Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro Mixer User Reviews at zZounds

"If you do small concerts and hall shows, LOOK HERE!!!" submitted November 12, 2006

By a customer from hotmail.com

Overall

Sound

Features

Ease of Use

Quality

Value

Manufacturer Support

The Wow Factor

Musical Background: Sound Technician, drummer, newb bassist :P

Music Style: Rock and punk

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SPOTLIGHT REVIEW

Sound: I love this frickin thing. I used to do a tonne of hall shows and small concerts. Honestly, I never had any problems with it, the mix is great and once you learn the board, it is just as powerfull as Mackies high end mixer. The clip head is great, the sound is great, its just a really sweet mixer if your going to be doing small concerts and hall shows. Feature: Standard 3 band EQ with sweepable low frequency rangs, low range cut, amazing aux in out abbility for a small board. Ease of Use: Like any mixing board, you get used to it and its still a little trouble getting around quickly when you need to. It does take a little while to learn how it likes to work, it can be touchy at times but once you figgure it out your golden. Quality: Well lets put it this way, you can stand on it, you can jump on it, you can drop it (caseless!) and you can smack it when you get angry because your mix aint working and she keeps workin. I never had any problems with its durability, its made to last the extreems of long road trips and those days your too tired to care how you handle your gear. If your just using it local itl live longer than you will! Value: Its pricy, but you get what you pay for, and in this case your getting a lot for what you paid for. There are a few little things that would be nice if it had but are simplie 5 dollar external fixes. In comparison to other equipment out there at the same or twice the price, it blows it away. Manufacturer Support: Mackie not only makes the best products but have an excellent customer support department. If you have technical questions, how to use questions, anything, you get someone who knows what their talking about and will help you until your problem is fixed. No general answers or standard response steps. Each problem is analised on an individual basis to give you the most informative answer. The Wow Factor: To a seasoned pro who works concerts all the time, hell look at the board and say "yeah thats a pretty good board." Its a 16 channel mixer, its not exactly desirable by any large company but to who do hall shows often, thel see this thing, try it and get addicted. Those who dont do it often find the board too confusing and hate it but I find with anyone who knew what they were doing, they wanted to steal it from me! Overall: If your going to be doing small small concernts and hall shows, this mixer is perfect for you. 16 Channels will start limiting you if you get into too big of a concernt but for hall shows, nothing compares to it. I only used mine for hall shows and recording, and I never ran out of channels or good quality. Its tough, its good and its got a competative price tag

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Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro Mixer Customer Review submitted April 9, 2006

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Sound

Features

Ease of Use

Quality

Manufacturer Support

The Wow Factor

Music Style: contemporary christian

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Sound: Despite what some experts say about Allen and Heath boards, for its price, the preamps are superior. Even with compression, there is high gain before distortion on the preamps. Feature: If it only had a mic for the soundman, like its bigger brother, the 24 and 32 channel models, then I would not have to utalize a vital channel from my board. Ease of Use: The one trait that is good with this model is that with monitors, the onboard eq and mute button is completely seperate from the mains. Unlike the 24 and 32 channel models, if you make an adjustment with the on board eqs and the mute button, it also affects the monitors as well. Manufacturer Support: Haven't had to deal with the company. So what does that say about the product huh? The Wow Factor: The only blemish is that i had to get a larger mixer because i outgrew it.

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"Neither I, my children, nor their children will purchase any Mackie device, ever." submitted January 19, 2010

By a customer from verizon.net

Overall

Sound

Features

Ease of Use

Quality

Value

Manufacturer Support

The Wow Factor

Musical Background: music director,musician, recording engineer

Music Style: rock, pop

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Sound: Some channels drop out, some would sound tinny, and others would mysteriously get quieter over time. This is my 2nd 1604vlz pro that's done this over the years. I've been an avid Mackie user until last Sunday. I should've known better after the first one did this (fool me once..). My local music store keeps pushing a VLZ3 on me saying it has fewer problems but I'm done with Mackie. [ Please read the Quality section below ] Feature: The rotopod in the back offers great connectivity options, so I can standardize my gear and simply carry a ton of TRS to TRS patch cables and be pretty sure I can have every effects box covered. At first, I figured the routing options simply added more complexity than was necessary. But each plug filled a niche that would randomly pop up. It's well planned, that's for sure. Ease of Use: The mixer has a series of compromises to make it smaller and more portable. So I ended up needing TRS to XLR adapters on the outputs to support SRM-450s and SR1530's. This is pretty minor though. Quality: This is where this device really gets bad. The first 1604VLZ Pro I bought came out of the box with a channel that had weaker output than the others on a pink noise generator test. I attributed it to manufacturing variances and thought nothing of it. About 3 months later, that channel started to drop out randomly. I did another test and noticed that 2 MORE channels were now weak. After a year, those channels started to drop out randomly (DURING PERFORMANCES). This was an absolute disaster. I had to pull out my backup mixer (an old 1404VLZ Pro) and a handful of channel preamps and wire this up in a few minutes. Not fun. Warranty repair isn't an option if I'm going to be out a mixer for a few weeks. I sold this one on craigslist as a parts unit and the guy who bought it told me that 1604VLZ Pros had this problem and that the fix was fairly easy. Sure it is, if you have a 1000 dollar soldering/desoldering iron and a few hours to unscrew 100 nuts and 2 dozen screws, a 500 dollar tester to test, desolder and resolder new caps, desolder and resolder flex connectors and then inspect these under a microscope to make sure there were no bridges and the joints were good quality. I've worked in SMD repair and these non-specific fixes are a crap shoot at best. Google searches revealed that the flex connectors in the rotopod frequently developed problems. Look it up for yourself. Value: Having replaced two of these in as many years, this is a particularly bad value. The machine sounds good when it's new, then it progressively gets worse until it randomly begins to cut out channels. Manufacturer Support: This is what really irks me. Mackie wanted me to pay shipping to send it to them under warranty. This would've cost over $100 in shipping overnight. But they wouldn't ship it back overnight...and it would take weeks to repair. I would need a mixer the following weekend, so this wasn't a good option to begin with. See, if the mixer was cheap, I would chalk it up to experience and buy something better. This is sold as a premium product but it doesn't include the premium quality or support. The Wow Factor: Slick marketing, shiny brochures and good technical specs. Overall: This was BY FAR the worst review I've ever given to any product. But that's because it covers two that went bad THE SAME EXACT WAY. I'm actually done with Mackie products. I have this joke I told people last Sunday, that neither I, my children nor their children will ever purchase anything from Mackie, ever. Out of the box, their products are really good. But they all seem to go bad fairly quickly. I've got an SRM-450 that's been buzzing since a week after I got it. It's noticeable but I just deal with it because return shipping is sooo expensive. Little things like that.

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"Taken a licking, and "sorta" ticking." submitted November 13, 2004

By a customer from yahoo.com

Overall

Sound

Features

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VERIFIED BUYER

zZounds has verified that this customer bought this product from us.

Sound: No complaints here. With better microphones and better monitor speakers, I may change my mind. Feature: Trim controls for all inputs: thumbs up. I like having the 6 aux sends, but all the "odd" sends (1, 3, 5) butt up against the corner of our rack-mount. Wish you didn't have to switch between 3/4 and 5/6. Could use a talkback mic input. Both issues have been addressed in the Onyx 1640. Quality: Cosmetics are fine, but Captain it's started to blow! Trim on input 6 got toasted by a MiniDV deck trimmed too high. Trim on 4 almost fell at the hand of same deck. Right channel of Main Out and Tape Output disappears every so often -- a good thump to the XDR sticker brings it back. The Wow Factor: Not a sexy mixer, but it is (was) functional. Overall: Our unit is beginning to die, so we might replace it with the Onyx 1640, assuming it fits in our rack-mount, which it probably won't. Knobs for all aux sends on each channel, and masters for each would be good. Add a talkback mic input. This 1604's been in our high school TV studio for only two years: not quite sure it's appropriate given the price. (Not sure the Onyx is either, for that matter.)

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"get this rack desk if you can not afford a midas/soundcraft" submitted January 6, 2007

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Features

Ease of Use

Quality

Value

Manufacturer Support

The Wow Factor

Musical Background: live sound tech

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Sound: not bad but has a lot of bleed, mains, aux, subs good for small live events but don`t put your rep on it. Feature: for better or worse you can not find anything in the price range that can do what this can do......someone pls make something better Ease of Use: plug n play but only has bal line outs... Quality: it does not like moving. the preamp section dies. you will lose the odd mic pre every now and then. Value: once again if you can find anything in the price range that can do everything that this can shout it from the roof tops Manufacturer Support: mackie knows about the problems with this desk but has done nothing to fix it....thanx The Wow Factor: it is what it is

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"good features, poor quality" submitted May 1, 2006

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Sound: sounds good when it works Feature: features are good, could use inserts on the subgroups Ease of Use: Easy to use Quality: Channels go bad, preamps go bad, things cut out...etc Manufacturer Support: not enough service centers in MA

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Mackie 1604-VLZ Pro 16-Channel Mixer

User Ratings

"If you do small concerts and hall shows, LOOK HERE!!!" submitted November 12, 2006

Mackie 1604 VLZ Pro Mixer Customer Review submitted April 9, 2006

"Neither I, my children, nor their children will purchase any Mackie device, ever." submitted January 19, 2010

"Taken a licking, and "sorta" ticking." submitted November 13, 2004

"get this rack desk if you can not afford a midas/soundcraft" submitted January 6, 2007

"good features, poor quality" submitted May 1, 2006