MACKIE PROFX8 REVIEW
Posted on Wed 11 May 2011 in entries
Are you a solo performer, small band (in numbers, not height!), or small venue? Are you looking for a professional yet cost effective solution to your live mixing problems? No need to go compare! Look no further than the Mackie ProFX8…
MACKIE PROFX8 – INTRODUCTION TO INSTANT FUN!
Hardware mixers are always fun to play around with aren’t they? All those sliders, knobs, buttons, connections and LEDs – using one immediately makes you feel like a true pro, even if you have absolutely no idea what on earth you are doing and people are looking at you whilst pointing and laughing, before swiftly downing their drinks and leaving the bar! And if you do know what all the controls do, then even better – you’ll have even more fun... and so will everyone else! So if you own, or are thinking about purchasing a Mackie ProFX8 for a reason other than making yourself feel cool, I will assume that you are indeed going to use it for live sound purposes and hence you are interested in what it does! So I will tell you!
The Mackie ProFX8 is designed to get your live performance up and running. It's an 8-channel mixer featuring 4 high-headroom, low-noise mic preamps (for hooking up microphones for vocals, acoustic guitar, etc, into your performance), 3-band EQ on each channel (for tweaking each input to fit better in the mix), a built in DI (for directly connecting your electric guitar or bass), in-built FX, a 7-band Graphic EQ, and more, which I hope to tell you about in this blog entry. Plus, all these professional features sit inside an immensely strong outer casing to protect it from life on the road, and it comes at a truly remarkable price. With all the features you should need to get your performance set-up quicker, make it sound better and run smoother, the Mackie ProFX8 may be exactly what you have been searching for…
MACKIE PROFX8 – YOUR PORTABLE LIVE SOUND TOOLBOX
Whether you’re a solo performer, a small music act, or an engineer, you will ultimately want the same thing – to get the best overall sound out of a performance. Chances are, if you are performing in a relatively large venue, they will supply their own sound engineer who will be set up either towards the back of the room (or in some cases, in an annoying little box in the middle of the dancefloor), but if you’ve not quite reached this level yet and your performance venues tend to have names more similar to ‘The Dog and Duck’ than ‘the O2 Arena’, then you will probably need to supply your own mixing gear if you want to get the best out of your sound. Alternatively, if you are in fact the owner of ‘The Dog and Duck’, then a) I apologise for using your pub name in my slightly derogatory example, I’m sure you run a fine establishment really, any chance of a free pint? No? Oh well, was worth a try… and b) maybe you would also like to purchase a Mackie ProFX8 to save all the bands that perform at the finest pub in the land from having to individually buy one! Free pint now? Half pint? Lemonade? Jacket potato?
MACKIE PROFX8 – PACKED WITH EFFECTS
You don’t just get a professional mixer when you buy the Mackie ProFX8, you also get a load of effects! The all-new RMFX (Running Man FX) 32-bit effects processor can be used to bring instant useable effects to your mixes! The Mackie ProFX8 provides a total of 16 professional effects, which gives you a fantastic amount of flexibility without bombarding you with hundreds of choices, making them ideal to scroll through quickly whilst live on stage. Onboard effects include small, medium, and large room reverbs, a number of simple, rich choruses and an array of delays, so the Mackie ProFX8 should give you more than enough to give your live music that killer sound.
The full list of effects is as follows: 1) Bright Room, 2) Warm Lounge, 3) Small Stage, 4) Warm Theatre, 5) Warm Hall, 6) Concert Hall, 7) Plate Reverb, 8) Cathedral, 9) Chorus, 10) Chorus + Reverb, 11) Doubler, 12) Tape Slap, 13) Delay 1 (300ms), 14) Delay 2 (380ms), 15) Delay 3 (480ms), and Reverb + Delay (250ms).
MACKIE PROFX8 – RECORD AND STREAM WITH USB
If you take a look at the back of the Mackie ProFX8, as well as the power lead connection and the two Balanced Left and Right outputs, you should also be able to see a single USB connection. Why would you need a USB connection? Well, you can use it to record your performances/mixes in real-time, by routing the audio to a connected laptop! This gives you the opportunity to listen back to your performance and revel in your awesomeness (or cringe when you relive the moment you hit 14 wrong notes in a row), or build up a library of live performances to release a live CD! Even better, if you don’t already own a piece of professional recording software (such as a DAW), then there is no need to go out and buy some… the Mackie ProFX8 ships with a copy of Traktion 3 Music Production Software, which gives you all the tools you need to get recording straight away! And the USB connection even works the other way, allowing you to stream music from your laptop to the connected speakers during breaks!
The Mackie ProFX8 also features an additional ‘USB Thru’ switch (found on the front panel above the monitor section), which allows for an innovative live/recording set-up when using performance software such as Ableton Live or Reason. This control allows you to stream the output of your live performance software (or any other software such as iTunes if you so desire) into the ProFX8, combine it with any signal from a connected mic or instrument, and then send everything back to your computer for recording! This makes recording your full live performances easier than ever before, and is something I can guarantee that you will appreciate if you perform with software/hardware combinations.
MACKIE PROFX8 – CONNECTIONS AND CONTROLS
So, I’ve given you a brief overview of the Mackie ProFX8 and what you might use it for, but in case you wanted a full list of it’s features, I thought I had best include this section. So if there are any questions you still have, read on and hopefully everything will become clear!
The 8 channels of the Mackie ProFX8 are split between five faders on the control panel, meaning you don’t get a dedicated fader to control each individual input, although this can hardly be expected from a mixer of this size, price, and quality! The first fader on the ProFX8 relates to input 1, the second fader to input 2, and then the third, fourth and fifth faders control stereo input pairs 3/4, 5/6, and 7/8 respectively, and each of these fader channels has individual Mute, Pan, Auxiliary Monitor and FX controls, 3-band EQ, and gain dials. Plus, every fader channel apart from the fifth one (which controls channels 7/8) features a low cut toggle button.
Looking at the connections associated with each fader strip, the first has both a microphone and a switchable line/Hi-Z (for instruments such as electric guitars) input associated with it, plus a 1/4" jack connection for hooking an insert effect into the signal path. The second fader channel is extremely similar, but the line input is not switchable to Hi-Z in this case. Channels 2/4 and 5/6 also have inputs for a microphone, but both also employ two line inputs. Finally, channels 7/8 also have 2 line inputs between them, but instead of a microphone connection, this strip features stereo unbalanced tape RCA inputs (with tape outputs next to them).
In addition to the five main channel faders, the Mackie ProFX8 features an additional 4 fader controls for the Stereo Return (with a dedicated mute control), FX Return, Monitor, and Main channels. The Stereo Return channel features two mono (left and right) 1/4" balanced/unbalanced connections (useful for hooking up keyboards, external effects, or stereo playback devices). The FX Return channel features a 1/4" jack monitor send connection, and a 1/4" jack FX send socket, and the final connections featured on the Mackie ProFX8 (apart from the Main out XLRs, the USB and the power socket on the back) are 2 Main Out jacks, and 1/4" jack connections for an optional footswitch, and headphones.
The Mackie ProFX8 also features the aforementioned 7-band graphic equaliser (with Main Mix/Monitor toggle and EQ bypass toggles). Plus, we have the FX section, which has a very handy list of each available effect and a display to indicate which effect you currently have selected (with a scroll dial to make your selection, a mute button, and 'FX Master' and 'FX to Mon' controls).
The Monitor channel features a dial for USB input level, the famous USB Thru switch and a headphone volume control, and finally, the main output channel has a 48V phantom power switch (for when you want to hook up a condenser microphone), a Tape Level dial, individual 12 segment LED metres for both the left and right main output channels (which indicate clipping), and a Break button that mutes all channels when pressed, which is extremely useful for playing music back between sets, when obviously you will not want any of the microphone or instrument signals interfering with the output!
MACKIE PROFX8 – SUMMARY
It looks cool, it’s got a quality build, it provides you with a host of professional features for live mixing, and it’s extremely affordable! If you are after a small, portable live sound mixer, then the Mackie ProFX8 is a quality investment and despite it’s low price, it is built to last! I personally can’t believe that Mackie have managed to pack this amount of features into such a budget device, and I really have to commend them for doing so. If I were to purchase a small live mixer, then the Mackie ProFX8 would certainly be something that I would seriously consider.
The bad news? If you search for other Mackie ProFX8 reviews on the the internet, you may find a complaint about a high-pitched noise encountered by some users when trying to record via USB. When writing my reviews I always try to tell you the good and the bad points about a product, so I took a trip down to our Returns and Testing department and asked whether they had ever experienced any problems with Mackie ProFX mixers. To my surprise, they said that they had never heard of this complaint with Mackie ProFX mixers before, but were aware that this is a problem that can rear its head on other budget USB recording devices. So I’m afraid that I didn’t really get to the bottom of that mystery! However, from reading other reviews on the Mackie ProFX8, it certainly does not seem to affect everyone (many people specifically reported how their ProFX8 recorded perfectly using USB) and judging from the reports from our Returns department, the problem may now have been fixed by Mackie, or certainly isn’t as bad as my initial investigations made it out to be.
So I’m going to sum up by saying that if you are after a portable live sound mixer, and the USB functionality is not important to you, you really cannot go wrong with the Mackie ProFX8, and you won’t be disappointed. If the USB feature IS important to you, then I would still consider the ProFX8… like I say, just be wary that there are past reports on the internet that detail the presence of an annoying USB noise, so I would advise testing it straight out of the box.
And if you have ever used a Mackie ProFX8 before, then please leave a comment on my blog and let me know of your experiences, whether good or bad! Also let me know when you bought it, and what sort of computer you use it with (Mac or PC). Hopefully together we can get to the bottom of this mysterious phenomenon that some past users have reported.
And finally, one last try Mr. Dog and Duck... bag of nuts?
For more information on the Mackie ProFX8, click the link below or give us a call on 01202 597180.
Mackie ProFX12 - More Info/Buy
******If you're interested in buying and you have seen it cheaper elsewhere, please call us or use our
As well as receiving our first rate customer service you can also claim money off your next purchase with our loyalty points scheme and receive a 3 year warranty if you sign up to our FREE VIP Club (click here for more infomation). Many of our items also come out on a FREE next-day delivery service to mainland UK customers, so you won't be left waiting!
Also, if you want to keep up with all our latest offers, competitions, news and videos, why not follow us on Facebook and Twitter?