enough, you can start to notice how it becomes exaggerated - good distortion or bad. It used to be standard advice that when building up tracks, you should have several preamps and mics and use them on what they sound best on. By not using the same preamp/mic combination on every track, you'll avoid compounding the same distortion. Good preamps are good. Bad preamps are bad. Mackie preamps, both the VLZ and the Onyx, are somewhere in between. As you've observed, the difference isn't like between day and night, it's more like between 4:30 and 5:00. Again, my advice is, given that you already have a Mackie mixer, that you not buy the Onyx just to get a better sounding preamp. It's not worth it. If you have use for a portable preamp, or you have reason to set up a secondary workstation, the Satellite is a good choice. But if you want to get a better preamp for whatever you're doing, get one with some character or one with better transparency than your Mackie. It WILL cost more than a Satellite. But if you're on a Satellite budget, save your money for now. (don't buy General Motors stock) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Mike, Are you payed per word? :poke: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 The bit about multiple tracks is the same thing whether you're talking about preamps, mics, compressors, equalizers, effects, A/D connverters . . . whatever. Everything adds distortion (including noise). There aren't too many things, once you get over the really cheap junk (like the mic input on your computer's built-in sound hardware) that sound bad enough to use on a single track. But when you compound the distortion of even the best devices enough, you can start to notice how it becomes exaggerated - good distortion or bad. Bingo. Exactly. The qualities of the device start becoming much more obvious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Yep... that's when you really start to appreciate a good console. You know, "back in the day," most people didn't record with external pre's. They tracked everything using the pre's in their console, and mixed using the console's EQ. Yet everything still sounded great even adding up a bunch of tracks. I still much prefer to do that, when I have access to a nice console. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 12, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Good preamps are good. Bad preamps are bad. Mackie preamps, both the VLZ and the Onyx, are somewhere in between. As you've observed, the difference isn't like between day and night, it's more like between 4:30 and 5:00. Again, my advice is, given that you already have a Mackie mixer, that you not buy the Onyx just to get a better sounding preamp. It's not worth it. If you have use for a portable preamp, or you have reason to set up a secondary workstation, the Satellite is a good choice. But if you want to get a better preamp for whatever you're doing, get one with some character or one with better transparency than your Mackie. It WILL cost more than a Satellite. But if you're on a Satellite budget, save your money for now. (don't buy General Motors stock) Thanks Mike... The only reason I considered the satellite is because I could get it cheap, and it was well spoken of in the pro review, (actually I learned how to get the best out of it from your commentary before I got it) but other than that, I'm not going to go on location or anything else... Definitely, I would love to someday have a great preamp, but there again, which one?? This is more of a rhetorical question... There's Great River, John Hardy, Ernest Buckley suggests a Martin, and I'm sure a whole host of others... Well, when I get to that bridge, I am sure I will post the question... But here's a real question, about preamps in this in between stage... People also speak well of the FMR RNP, the Brick and others... In your opinion, for this one - two track work, is an RNP or something going to offer any appreciable difference in the sound than a mackie vlz? Or are we going to be at that 4:30 - 5:00 situation?? Assuming all I want is a clean signal, what you see if what you get situation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 12, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Don`t get me wrong, I was comparing pres within the same category/class. Their are bright sounding pres and warmer sounding ones so... If I had to pick only 1 mic pre, I would use a Martin. Nothing comes close IMO and it`ll cost your around $1800 for 1 channel. If you record the same song with just vocal and acoustic guitar with a Martin and an Art mic pre, you will notice the difference so... I should have made clearer that the ONLY things I'll record with a mic are vocals or a guitar, however, they will rarely appear simultaneously on any track... I'll do an orchestral sample library background and I'll add a vocal... Or maybe a guitar... Everything else is from/in the computer... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted December 12, 2008 Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 But here's a real question, about preamps in this in between stage... People also speak well of the FMR RNP, the Brick and others... In your opinion, for this one - two track work, is an RNP or something going to offer any appreciable difference in the sound than a mackie vlz? Or are we going to be at that 4:30 - 5:00 situation?? Assuming all I want is a clean signal, what you see if what you get situation? I can answer this one because I own both two RNPs and a Mackie VLZ Pro. If you are just doing one vocal, there's a slight but noticeable difference in the vocal. I cannot explain it in "scientific" terms, but in comparing the two with a single vocal track, the RNP sounds less "pinched" and a bit more open than the VLZ Pro, but it's not a super "Oh my gosh!!!!!" sort of difference. However, as we've been discussing, across numerous tracks (used, say, twenty times or whatever for a song), there's a noticeable difference. The tracks are "easier" to mix, seems more open, and, I hate to say this, but simply sound better (warmer, fuller, less "pinched"). In this manner, it really does make a noticeable difference. I believe that the VLZ Pro is a good enough mic preamp that a good engineer can make a good sounding album from it. I truly believe that. I've even made numerous recordings that sounded quite good with regular (not VLZ Pro) Mackie preamps, the original ones. But I also believe that all other things being equal, a good engineer would have an easier time making a good sounding album - and would make a better sounding album - with RNPs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tradivoro1 Posted December 12, 2008 Author Members Share Posted December 12, 2008 Yep... that's when you really start to appreciate a good console. You know, "back in the day," most people didn't record with external pre's. They tracked everything using the pre's in their console, and mixed using the console's EQ. Yet everything still sounded great even adding up a bunch of tracks. I still much prefer to do that, when I have access to a nice console. And that's exactly my experience from back in the day when I did a lot of recordings with instruments and multiple people... I was working with a Trident Series 65... We did all the recordings to 24 tracks... And everything sounded great... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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