Mackie ONYX 1640 w/Firewire option and Logic Pro 8?

[kamera]

Hi,

 

First post.

 

I was wondering if anyone had any experience using the Mackie ONYX 1640 (or 1220, or 1620) with Logic Pro 8 as an interface through the Firewire card option?

 

I'm starting up a new live band, and was looking around for a P.A. system and audio interface for our rehearsal space. These new Mackie mixers seem like they can fulfill both the task of being the mixer in a rehearsal P.A. and a pretty decent Firewire audio interface?

 

If they really work as advertised then it would save a lot of set-up clutter.

 

Is that so or am I on the wrong track completely?

 

 

Thank you

Nikita

Montreal

[Jabba The Hut]

Hey I too am doing the same thing with an original band, were using the Onyx 1640 for recording purposes, so any tips on the use of firewire and maybe setup's would be greatly appreciated

[onewave]

Yes, your thinking is correct. You could use this mixer as a PA mixer and a A/D interface for your Logic Pro setup. Would you be looking at the onyx i series mixers too? I know that Mackie made an older version (1640) with a firewire option, I believe this is the mixer your talking about. The big difference between the new one and the older version is that the i series firewire allows you to assign your mix back to the faders in analog. Why would this be important you may ask? Well, I know that some opinions differ dramatically, but it is a current trend in recording now that people value the sound of an analog mix. If you have heard of ITB mixing, you are aware that your mix is being summed digitally in the box (ITB) as in Logic Pro for instance. Now, when your sending your tracks out to a mixer in analog your mixing your tracks out of the box(OTB). I must say that there is a dramatic difference of opinion here, those of you may tend to want the ITB sound and those of us who have recorded with analog tape machines and consoles in the past may tend to lean more to the analog mixer (OTB) sound. I find that the new i series is a great idea, not having used one yet, I may think there worth a closer look before deciding on that older mixer. The big price difference reflects the extra cost of the 16 D/A converters used to bring back into the analog realm.

 

Best of luck with your band and your decisions.

[cc2ss]

We use an older 1640 with the firewire card into logic 9. We use it as our PA mixer and to record scratch tracks and trigger signals during recording. Then we replace the triggers with Steven Slate Samples. We run the overheads into our Great River MP-2nv. Then we do all other tracks and overdubs into the great river >apogee duet. At mixdown we send 6 stereo groups from logic out of an echo audiofire 12 into a Folcrom analog summing buss, then through the Great river and into the Duet and logic on another laptop. Works awesome so far

[uhdinator]

yep it works..........create a project with 16 tracks, plug in the fire wire. Select 1640 as input and arm tracks and record.

[gretsch_drums]

Nikita... Did you ever try this with a Mackie Onyx Firewire mixer, and OS Leopard?

 

I just connected my G5 running 10.5.7 to my Mackie 1640 Onyx mixer tonight, and there's no driver support for the Firewire audio devices in that OS (or Tiger 10.4.11, for that matter). I've found several threads from 2008/2009 that talk about this issue, but I would have thought it would have been fixed by now.

 

It works just fine on my MacBook Pro running 10.6.3, by the way. So if you're able to upgrade to Snow Leopard, then that might be the easiest way to go--because it works very nicely, as far as I can tell.

 

TB

[uhdinator]

Is it the G5 vs. Intel macs causing the issue. I did projects using 10.4 and 10.5 (both leopard) and no issues with the older 1640 or newer 1640I. Plugged it in,

launched Logic and selected 1640 as audio device. There is was.

 

Yes Nikita they work fine. Have tracked 16 at a time with the older and latest model 1640i

and have similar setup as you have.

 

The Onyx pre amps in the mixer are decent and have a few guys I know that record way more than I do and have been raving about it.

 

Great way to go if you need a live console and want to record as well!

does 18 tracks at once (16 track plus stereo out).

[gretsch_drums]

Well, I had OS 10.5.8 installed at a computer store, and so I don't have a OS disk. I got the G5 from my friend, because it wasn't working and he thought it had a bad logic board. As it turns out, it probably isn't the logic board at all--it was the RAM. I have had it working for two weeks now, and once I removed the bad RAM, things seem to be working well. It wasn't as easy to figure out the problem as I've explained it here, and it took a few days to figure out. But now that it's working, it seems very stable.

 

But I got the thing with no OS disk. My friend bought it from someone on Craigslist, and he got it without a system disk...it only had 10.4 on it. At least he cloned the drive, so I have something to go on now. But when I got it, it had 10.4.11 on it. I thought I had gotten a disk with OS X 10.4 with it, but it doesn't seem to work. But since I was going to upgrade to Logic Express 9, I needed to be running 10.5.7 or later--so I didn't even mess with 10.4.11. I did install a second hard-drive though, and that's where the store put 10.5.8.

 

That being said, I wonder if I should simply buy a 10.5.x disk off e-bay so that I have an actual disk? I called Mackie today and talked to someone there who told me that the Onyx boards (not the i-series) should work fine with 10.4.11, and with Snow Leopard. He says that although they haven't formally "approved" their Onyx boards with Leopard, they work fine on that OS. This is contrary to all the information I've found on their forums, and on other forums. And the part he said about Leopard not being formally supported is directly contrary to what their website says. But the guy I talked told me that the information he gave me today is the gospel--and not what I've read on the internet (forums or their webpage). He told me that in his opinion, all that information should be taken off their forum, and that someone had apparently changed the information on their website (to be incorrect) without his knowledge, and so it was WRONG.

 

I'm not sure just what to believe at this point, quite honestly. It was not a helpful conversation, and he basically just told me that I had incorrect information and there was no reason I should be having this problem. So I may be back at square one.

 

So much for my first experience with Mackie tech support...

 

TB