Mackie Onyx 8 bus live mixer in studio

[octatonic]

Is anyone using the Mackie Onyx 8 bus live consoles in their studio?

Just wondering how you find it?

James

[PoorGlory]

Its a decent board, but for studio?... We have a 48 channel Onyx at our shop (my day job is shop foreman at a regional East Coast live audio company) but it's never been out on a gig, mostly because the group send buttons are the horrible Mackie two-tone buttons, making it difficult to see whats going where in a dark concert environment. Not to mention the metering is pretty bad... theres a master LED meter where you can select what source to meter, and then each channel has its own tiny LED meter, but its just not enough to be able to get a good reading on where your levels stand.

We're going to be selling the Onyx at dealer cost (I am the only person who ever fired it up and put signal into it for about 5 minutes) and staying with our PM3500 as our go-to large format board. The Onyx sounds fine (at least in a shop environment), and its signal routing is actually pretty good. It has the ability to send the auxes to the groups so it can double as a monitor desk, as well as a matrix. Other than the bad metering and non-lit group send selectors, its a decent board.

[Matt Hepworth]

I've used the 2480 quite a bit. Good sound for the price, metering leaves a bit to be desired, but they have fairly noisy fans. Don't know whether those can be replaced, but it's an issue, IMO. Bang had one for a bit and liked it, IIRC.

[James HE]

I've been wondering the same thing, but more in reference to the 4 bus mixers that aren't out yet. The 24 channel one is just a little more than the Onyx 1640. I have a 800R and like it a lot.

[Matt Hepworth]

I'm eyeing the four bus as well. Hoping it doesn't have the fans.

[JohnNy C]

I run one of the smaller format Onyx series in my home project studio and absolutely love it. And for the price, it makes it an even better deal. The pre's are more than usable for everyday7 work and the new Perkins EQ's are pretty damn good. The 8 Bus Onyx should fit just fine in a studio environment.

[dokushoka]

We just did a remote with a 16 channel Onyx. I can say that the pres are pretty good and the converters get the job done. I didn't explore the EQ at all, so I can't comment on that. I think, if anything, the weakness of the console would be the mixbuss. I REALLY would not want to mix on it.