Mackie Onyx - bargain USB audio interface

[MartinB]

Some good discounts have just appeared on these!

https://mackie.com/products/onyx-series-usb-interfaces

Gear4music and Amazon have the Producer 2.2 for £69

Gear4music also have the Artist 2.1 for £45

[Bigwan]

Hmm... These look suspiciously similar in layout to the Focusrite Scarlett stuff. Coincidence?

 

[roman_sub]

Onyx pre's are supposed to be pretty good for the money, nice n' clean :-)

[skidder652003]

hmmm not a big fan of Mackie, they ruined Tracktion DAW and Ampeg and their PA gear sucks

[Elfrasho]

Has anyone had the chance to try one of these, specifically the 2.2? any issues at all? Solid enough drivers? , I've experience with the Onyx pre's which seem to be pretty good, and this as mentioned by Bigwan, seems very similar to the scarletts. Seems a ridiculous price for what you get! I'm in the market for a 2 input interface so this might be the one!

[Mcgiver69]

There's a review here and to be honest I'm not very impressed

 

 

[Elfrasho]

On 31/08/2018 at 11:49, Mcgiver69 said:

There's a review here and to be honest I'm not very impressed

 

 

I must admit, I didnt quite follow what he did there with the latency... the latency was less when the sample size was higher?

[Sibob]

On 07/09/2018 at 19:55, Elfrasho said:

I must admit, I didnt quite follow what he did there with the latency... the latency was less when the sample size was higher?

Not quite, latency will increase as you increase sample size, but latency will decrease if you up the sample rate (note different terms here, ‘size’ vs ‘rate’). Sample size we understand to mean the 32,64,128 etc number, sample rate is the kHz number (44.1kHz, 192kHz etc). There’s plenty about those online that you can read to explain what they are.

Essentially, a sample rate of 192kHz (which very very few people work at tbh) will allow for a lower latency than 44.1kHz. But higher sample rates require more CPU power. An overworked CPU might cause clicking audio, which means you might then choose to sacrifice low latency (by upping your sample size) to clear up the audio. Lowering your sample-rate to say 48kHz would increase your latency, but would require less CPU resource, thus allowing you to reduce your sample size to decrease latency.

If that all sounds ‘swings and roundabouts’ that’s because ultimately it is.  It’s very much a balancing act between what sample rate you want/need to work at, the power of your computer (CPU speed, memory, hard drive capacity), and how much latency you can bear to work with whilst recording. Latency can be completely negated by monitoring your input signal directly from the interface (if that feature is present), however that would mean not hearing any applied plugins to that track whilst recording real-time (of course, you'd hear it upon playback of your recording).

Aside from that, can’t really comment too much on the interface, i’m somewhat biased

Si

Edited September 11, 2018 by Sibob