Just to comment on my own post and to question what I posted. I wonder if support only includes the control features of the mixer an not the actual input. But, then I would think that it should be supported in ProTools LE as well no?

And to (I think) answer my own question, here's a quote from[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.mackie.c…"] Mackie.[/]="http://www.mackie.c…"] Mackie.[/]

*The Onyx-i Series Mixers are qualified by Mackie for use with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8. Mackie will release a driver (via http://www.mackie.com) together with full details of how to use the Onyx-i series with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8 in the coming weeks.

I am apparently not bright enough to see what the main differences are between the 1640i and the old 1640. What's the deal Hueseph? Does it actually work as an analog control surface for your DAW or something?

Oh wait, is it this?

full 16 channels of FireWire output from your computer directly into the channel strips – for a true tape style mix down.

If so, I'm not sure I see the wonderfulness of it. Well, maybe... But I'd rather have DAW control (with touch sensitive faders and automation) myself.

Seems sort of suspicious - wonder if they just reconfigured the Firewire unit to be bidirectional and slapped it into the old 1640 hardware, or if the mixer itself is actually different?

The bi-directional FireWire enhancement for the Mackie Onyx-i series brings them into A&H Zed-R16 territory. I wonder if they sound as good?

In any case, it's a good move that digi is working with more outside partners. We'll see about the sound, but the 1640i + PT Mpowered is going to have the nicest set of features in its price range.

i have the original onyx1640 and it sounds fantastic.

the new onyx-i seems to be approaching the Presonus StudioLive board, except the StudioLive is a digital board and includes onboard comps and effects.

apstrong wrote: I am apparently not bright enough to see what the main differences are between the 1640i and the old 1640. What's the deal Hueseph? Does it actually work as an analog control surface for your DAW or something?

Absolutely it is a control surface as well.(Edit: wait. I'm not so sure it is a control surface. But it does have some other cool features otherwise.) That is cool in itself. The fact that they are compatible with M-powered is a huge deal since Digidesign generally partners with no one. Which could either mean that Avid is ready to take over Loud Technologies or that Avid is easing up on the reigns. I would like to think it's the latter and soon......maybe, they will release ProTools powered by iLok alone. Well, I can always dream.

I'd be willing to spend Under $2000($1300 with PT M-Powered) for the Mackie Equivalent of a Digi 003 with twice the standard inputs, inserts and auxiliary sends. That's pretty cool I dare say.

Edit: EQ and sends are routable to DAW, regardless of which one you are using. So, no need to modify this board. The perkins eq can already go to disk.

Avid is ready to take over Loud Technologies

might be the other way around. Mackie is eating a lot of companies....

There were rumours early this year that Loud Technologies was on the verge of bankruptcy, but then they just delisted themselves from the NASDAQ. Which isn't a great sign, but they claimed it was because being a public company was costing them too much money, IIRC. So who knows. They didn't go bankrupt as far as I know, and if Mackie is growing that's a good sign.

I have the 1640 too, so really what I'm wondering deep down is whether there is some sort of upgrade path here :) I want to know if replacing the firewire card with the version from the 1640i and using new drivers is possible and if it will give the same functionality as the 1640i, or if there are changes to the mixer itself that would prevent this.

I was just getting ready to buy a used Onyx 1620/w. FW interface card this past weekend when I "discovered" this new issue. It looks pretty promising, if for no other reason that the FW is now sourceable POST EQ on the channels, and you can select that option by a button. No more jumping wires inside a hard-to-open box.
The faders are not controllers, the board simply lets you mix the FW source thru the analog channels.

It will kbe interesting to see whether Avid buys Loud or Loud aquires Avid.
My bet is that Loud, being that they are a bit "over extended" at this time may be up for sale. Maybe it's just that the recording gear business is cooling off more than a bit, so both companies are willing to open their minds to others that can expand their base product useage.

Doh, I just looked at the closeup image of the channels and it's obvious they've modified the mixer with that channel by channel firewire assign button moonbaby mentioned. And a similar button for the subgroups and the master fader. No upgrades for me :(

Looks like they've mainly addressed all the old complaints of the original ONYX series; esp the Pre/Post EQ sends for the FW interface. WIth the 16 channel FW playback feature, it's getting closer to becoming the "Digital board" they swore the original ONYX series wasn't.

This actually makes me even more interested in attending AES this October in AES. It's another product I want to see/hear/touch in real time.

I think this may be a stupid question but I've been looking at controllers like the Mackie MCU Pro for my Cubase/RME FF800 setup and this seems like a really nice real world mixer similar to the Yamaha n12....
So...do these mixers have A/D and D/A converters built in using firewire?
Would these mixers work along with another interface like an RME FF800 or would that be redundant because they convert everything?
If this is all you need to mix and record into say Cubase or some other software, then why isn't there any transport controls or other stuff for controlling your software?

So...do these mixers have A/D and D/A converters built in using firewire?

Yes.

Would these mixers work along with another interface like an RME FF800 or would that be redundant because they convert everything

They would work, but the RME would be redundant.

If this is all you need to mix and record into say Cubase or some other software, then why isn't there any transport controls or other stuff for controlling your software?

Because this isn't what they were designed for, although I would love it they added this feature, along with motorized, touch-sensitive faders. The Onyx series does what it was designed to do very well - they were designed for live music production while simultaneously capturing the uneffected, unEQ'd performance for later mixing, etc.. That's why the firewire out of the board is post-gain and pre-everything else. The inputs into each of the channels get routed to your computer unaffected by any hardware you're using for your live show or even the onboard EQ. Hardware effects and onboard EQ affect the sound the engineer wants to create in the room for the audience, but don't get recorded so you have the flexibility to go back in later and do a multitrack mix with whatever effects and EQ settings you want in your DAW on each independently recorded track. It was never intended to be a DAW controller, but that seems like the next logical step to me.

While the Onyx series was made for recording live performances, you can still use it for regular multitrack recording well enough. It's just that (at least until the i series, or a 400$ hardware conversion on the original units) you couldn't record the board's EQ settings etc.. That's what I use mine for mostly, and I use the board EQ and six aux sends to create truly latency-free headphone mixes for my band, but I still take the un-EQd signals into my DAW and apply mix EQ and effects there. I like it because of the number of latency free monitor mixes (picky band members!), and because I can use it for live sound if I ever need it to. Like last night, where we used it for a 3 band show in front of about 150 people that we wanted to record while the bands played. Worked like a dream.

Thanks for the answers apstrong:
If you were looking to buy a brand new recording interface and wanted real world faders and mixing this would be a nice package.....just one of these and some software you'd be set....I guess I will continue my quest for a real world fader board that I can use with my RME and Cubase....
I found the same issues with the n12. I bought the RME FF800 for its quality and using it with Cubase is rock solid and the sound is incredible, but I'm really tired of all the mouse work and I want to run things with my hands on a real board or I guess get a controller....If I can find one...
The price of the 1640i isn't that bad for everything it does...especially if you want to do live mixes and use it for both worlds like you described....I'm merely a home hobby studio person doing my own gig song writing and playing, but I could see where this would be a really cool setup...
The Yamaha n12 is less expensive and does have a few more features like effects and the DAW transport controls....but it is 12 channels....

Control surfaces can get expensive quick. You can go as cheap as the Presounus Faderport or Digidesign Command 8 or if you have the cash there's the C24. I found [[url=http://[/URL]="http://pro-audio.mu…"]this[/]="http://pro-audio.mu…"]this[/] online. Looks promising.

Yes they can!
That's why I started looking at different ways of running Cubase and thought about getting a regular mixing board and thinking I could just feed the RME with a submix into Cubase....but now with all these new firewire built in mixers out there my nice sweet RME feels kinda out of the picture....I used to have one of those small Mackie mixers which I gave to a friend and now I miss the sliders and knobs....LOL...
Too much mousing around!?

I was talking about the 1640, the 1640i seems a slightly different beast since you can actually use it to mix already recorded material by assigning each track (up to 16 I assume) to a channel in the board and then play with the board EQ, outboard hardware, and faders all you like. I assume it will route the final stereo result (with or without onboard EQ, outboard hardware etc) back to your DAW so you can record the final stereo mixdown. But it still doesn't look like it handles automation, and that's pretty important to me. Maybe if you're good enough, and your hands are fast enough, or if you source material is just so perfectly recorded to begin with, you wouldn't need any automation and you could use the 1640i to do your mixdowns.... but how would you ever recreate what you did with it if you needed to go back in and change something? Old schoolers with great analog tracking and mixing skills might be able to work this way perhaps? Definitely not me, I make way too many mistakes.

But the other thing for me is that 16 inputs is more than enough for tracking, but once I'm done with overdubs I often have 18-24 tracks in total. Maybe through the 1640i you could assign multiple tracks to a single input channel for mixdown, I'm not sure, but it's still a limitation, since you only have 16 individual channels to manipulate during analog mixdown. But I suppose you can daisychain another 1640i to get around that.

apstrong wrote: .... but how would you ever recreate what you did with it if you needed to go back in and change something? Old schoolers with great analog tracking and mixing skills might be able to work this way perhaps? Definitely not me, I make way too many mistakes.

But the other thing for me is that 16 inputs is more than enough for tracking, but once I'm done with overdubs I often have 18-24 tracks in total. Maybe through the 1640i you could assign multiple tracks to a single input channel for mixdown, I'm not sure, but it's still a limitation, since you only have 16 individual channels to manipulate during analog mixdown. But I suppose you can daisychain another 1640i to get around that.

There was a time when mixdown required some choreography. You actually had to practice your mix a few times.

As far as mixing with the 1640i, this is where creating stems or grouping channels together in the daw comes in handy. You might use the 12 mono channels for individuals and route the outputs of channel groups to one of the stereo channels on the mixer.

apstrong wrote: I was talking about the 1640, the 1640i seems a slightly different beast since you can actually use it to mix already recorded material by assigning each track (up to 16 I assume) to a channel in the board and then play with the board EQ, outboard hardware, and faders all you like. I assume it will route the final stereo result (with or without onboard EQ, outboard hardware etc) back to your DAW so you can record the final stereo mixdown. But it still doesn't look like it handles automation, and that's pretty important to me. Maybe if you're good enough, and your hands are fast enough, or if you source material is just so perfectly recorded to begin with, you wouldn't need any automation and you could use the 1640i to do your mixdowns.... but how would you ever recreate what you did with it if you needed to go back in and change something? Old schoolers with great analog tracking and mixing skills might be able to work this way perhaps? Definitely not me, I make way too many mistakes.

But the other thing for me is that 16 inputs is more than enough for tracking, but once I'm done with overdubs I often have 18-24 tracks in total. Maybe through the 1640i you could assign multiple tracks to a single input channel for mixdown, I'm not sure, but it's still a limitation, since you only have 16 individual channels to manipulate during analog mixdown. But I suppose you can daisychain another 1640i to get around that.

Adding automation to an essentially low-cost analog mixer would be expensive. If you are prepared to consider a digital mixer, the Yamaha 01V96 will mix up to 32 mono channels, can be automated from a MIDI track in a DAW and will also act as a control surface for Cubase, PT and other DAWs. You could use your FF800 as the ADAT interface for 16 digital channels into the 01V96, plus at a pinch another 8 analog input channels, in addition to handling the digital stereo mix return.