Looking for advice on a small usb or firewire mixer

[Cancer]

Greets all. I'm looking for a small mixer, no more than 8 tracks, that can hook up to a computer via either firewire or usb. I've been to Mackie's site and seen their Onyx, and looked at a couple of other ones as well from Alesis and Behringer.

We're goning to be using it primarily to record vocals, some of of outboard synth gear (mc 303 and 505), miking guitar cabs, or for submixing multiple guitar modellers.

Also may be interested in buying if someone's got one for sale.

Any advice, or opinion would be greatly appreciated.

 

[DSS3]

Why not just get a smaller mixer and an M-Box? I know Textures tracks there rehearsals with an Mbox and 2 SM58's.

 

[Cancer]

Why not just get a smaller mixer and an M-Box? I know Textures tracks there rehearsals with an Mbox and 2 SM58's.

Not a bad idea, especially since I have a small mixer already, just looking to see whats out there. Maybe give myself an excuse to GAS on a new one.

Thanks for the suggestion though, that was a route I had not considered.

 

[widdly]

For the mackie, get the firewire. The USB one has to mix everything down to two traks before it goes into the puter. The firewire lets you stick each channel on a seperate track.

 

[Rev2010]

I was lucky to get my Mackie Onyx 1220 when they were running the Christman special with the free firewire card. I'll tell ya... it's an amazing mixer. I'm only going to use the firewire when I need to record multiple band members at a time. But currently for my home writing I use an Echo Mia and record a track at a time.

I'd say what you should buy depends on your budget. If you have enough cash to buy the Onyx with firewire go for it. You likely won't need another mixer for a very long time. But the price is steep. So like mentioned, you'd also be perfectly fine using your small mixer (or getting a new one) with a PCI audio card. Keep in mind if you need to record multiple musicians at once on their own individual tracks you'll need an audio card with a healthy number of inputs. Oh, and being I've also used an M-Audio Delta in the past I can recommend both M-Audio and Echo products highly.


Rev.

 

[Cancer]

I was lucky to get my Mackie Onyx 1220 when they were running the Christman special with the free firewire card. I'll tell ya... it's an amazing mixer. I'm only going to use the firewire when I need to record multiple band members at a time. But currently for my home writing I use an Echo Mia and record a track at a time

Rev.

Yeah, I've been lustiing over the Mackie lately. We have a small old Peavey mixer, perfectly fine, just looking to "step the game up" since we're recording, using software for thr first time, and just general updating the studio overall.

Overall if appears that Mackie may have the best specs too.