Mackie Onyx 1640 for Mixing? Summing? Advice please!

thanks mr posse yep there seems to be a bit of a debate as to whether or not analogue summing is worth it as you say.. but yes you can send a stereo mix back through 15 and 16 so i'll give it a go.. the eqs are meant to be pretty nice but i've never used them as it's only been used for tracking and the 1640 (not 1640i) won't allow that without a mod.. do you reckon they'd be an improvement on booteq (variety of sound) or reaper's eq? or plugin eqs in general?

Mixing with a 64 bit fp digital board (Reaper) feels much more like a large format console like a Neve or SSL. Any of the smaller to medium mixers (and especially the budget stuff like Mackie) are frankly awful compared to Reaper with nice converters. Spend your money on good analog to digital converters. Always use 24 bit. This is the secret. We've crossed the line with high resolution digital formats. You need VERY expensive analog to compete with this now (and it's one of those 1% or 2% discussions). I mix live music with Reaper in addition to studio work. The upgrade in sound over every small or medium club mixer or even larger festival mixer was shocking when I first started doing this. Spend your money on good (or great) AD and DA converters and good mic preamps if you use mics. This is the analog gear that makes a difference.

Its also worth bearing in mind that when recording with 24 bit converters you are never getting 24 bits of audio to use my RME box as an example the noise floor is around -110dBFS (incidentally, I get the same performance off 2 x Behringer ADA 8000 that I use via ADAT to extend my AD/DA In/Outs. The pres suck but the AD/DA is an RME clone) so at least 5 bits, almost 6, are lost in thermal noise. And using -18 dBFS RMS with peaks around -10 (ah the luxury of headroom) I'm losing almost 2 bits off the top. At best recording with sensible levels into these converters I'm getting 16-17 bits when the audio peaks plus 5 bits of well defined thermal noise, most of which is below the threshold of human hearing Recording with 16 bit converters, the digital noise is above the thermal noise floor of the converter box and if I push the levels to peaks around -2 RMS around -9 like we used to do in the good old days of 16 bits, I'm getting almost the full sixteen bits Not a lot in it except more recording headroom

As an ADA 8000 owner I have to disagree with the comment about poor Behringer conversion. One thing that made that unit so popular was the converter quality, noisy pre-amps aside. IIRC, that unit used the same chips and designs (in that Behringer way :)) as some highly regarded gear. Obviousy, Behrigner could sell it for less since their R&D costs amounted to reverse engineering, :) As to a daw mixer feeling like a great console, not even close. We become accustomed to what we use and it becomes normal, but I too have mixed on an SSL and mousing or using a Mackie Control is really nothing like that. :). Literally everything is at your fingertips and the workflow glides along much faster... assuming you have a good patchbay setup for all the outboard.

Being cursed to spend nearly the entirety of my professional life behind either a Neve or an SSL, and occaisionally a trident or API, the day of getting the hell away from gigantic, noisy, distorted, unreliable space heaters couldn't come soon enough. The type of automation the customer demanded was always impossible, or very nearly impossible, so it was always a terrible compromise. Rerouting constantly from dealing with gear made in a country where Lucas Electronics was deemed acceptable was a constant nightmare In the rare occaision where everything worked, the sonic doorway you had to squeeze everything in through made all your work at preserving tones into a wasted joke I'll take my 24 bit lumps and say "thank you sir, can I have another?"