On Friday, May 4, 2001 at 11:00:22 PM UTC-6, David Simmons wrote:

Craig,
The headroom complaint is a very common one, but the problem is with the non-standard metering Mackie uses, not an inherent hardware limitation
(read the level-setting procedure in the manual). The original 1604 is a little noisy, but the 2 subsequent models cleaned things up a bit. The
"low end" Mackie stuff does NOT sound terrible and definitely does not
shred your sound, at least compared to a Behringer anyway. The Mackie EQ
is certainly not very good compared to a ghost, and pro engineers
complain about the summing busses on the 8 bus, but we're talking about a portable $500 14 channel mixer here for mixing synths and samplers. .
.The Roland digital mixers are definitely ok but kind of clumsy (poor interface), and I agree with you that they have a lot to offer as far as effects and automation go, but the little Mackies have very good preamps, sound pretty good, and are reasonably priced. You can drag them around anywhere to the shittiest gigs, throw them around etc and still know that they'll work when you flip the switch. Either option would certainly
sound better than any Behringer though that's for sure.
Craig Vanderborgh wrote:

Mackies shred your sound. I had a 1604 for a while and I thought
it really sounded bad. It had headroom problems, and I just
couldn't things it to sound right. Desparate, I replaced it with
a 32 channel Soundcraft Ghost, and I was totally vindicated: The low
end Mackie stuff sounds TERRIBLE. I can't speak for the Beringer.

It is the year 2001. Why anyone would buy something like a
Mackie 1202 today is beyond my comprehension. The digital mixers
(like the Roland V Series) sound vastly better than those tweezy
relics from the past. No kidding. By the way, I am not a big
digital head either. It's just that if you care about sound they
really do sound better than low end analog "equivalents".

regards,
craig vanderborgh

Thomas Sehnert wrote:

I wanna buy a mixer with 8 Mono and 4 Stereo-Inputs. With
Channel-Insert, 3Band EQ (param. Mid) and 2 Subgroups.

Behringer MX 2004A
or
Mackie 1404 ?

(Behringer is much cheaper than mackie with more features)

Best regards
Thomas Sehnert
Germany, Leipzig

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