I appreciate the response toine6. That is definitely right. The ones I am comparing are very stable as interfaces from my research which is why I have not listed other interfaces I have already ruled out from many issues and driver problems. These ones seem solid, except now I have heard some not so great stuff about the UR22 so I think I will rule that one out.

So that brings it down to a cheaper interface such as the Scarlett 6i6, 8i6 or 18i6 or M Audio C400, or ??? and also get a cheap external mic preamp like the Mackie VLZ4 Onyx mic pres,
or just the Forte, and use it's own mic preamps.

Seeing some weirdness with the Forte; see the pop/crackle thread. Maybe the drivers aren't quite solid?

Darn, I already purchased the Forte...will arrive in a few days, I will have to see if mine will have any issues...or at least the drivers can be updated soon and fix the problems.

I'd just like to say thanks very much (and particularly to guitarboy94) for this thread, it was just what I needed.

I've been struggling with dissatisfaction about my recorded vocals for some time. After buying an Audio-Technica AT2035 condenser mic, as well as an AKG D5 Dynamic (better than an SM58 but less expensive) I finally concluded that the weak link is the.... Behringer Xenyx 802.

I had decided to get a small Soundcraft Notepad but none are available any more here in the UK, so today I discovered the Mackie 402-VLZ3, and was on the verge of buying one before I took a visit to Mackie's website and noticed it had been superceded by the VLZ4, which is a bit more expensive. Hence I started looking for feedback and found this thread.

I could clearly hear a difference between all three of those samples (maybe thanks to my Audiophile 2496), and the difference between the Warm and the VLZ4 is much less than the difference between the Warm and the VLZ3; it's also much less than the difference between the VLZ4 and VLZ3. I found the VLZ3 not so much sharper, but having less presence, even thinner. My voice is naturally a baritone and I suspect the VLZ4 with the Onyx preamp will reproduce the deep power of my voice better than the VLZ3. And anyway, with eq adjustment in the DAW the mids could be tempered a little anyway.

I'm tipped towards the Mackie 402-VLZ4 but am also wondering about the Yamaha MG102C which retails at a similar price but with more features. However, from reading various user reviews, it would seem that more could mean less, especially if I'm paying for an inbuilt compressor and other features I don't need, which could mean a compromise elsewhere on the unit. Mackie it is.

I have a Yamaha mg102c and a Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro. In my personal opinion, even my older Mackie is much, much better than the Yamaha.

Thanks. I did decide that it was safer to opt for certain quality rather than taking a risk and getting the Yamaha for its extra features, so earlier today I finally ordered the Mackie 402VLZ4. I'm looking forward to hearing how much better it sounds than the Behringer.

You're welcome.

You're going to love that VLZ4! It really is awesome quality at a sick price. Seriously, where else can you get two quality preamps, a musical sounding EQ and a headphone amp AND monitor for 99 dollars?

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it after you've had a chance to use it!

It may be 99 dollars to you, but here in Britain it costs 99 pounds, which translates in current exchange rates to a little under 158 US dollars! This kind of thing keeps happening, which is why so many of us here call it 'Rip-Off Britain'.

Had the prices been a true translation (62 pounds) I'd have probably considered ordering a VLZ3 too, just to have the luxury of access to both the Onyx and XDR2 preamps for different requirements.

I received the 402VLZ4 earlier today and I've been trying it for about an hour or so, and here are my initial findings.

I first played a couple of 160kbps MP3 files and found them to sound more detailed than before. I then loaded up my DAW and recorded my voice on a song I've been having vocal issues with when using my old Behringer. I now found my vocals to have better tonality, more detail, crispness, and smoothness. They also have the baritone depth and power that was missing before, and I no longer need to strain my vocal chords to achieve this. Gone also is that annoying lift I was experiencing at around 2khz with the Behringer which gave the impression that I was kind of singing in a contrived manner from the back of my throat. There is now also very little hiss when the gain control is turned up, although it does kick in when turned all the way up, but still nowhere near as badly as the Behringer.

It would have been a nice addition if they'd have included a switch to bypass the eq controls, which I have absolutely no use for, and I doubt anyone else who is using this desk for recording would either.

There are two points of criticism so far experienced with this desk. Firstly, when tracking, I'm experiencing a slight chorusing effect with my voice that's not there on playback. Secondly, that the headphone amp exhibits a fair amount of hiss.

Great review. I acutally use the EQ 12k high shelf all the time wih my darker voiced Oktava 319. The EQ is more musical than what I get in the DAW. Give it a try sometime! I too find that the headphone amp has some hiss. No big deal for me because it doesn't show up in the tracks. Do you have your monitor on in your DAW as well? A phase delay between your DAW monitor and your mixer monitor could be the chorus affect you are hearing. Make sure you shut off your DAW monitor if you are using your mixer monitor.

Unless I'm missing something, if I switch off the DAW monitoring then I lose the plugin effects (compression + reverb) while tracking, and end up with a lifeless sound in my headphones. I increased the ASIO latency, and, of course, the chorusing became more pronounced, while reducing latency (from 384 samples down to 256) had the opposite effect, but then I got audio break-up.

Well, then you're not going to be able to use the monitor on the mixer. You can't run both the DAW monitor and the mixer monitor at the same time because the mixer monitor has zero latency and your DAW does have latency. That's the phase efffect you are hearing. You are going to have to patch an analog reverb/compresser in with the mixer in order to get those effects.

This looks like an appalling oversight by the Mackie designers. Even the cheapo Behringer Xenyx allows the running of both the DAW Monitor and mixer monitor at the same time with no problems at all. Very disappointing. I'll just have to email them about it and see what they have to say.

Dude, I don't know how that's possible. Perhaps your Xenyz had a latency issue that just happened to sync with the latency of your DAW? The mixer functions fine. It's a delay you're hearing between the zero delay of the mixer monitor and the delay of the DAW monitor. It's not the mixer's fault that it has 100 percent zero delay.

You're trying to listen and sing through two different monitoring systems at the same time! You have to either establish a monitoring setup with your DAW or a monitoring setup with your Mixer. One is a hardware monitoring mix and the other is a software monitoring mix. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but unless your DAW has zero latency, then combining a DAW monitor mix with that of a zero latency hardware monitoring mix is always going to result in a phase issue and or chorus effect. Mackie has a fine product here.

I understand what you are saying, and it would seem to be that the flaw in design of the Mackie is that it relies on monitoring within the mixer, whereas the Behringer Xenyx is able to work exclusively through the DAW monitor, which is a more practical configuration because it avoids the inevitable latency difference.

I'm positive you can patch in your mix from the DAW into the Mackie. Study the manual.

Honestly, I've never dug this deep into monitor mixes, so you might have a point there. It can get pretty complex. I track everything dry and don't even hassle with effects while tracking. I like to record with open back headphones so I can hear the natural sound of my voice with room reverb. I get a little bleed, but nothing that ruins the tracks. I'm not a fan of tracking with compression in the monitor mix because it sort of creates a false impression of how you really sound and often leads to a so-so performance. But that's just me. YMMV

Why not just patch your headphones into the output of your DAW or a dedicated headphone only amp? Then you can use the DAW monitoring setup and bypass using the mixer as a monitor. Honestly, you're still getting two terrific preamps on the Mackie for 99 bucks. That alone more than pays for the price of the mixer.

I can't find anything in the manual relating to patching the mix from the DAW into the mixer.

http://www.mackie.com/downloads/VLZ4...402VLZ4_OM.pdf

I wouldn't even know how to patch the headphones to the output of my DAW, it's something I've never needed to do before, and having a dedicated headphone only amp would mean I'd have to buy one and then search for (or make a box) to switch between headphone and speakers, which is not really something I should need to do. The option for exclusive DAW Monitoring should be built into the unit.

I think it best to contact Mackie at this stage and see what they have to say and then decide where to go from there.

Real easy to patch a headphone mix. Just split the output of the cable going to your monitors. Run that into a headphone amp. You can get one from Behringer for 25 bucks. I used to have one.

Best of luck, man. Let me know what you find out. I would be very curious to know how that's done if I have to do that one day.

Tried a lot a stuf, you have a testtime of 60 days here in the store in the netherlands, but the onyx has a very nice warmth addig, without the use of any effects and i like the looks...nice and sturdy...enough headroom for my purposes, but you can buy the vlz3's almost for nothing. The s/n and stuff on paper doesn't say a lot in my opinion...
I wanna see graphs.... But for the price you can't really go wrong with vlz3 /4 onyx i.
greetz rich and offcourse i don't know how the prices are at your part of the globe.

Has anyone seen an actual review of the vlz4?

This is kind of mixer 101, but you need to output a stem or the full stereo mix to the Mackie's 3/4 inputs from your DAW/interface. Once it's in the mixer, congratulations: you're now listening to a zero latency mix of your vocals (channel 1 or 2) and the previously recorded tracks from the DAW (ch. 3/4).

Just to keep people up to date, I received a sloppy response to my email to Mackie.

This is the contents of my first email:

Today I received delivery of a 402VLZ4 Mixer. However, I believe I have discovered a flaw with the design in that it relies on monitoring within the mixer but fails to allow monitoring only from the DAW. The consequence of this is that a chorusing effect is present during tracking when DAW monitoring is selected, and this effect becomes progressively worse as latency is increased. DAW monitoring is essential when using software compression and reverb from within the DAW during tracking. I find this omission very disappointing, as even my previous (and cheap) Behringer Xenyx802 mixer does not suffer with this problem, because it is able to function exclusively through DAW monitoring, which is a more practical configuration as it avoids the inevitable latency differences between software and hardware.

Please let me know whether or not there is a means of dealing with this issue, because there is nothing that I can find about it in the manual or on the 720trees.com website, and I wish to avoid having to return it for a refund, because of the quality of the preamps, even though the noisiness of the headphone amplifier is yet another negative feature.

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Their reply:

Thanks for writing in.

The 402-VLZ4 is a purely analog mixing console. Just like other analog mixers from any brand, there is no latency problem related to it. If you are hearing some sort of latency during tracking, most likely it’s either the settings in your DAW or a performance issue with the computer. Please check with you DAW Tech Support to seek ways to resolve this.

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My response, sent today:

Thank you for your response, which completely misses the point.

I didn't even suggest there is any latency in the mixing console. What I pointed out was that it is not capable of exclusive DAW monitoring. Consequently, when attempting to do so, it mixes both the DAW monitoring signal (inevitably with a very small latency) and the mixer monitoring (with no latency), thereby causing a 'chorusing' effect due to phase shift between the two signals. This does not happen in the Behringer Xenyx mixers because they have designed it to be able to monitor purely from the DAW, whereas your mixer fails to do this. So, in brief, it falls short of practical expectations (and even short of cheaper Behringer functionality) because it is unable to perform exclusive DAW monitoring. Unless you can explain how exclusive DAW monitoring can be achieved with the 402-VLZ4 , it would point to a shortcoming in design.

I await your response.

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Next chapter hopefully soon.

Interesting. There has got to be a way to mute the on board mic input monitor on the Mackie without muting your headphones and route your DAW output to channels 3 and 4 as another posted said. That would completely solve your problem.

If Behringer can do it, there's no excuse for Mackie not to. All it needed was a little re-routing through an extra switch. That's why I pointed to a design oversight. A pity that mixers were never of a modular design (rather like computers), then we could pick and mix interfaces and preamps.

I tried it and you are right. I never realised how dark my AT2035 was until I tried turning the treble up to three-quarters. It now sounds nicer than it's ever done.

Good to hear. Don't go too crazy with the EQ, but a little bit really sounds nice.

Look, if you can't bypass the monitor on the Mackie with your headphones, all you need is a little Beheringer HA400 headphone amp. It's only 23 bucks. All you do is route your DAW mix into the headphone amp and just bypass the Mackie with the headphones. Problem solved.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Behringer-4-...item41780deaed

I use a small Eurorack mixer to monitor. Dirt cheap and the headphone output seems fine. So I got 2 small mixers VLZ3 going in, and Eurorack from the soundcard. Works fine for me. I even mix dry (from the VLZ) and DAW signals together in the Eurorack.

Thanks. I have seen that headphone amp. Hopefully it may even be less noisy than the Mackie headphone amp anyway. I assume I would need to take the outputs from my AP2496 sound card and send them into the headphone amp via a 2 x rca phono sockets to 6.5mm stereo jack adaptor lead.

I finally got a reply from Mackie...


Hello,

This mixer is designed as a live mixer not a recording console so it may lack features that make recording as convenient as our Onyx series mixers. The point of an analogue mixer is to monitor the signal within the mixer. I apologize if this design process is cumbersome to you. Perhaps, this is what you were after?

Mackie Onyx Blackjack | Sweetwater.com

Regards,

Technical Support Team

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And here is my response to that...


You are clearly not taking this issue seriously. Your response exposes a certain duplicity because, to quote your website:

"COMPACT. Small footprints, big features, great sound, live or recording."

Mackie - Mixers

So are you now saying that your official website is telling lies?