Mackie Onyx Satellite: Out of this World Recording

Happy Birthday to Me
Its always great to get a new toy on one's birthday, and today (July 31) I was thrilled to get a box from Mackie, even if this new toy was one I had to regretfully return to them once I was done with the review. Alas, reviewers rarely get to keep the toys they write about unless it is a software product, and even then they are often time-limited fully functioning demos. So while we get to play with all kinds of cool, latest and greatest toys, if we like the product we often end up writing the manufacturer and begging for a good price so we can keep it. These reviews can get pretty expensive when you like the gear! And to rub it in our gear-lusting noses a bit, when we do want to buy the demo unit, we often find the item is not available due to backorders and large demand, thus requiring us to send back the demo item and try to get another one later if our enthusiasm continues while we force ourselves to ship back the demo unit. But I digress.....

My temporary birthday present today came from Mackie in the form of their new Onyx Satellite portable recording pre-amp system, with a 96Khz Firewire interface. The Onyx Satellite is a sturdy, solid creation from Mackie, made of steel in a handsome, gun-metal matted finished case. First impressions? Its about the size of my Mackie Big Knob, sporting the same dotted air vents on the back and color scheme, etc. Its just slightly smaller in width, too.

Opening the Box
Inside the box was the Onyx Satellite Base Station, the Onyx Satellite portable unit, a Firewire cable (only about 3' though, too short in my opinion), a handy six-pin to four-pin adapter, a CD-ROM containing the drivers (for poor Windows users), a power adapter in the form of the dreaded Wall-wart, and a license code on the back of the CD-ROM envelope for Mackie's Tracktion 2 software.

Real Plug-n-Play
Setting up the Mackie Onyx Satellite is amazingly easy for OS X users. People on a Mac enjoy the automatic, out-of-the-box experience of not having to install new drivers for audio hardware that use Apple's Core Audio system. Microsoft came up with the term Plug-n-Pay, but Apple made it real. Without attaching the Wall wart, I simply set the Mackie Onyx Satellite into the Base Station, plugged the Firewire cable into my MacBook Pro and pushed the "On" button on the front of the Base Station. Hey Mackie designers, thanks for putting that power button right on the front of the Mackie Onyx Satellite Base Station. I so hate having to fish around the back of gear and feel for the on/off switch! The use of the power supply is optional. This is a bus-powered unit, but there are times when you will want to use the power supply, such as when you need to daisy-chain Firewire off of the back of the Base Station. I recommend using the supplied wall wart power supply since the Base Station is intended to be a more permanent base of operations for the removable Mackie Onyx Satellite unit.

A quick visit to the Audio/MIDI Setup area on my Mac found the Mackie Onyx Satellite already recognized and immediately available for me to set as my preferred device on OS X for audio input and output. There was nothing to it. This is what Mac users love about their Macs. Simplicity, it just works.

I/O, I/O, It's Off to Work I Go
The Mackie Onyx Satellite system has a great assortment of I/O for recording. Let's start with the Base Station itself. This unit is designed to stay on your desktop with the Mackie Onyx Satellite setting inside of it, and it gives you more I/O than the removable Mackie Onyx Satellite part when taken out for remote recording work. One of the coolest features of the Mackie Onyx Satellite Base Station is that it has two distinct speaker outputs on it listed as "Control Room" outputs. This lets you have two sets of monitors connected to the system for A/B'ing your audio between them at the touch of a button. Its like a mini-version of the Big Knob and its a much appreciated feature they could have gotten away without adding to it with likely nobody noticing or complaining. Its just a cool extra touch, something Mackie is known for doing when they can.

Inputs One and Two feature a great assortment of choices. You have an XLR on each, with a singular Phantom Power control button to turn on Phantom Power for your condenser mics located on the front of the Mackie Onyx Satellite. Each input channel also provides a pair of 1/4" TRS balanced inputs allowing you to plug in a stereo device like an effects unit, synth, etc., plus an additional 1/4" unbalanced mono input and a 1/4" insert jack where you can add a compressor, equalizer or similar device to that channel's signal path. That's a lot of I/O on one channel. What this does is give you the ability to patch in items you may wish to keep patched in over the long haul, as demonstrated in their Hookup Diagrams portion of the accompanying manual, for a quasi-permanent setup at home, while having the freedom to grab the Mackie Onyx Satellite portion of the rig for recording remotely. Its a really cool concept. You actually have a total of eight inputs on the back of the Base Station between the two channels (though non-discrete, only two discrete channels are on the system), plus two insert points.

The Little Knob
In addition to the two sets of stereo control room outputs for your monitors, the Mackie Onyx Satellite Base Station also contains four outputs, which could even be configured to setup up a surround sound speaker system while maintaining a separate set of Stereo monitors. That's just cool, especially in a compact recording system like this.

Speaking of monitoring, The Mackie Onyx Satellite has two headphone out jacks. The output volume for the headphone 1 share the control room volume knob, and the 2nd headphone has its own output level. If you're only using headphones, just turn off the set of monitor speakers you have selected on the Base Station, and then you'll have two discrete headphone level controls. The outputs give out plenty of level, so set them low when you try them on the first time and are getting to know the volume output ability.

Here's another cool feature of the Mackie Onyx Satellite. It includes a Kensington Security Slot (as does its portable recording cousin, the TAPCO Link.USB) so you can fasten a compatible locking cable to the device to keep would-be thieves from running off with it.

What does THIS button do?
The front of the Mackie Onyx Satellite Base Station has a selection of buttons and knobs to control the system. On each channel you can select the Mic Input Selection Switch, Instrument Input Selection Switch, Line 1 Input Selection Switch and Line 2 Input Selection Switch. This is how you control the "discrete" input of the items plugged into each channel. You can select them all and record all sources at once on one channel, or select one at a time, or any combination thereof. There are a myriad of applications for this, like selecting Line 1 and 2 for a recording from a stereo source like a guitar effects unit (being fed from the insert point), but also selecting the Instrument Input switch at the same time to balance in using your instruments volume know the amount of a clean source directly from your guitar.

Yakkity-Yak, Do Talk Back
The Base Station includes a Talk Back feature. Some folks might think this is a kind of silly since most of the users of these kind of systems will be working in the same control room as the musicians are recording, and usually the person recording is the musician himself. So what good is this feature if you're working solo? Mackie clues you into this in the manual by heping you to the ability to use the Talk Back Level control to input your voice from the built-in mic on the base station to "slate" (announce or verbally label) your takes for each recording. That's a cool feature, too.

Next to the Talk Back section it the "Control Room" section of controls on the Base Station. This allows you to choose the source of audio you are listening to to, be they the sound coming back from your DAW software, or the direct input source plugged into on the back of the Base Station. There is a master level control (think of it as Mackie's Little Knob) and you can select which monitors to listen to next to it, or select them both.

Mackie Gives a Solid Grip
What makes this an even better product is the fact that Mackie ships its Tracktion 2 DAW software with it. So not only are you getting a very versatile recording device, but you're getting a really good recording application with it, too. I loved the Tracktion 2 software from Mackie and you can read my review of it here if you want to know why.

It's All About the Sound
The Mackie Onyx Satellite unit slides snugly into the Base Station. Pulling it out gives you a handy, high-quality portable, Firewire bus-powered device with two Neutrik connections on the back, for stereo, or two mono channels of recording. Just slide it out, grab it and go. When you're done with your off-Base recording adventure, slide the Mackie Onyx Satellite back into the Base Station and you're recording with your full rig again. It's that simple.

Because the Mackie Onyx Satellite uses the awesome Onyx mic pre-amps, you'll get wonderful sounding recordings. The Onyx mic pres are clean, clear and sparkling. You'll enjoy plugging in everything from SM-58's to your finest large or small diaphragm condensers into these things, and you'll get excellent results. Because Mackie is one of the "good guys" in the business that provides easy-to-read manuals with very helpful, real-world application examples for their gear, you'll see how to set this up for a variety of applications, from recording to computer sound monitoring, video voice-over system setups, and more.

I demoed the speakers in my personal studio (JBL 4208's, M-Audio Bx8's and Tannoy 6.5PBM's) through this system, though only two at time of course. I called up Tracktion's demo song, set the software preferences to the Mackie Onyx Satellite in my Audio/MIDI setup, and then had fun pushing buttons, plugging in Mics, recording sample audio and guitar tracks, etc. Every input and output in this thing was plugged in and put to the test. The box is built like a tank, there are no fragile connections here. The connections were solid, too. No hums or buzzes, this thing was assembled well and Mackie's QC made sure a perfect unit made it into this unopened box they sent me. With everything plugged in, and a couple of fun tracks recorded on top of the demo song that came with the software, I just sat back and listened. The Mackie Onyx Satellite sounds great, it was easy to use, very easy to setup and learn, and impressively constructed.

The Power Station
What I didn't like about the unit, and its kind of a small criticism, is the wall wart. Sorry, I just hate these things. They take up too much room in my power conditioner racks and make me waste space so I can't get more gear plugged into them. Further, while the connection to the Mackie Onyx Satellite is solid, I find the construction of wall warts in general to be inferior, with thin cables going to the connections. There is nothing special about this on, its your standard wall wart. The power supply can be plugged into either the Mackie Onyx Satellite or its base station, so in the case of this product I guess I can understand why they chose this route in the design process, since the Mackie Onyx Satellite part of the system wouldn't be something you'd want to have a power transformer built inside of, as it would make it larger and heavier. However, I'd think one could have been put in the Base Station, allowing a standard three-prong power cable to me employed as it is in the Mackie Big Knob. If I were designing this, I would probably have made the Mackie Onyx Satellite portion bus-powered only for portable recording, and A/C powered as an option (like it is now) for use in the Mackie Onyx Satellite Base Station.

Exceptional Value, Exceptional Sound
OK, want the best part of this whole deal? Street price on this system is only $399 US! What? $399? Are they insane? This is a solid piece of gear here, warth every penny and the fact that you can get all of this for this kind of price is really impressive. For under $400 you get a lot of I/O, a monitor switching system, dual headphone amp, Onyx mic pre-amps, a versatile output system that can feed a stereo set of monitors and a 5.1 surround system at the same time, and on top of all of that, it turns into a portable recording system in a flash. Toss into the mix that Mackie includes the Tracktion 2 software, and this becomes a no-lose proposition for anyone looking for a new, flexible recording system that will work with Windows, Macs, and any audio recording software you have at your disposal (other than Pro Tools LE, of course).

If it weren't for my pet peeve about wall warts, and the fact that the included Firewire cable is way too small to take seriously, we'd go all the way with this, so take that for what it's worth. I'm giving this Mackie Onyx Satellite and Base Station system (with Tracktion!) 4.5 stars and its Rated Excellent by AppleProAudio.com.

For more information on this and other Mackie products, visit them online at Mackie.com.