cant comment on quality per se, but the first logical thing that comes to mind is you would be eliminating the extra spans of cabling from onyx to 1212 as well as the decreased distance your audio signal would travel to get to your DAW.

Onyx mixers dont have midi IO, or spdif do they?

And doesnt the EMU have only 1 set of analog IO? You have to mix everything before it hits your DAW, so if you want to make alterations to one signal after you've recorded you have to set everything back up. Ick...

Ditch the EMU, get the FW card and a midiman usb for your midi. Thats just my opinion, you know better than we do what you need. :D

the pther thing that would be important to note is that you will lose the mixers eq as the firewire gets its signal driectly after the preamp

Hi, thanks for the help.

Onyx mixers dont have midi IO, or spdif do they?
- No.

And doesnt the EMU have only 1 set of analog IO?
- Yes.

You have to mix everything before it hits your DAW, so if you want to make alterations to one signal after you've recorded you have to set everything back up. Ick...
- In my case I record one part at a time, sometimes stereo, sometimes mono. So it's been great for me so far but you have a good point, the firewire gives my 12 separate input channels into my software.

Ditch the EMU, get the FW card and a midiman usb for your midi. Thats just my opinion, you know better than we do what you need.
- I also have a Behringer BFC2000 and a BCR2000 which give me 2 X 2 X 2 MIDI in/out/thru via USB.

the other thing that would be important to note is that you will lose the mixers eq as the firewire gets its signal directly after the preamp
- Yikes. Good point. Why on earth would they not make that optional? Dang. Hmmmph, much of the reason I bought the Onyx was that I love the EQs. If there's not going to be a marked boost in the quality then maybe I won't grab the Onyx firewire I/O in that case. The fact that it bypasses the EQ strips (and inserts?) confounds me a bit. Thanks for the headsup.

good point. why on earth would they bypass the EQ with the FW port? That sounds pretty heavy.

Yeah I had it on hold but I just called and had them put it back on the shelf. It's a terrrible value for $500 I think given the EQ and insert bypass.

Mud5150, thank you very much for your help. You pointing that out was *extremely* helpful to me and probably saved me some grief a trip back to the store to return the card. Can't thank you enough. Excellent forum... :D

Great news. I just called the store, they're going to give me a 100% refund on my Mackie Onyx. They agree that having the Firewaire I/O and DB-25s as "pre-EQ/pre-insert only" is dumb.

Now I'm considering getting one of these instead, any thoughts?:
http://www.tascam.com/Products/FW-1884.html

Ya, had Mackie decided to put a switch so you can choose to have the firewire post everything or just post fader, they would have had me at hello, unfortunately now it's just a FOH mixer that happens to track the raw audio to DAW for $500 extra. Stupid.

That tascam unit looks pretty sweet. I like how it's a control surface as well.

Alternatively, check out this unit: http://www.alesis.com/product.php?id=94
I just got one the other day and so far it's sounding pretty sweet. Unlike the Onyx, the FW Out is POST EVERYTHING, which is nice to be able to add a little EQ if needed. It also has onboard digital effects, although I haven't used them and would probably rather apply effects during mixing anyway. It makes a nice little live mixer as well.

It was pretty cheap too, I got mine for $699 CAD because it had two scratches on the front. Regularly it was $780 CAD

Nice. Thanks for the tip. Here's the dealbreaker on the 1884 for me, no visual indicators on the rotaries. For me that's an inconvenience which is out of line with the price. My $200 BFC2000 has fantastic automation/indicators for the rotaries. Those whacky engineers and their ideas, I mean who wouldn't want visual indicators for the rotaries? That to me is a very whacky product design decision, particularly in the price range of the 1884.