How good are Mackie mic pre's, really?

'cause they make them sound like they're really great. I have a Mackie Satellite and I like it a lot but it's about time for an upgrade as I need to be on Pro Tools ASAP. So, I've been planning on buying myself an M-Audio ProjectMix I/O for the PT Compatibility. TBH, I haven't had very much luck with M-Audio before, but I was at the very entry level of the M-Audio line. I believe it was a FasTrack USB or something.

Now, I have a few options. The ProjectMix offers me an Audio Interface, Control Surface, and Midi. These are all good things. However, I'd like to know that its Mic Pres will be better than the $179 dollar Mackie interface that I have now. I could go about getting a control surface and midi interface individually, but I'd also have to get a decent M-Audio Pro Tools or Digidesign MBox audio interface as well.

So for you more experienced recording folk, what would you do?

i will never buy anything made by digidesign or mackie (again that is, i own both), but thats just me. mackie pres are "ok" and fairly colorless; they dont add anything to the sound for the most part but do have a tendency to get weird with excessive gain. up really, really hot the low end starts to roll off but this may be due to factors other than the pre itself.

i dont get excited by anything "mic pre"- i find they are pretty much all the same unless they are built to be colorful, and then i find them unacceptable for what i do. i dont really notice much difference between mic pres on the mixers i use, like A&H, mackie, yamaha but i do tend to notice other sonic quality differences with these mixers.

the cleanest signal path i have used have been on midas boards. i have only used the little midas (verona?) but it was an eye opener.

Why do you have to make this decision by asking on a forum? Do you first have to sell your $180 Satelltie before you cab afford to buy the $1300 Project Mix I/O? If that's the case, then you probably shouldn't get into ProTools - it'll drive you to the poorhouse.

Get the Project Mix or whatever system you choose but keep your Satellite. When you start recording, try using the Satellite as a mic preamp and compare it to what's in your new hardware. If it turns out that your new gear's preamps don't sound as good as the Mackie, at least you still have the Mackie. And if they sound different, there may be occasions where you'll want to use one and other occasions where you'll want to use the other. And if you think the Mackie sucks next to the new gear, hold on to it for a little longer. You might get a new microphone that sounds better through the Mackie.

You shouldn't have to make this decision now.

Now if what you're really asking is whether you should buy the Project Mix (or something else) based on the quality and characteristics of its on-board preamps compared to the Satellite, that's kind of silly too. The Satellite essentially IS a mic preamp with a Firewire output tacked on. The Project Mix I/O is a control surface that has some mic preamps in it so you don't have to buy anything extra. Consider the Satellite your first investment in outboard preamps. Peoplel sell and trade those all the time when they're no longer useful or the gear lust becomes strong enough.

Well, realistically, I'll probably end up buying the ProjectMix either way. It's just I'd like to know that if I do buy it I'm not, in a sense, downgrading my Mic Pre's in order to have the convenience of a control surface, and midi.

You don't have to downgrade your mic preamps. You can use the Mackie with the Project Mix if you think it sounds better.

But remember, too, that if you compare the Mackie by itself with the Project Mix by itself, you're also comparing at least the A/D converters, since they're different. You could make test recordings of each and play them back through the same device so at least you'd be listening through the same converters. You might find that THOSE sound enough different to care about. Or maybe not.

Use the Satellite pod by itself and connect the outputs to the line inputs of a couple of channels on the Project Mix, swap a mic back and forth between the Project Mix and Satellite mic inputs and use the one you like best. It may or may not be the same one I'd like best if I tried the same experiment.

I don't know if the Project Mix has line inputs that don't go through mic preamps. If it does, use those just so you won't put up the argument about the signal going through two stages of mic preamp. In the trenches, I find that it makes no difference that the mic and line inputs go through the same circuit (like the Satellite and most any mixer under about $20,000).

The greatest source for a preamp's "sound," unless it's designed to have a specific flavor of distortion, is the interface with the microphone, and that's determined by where you plug in the mic. The line input is sufficiently isolated, and the preamp is quiet enough, so that it really doesn't matter that it has an attenuator in front of it to make the line input (and you get a balanced line input for free that way).

The Satellite is well below tolerance for phantom power voltage (38 volts) so it's possible that you might have a condenser mic that has more headroom with a full 48V which (I hope) the Project Mix provides. Other than that, I suspect you'll notice litle if any diffrence. But you should try it yourself. Experimentation is fun.

Yeah, I'm with Mike there. You might find the Satellite pres work with some sounds and the M-Audio with others.

Good points, guys. Thanks

Is there any way to have both of them hooked up at the same time? I have two firewire inputs (1 in the front of the computer, 1 in the back) so I have the space for 'em.

Is it possible?

It depends on your computer. If you use a Mac, there's a function known as something like "aggregate audio devices" that lets you make several ASIO devices look like a single device with more inputs and outputs. There isn't an equivalent function for Windows though.

So if you have a Mac, yes. If you have a PC, the only way you can have both connected at once is to connect the analog outputs of the Satellite to the a pair of inputs on the Project Mix.

The two Firewire ports on your computer are almost certainly connected to the same host controller (Firewire is a bus) so they really aren't separate ports. If you noticed, the Satellite has two Firewire connectors on it as well.

Those two Firewire connectors are simply tied together like the two sockets in an AC power output. The idea is that you can use another (not ASIO) device on the Firewire bus without tying up another computer computer port. I suspect that the Project Mix has the same arrangement. It's just a matter of physical convenience. You could, for example, connect a Firewire disk drive to that port. That's not really advisable, though, due to the continuous streaming of both audio and disk data through the same bus. But you could use it to connect your video camcorder for dumping a recording to the computer for editing.

Ok cool. If I take audio from the outputs of the Satellite into the ProjectMix will I lose sound quality?