Re: mackie Onyx 1620 vsRME fw800

[Sam Nilsson <sam@servingpeace.com>]

L.A. Angulo wrote:
> Hi gang,
> if you were to pick between this 2 to record with
> bands at home which one would you choose?what would be
> the pro s and cons or which preamps sound better?i
> currently own the rme800 which is very nice but i am
> being offered an onyx for a very cheap price(about
> 599.-eur.) and i am reconsidering,also with the onyx
> having more available XLR inputs sends etc.it would
> seem easier to have a band just come in plug their
> instruments directly and go at it.My other question
> is,because of my room space i would probably have to
> run a rather long firewire cable,would this have any
> effect on latency?


Hello,

I actually have the rme fireface 800 as well as the onyx 1640. I find 
that the onyx is great for mixing live music if you need to do a show, 
and if you want to record that live performance the onyx makes that 
really simple and it does have pretty nice preamps in it.

For actual recording projects which might include overdubs or adding 
extra tracks where you need to hear a mix of live instruments and 
recorded tracks, the rme 800 is much more capable. The flexibility and 
power of totalmix is amazing. Also I find that the rme 800 has not only 
better preamps, but the converters seem much nicer to me which is even 
more important for good recording quality. This is why I bought the rme 
800: better converters, better preamps, totalmix's powerful flexible 
routing, and rme's reputation for stable quality software drivers.

So if you just want to record the inputs of your mixer live the onyx is 
great. If you want better preamps and much better A/D and D/A converters 
along with much more powerful routing capabilities the rme 800 is the 
winner.

When I want the best quality that I can get and I run out of mic inputs 
on the fireface, I run cables from inserts on the onyx to line inputs on 
the fireface and that allows me to use the fireface's converters with 
more mics. For recording bands at home you might need some sort of 
solution like this since the fireface only has 4 mic inputs.

I don't technically know how the firewire cable affects latency, but I 
would suspect that the effect will be negligible. I imagine that you 
will have dropouts or other problems if the cable is too long rather 
than added latency, but I'm not sure.

Peace,
- Sam

Peace,
- Sam