I love a good pro-audio mixer. For many DJs, they can be Swiss Army knives that help wrangle multiple inputs and outputs with greater ease than most dedicated pieces of DJ gear. Mackie‘s Onyx8 makes life easy.
Mobile DJs know exactly what I’m talking about. Depending on the event, they might have to juggle multiple microphones, speakers at different parts of a room, and multiple playback sources. It’s not easy to handle all these inputs and outputs on a typical DJ controller or DJ mixer.
This is where a good multi-channel mixer comes in. It might be easy to think that all pro-audio mixers are created equal, but that’s not exactly the case. The mixer can make or break things – whether it’s a live show or a live stream.
Onyx8: As many of you know, Mackie is no stranger to audio mixers. Across its range, the Bothell, Wash.-based manufacturer seems to have a mixer for every situation – for small bands all the way up to large studios, touring productions, or front-of-house installations.
This past winter, Mackie released four new units to its Onyx range of mixers – Onyx8, Onyx12, Onyx16 and Onyx24 (all named for their number of input channels). They’re described as “premium analog mixers with multi-track USB,” and that’s exactly right.
At eight channels, Mackie’s Onyx8 sits at a sweet spot for a home studio or a mobile DJ. Like most mixers, it can accept signal via XLR jacks and TRS jacks, or through a 1/8-inch headphone jack that routs into channel 7/8. But, aside from these usual suspects, the Onyx8 has a few tricks up its sleeve. For instance, it can accept wirelessly streamed media through a Bluetooth connection.
Pairing the mixer to my smartphone took almost no time, and I was able to stream music to the mixer in less than 10 seconds. Additionally, the Onyx8 also has an SD card slot on the front of the unit. Here, users can record the mixer’s output to an SD card or play existing files that are on the SD card.
Full multi-track recording can be accomplished by plugging the mixer into a computer via a USB cable. All channels have dedicated level controls, pan controls, gain controls, and mute and solo controls, and Channels 1 through 6 have fully featured EQ controls. The mute/solo buttons light up when pressed and require deliberate effort to activate, meaning it’s difficult to accidentally press them. There are also bright VU meters for the master output.
The main master output of the mixer comes out via XLR or TRS jacks. There is also a secondary output – called “Control Room” – that comes out through TRS jacks, and levels for this Control Room output are controlled separately from the master output. On other mixers, this feature would likely be called a “Booth Output.” Users can plug their headphones into the ¼-inch jack on the top of the mixer.
Most of the inputs and outputs are located on the back of the mixer. I was surprised to see none of the channels accept an RCA connection, given that a lot of DJ gear has RCA-style master outputs – especially smaller controllers that don’t have XLR or TRS connections. Theoretically, you could always use various cables and adaptors to bridge the gap, but a built-in RCA connection would have been nice.
Like Mackie’s latest-generation PA speakers, the Onyx8 has a small full-color LCD screen. On it, users can control FX and load media from a connected SD card. Onscreen parameters are controlled by a small, black knob adjacent to the screen, and there are dedicated transport controls for media playback.
Ultimately, the Onyx8 has just about everything you could want from a $500 audio mixer. Connected to various sources, the audio quality sounds great, and I found myself having more than enough headroom on the mixer to achieve loud volumes without distortion. Even streaming signal from Bluetooth sounded really good.
Conclusions: I can see this mixer being bought by mobile DJs who want to achieve greater versatility in their setups. For a mobile DJ, this mixer can run multiple microphones, control playback from two or more DJ setups, stream music from a phone or MP3 player, and play custom audio files directly from the mixer.
Additionally, given this mixer’s capabilities, I could see it being bought by podcasters, music producers, or content creators for their studios. Mackie’s Onyx8 is a solid, well-built mixer with some compelling features for a number of different use cases. It’s versatile, and it’s a winner.
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