As an industrial musician, I need absolutely the clearest recordings I can get before I start using effects - this unit has the most pristine mic pre amps I have ever heard. After effects and mixdown, I couldn't find any interuptions or glitches to my vocals!! This is the cleanest recording unit at this price and trashes other units at much higher prices!!!

The firewire cable was suppose to come with an adapter to 1394 but didn't. Mackie no longer includes that with the unit. The firewire cable itself is super long for those studio (and stage) connections. The only thing I wished Mackie had considered was lightpipe so I wouldn't have to make so many connections from the three keyboards I have (the Korg Triton Studio and Extreme have six outs and there are only 10 inputs on the Mackie).

I had this unit up, running and recording in about 10 minutes. 10 hours later, I realized that I was being possessed by the "Let's do it again!," sickness! Of all the equipment in my studio, this one is the easiest to use!!

I can tell that the ONYX 400F is going to be the workhorse for many recordings in the studio and the stage. It's solid and gives me comfort looking at how well it is built.

I read a lot of forums and reviews on this product before I decided to buy and, none of the horrors I read turned out to be true for me. There was no "whine" from the unit or in any of my recordings and the drivers have worked well!! Mackie has given this unit the right price in that it only has ten inputs and outputs. You will get everything out of this that you payed for and more. I can see that even new and aspiring recording engineers or just hobbyists will find this product an excellent value!!!

I have had no need for any support.

The appeal is not in the looks (though it doesn't look bad) - just hearing the final recording is enough make one very satisfied.

Active Musician

Industrial Wall

It's the first interface I have so I don't have any reference. Before I recorded vocals and guitars on a Tascam 2488 workstation. Well the difference between those are pretty huge so I think i bought the right one. I heard a lot about Onyx amps so that did it for me.

I liked the very long firewire cable, cheer fun when unpacking because I havea distant machineroom. I like the final mix plug in but I work with cubase and the version included only works within traktion. Too bad...

It goes in, it goes out, you decide how, it's like that.

Didn't get across one glitch. I have it for 6 months now.

It did'n hurt at all once I was up and running in minutes and heard the quality. I want to buy more!

I use a lot of support from cubase because they experiment a lot, for this product it's the opposite. Mackie works very straith forward, I think they do not dare try to build things that can come across difficult bridges.

Two headphone sockets on the front, very convenient. I almost bought a MOTU MKII because it looks a lot better. I think that beauty comes from the inside. With audio interfaces that is

compose/producer

on demand

great for live use. great for studio use. great with a laptop on location. Great sound Great drivers (3.2.8). Installation was a breeze. Latency is quite low (3ms in 3ms out with 64 buffer size in 48kHz) Works on my PC with the on-board non TI FireWire chip. robust. Great features. even the service support center has improved over the past months. 192kHz 24bit sounds amazing. I would like a better meter on the front panel for inputs but I can handle the one on the unit. sounds better than the MOTU traveler or mK828. I use it as the central unit between my PC, mixing board, external effects, midi controllers, external preamps, line inputs and mics. Great value. I was afraid to buy this unit as it had some early driver problems. I never had any problem with it. Didn't work well with MacBook Pro running XP on BootCamp but that could be a SP2 FW update issue so it should be checked again. Overall: I Love this unit and I stopped using my external preamps because the sound is just good enough for me.

could have a separate mix for the two headphone outputs.

very easy. very good. swift installation. no crashes or glitches since

Built well. strong chassi. good knobs. 48V and front input buttons slightly plasticy.

very good

Support was terrible but got very good over the past few months. there is a new team for dealing with Onyx products.

I don't get overwhelmed by 'must have it' sex-appeal looks

Producer, Soundtrack composer, studio owner

Progressive rock, Blues, Psychedelic rock, Latin Avantguard

Onyx Preamps- the best you can get in this price range.!!!

For the money it cant be beat.

After doing a little homework and getting feedback from engineers and audio enthusiasts, the is definitely the way to go.

no need for it.

Read the previous statement.

Recording Artist

Hip hop R&G Gospel r&b

Great and clear sound. The 4 preamps can't be beaten for the price but specially for the quality of sound. Midi, works great as well.

4 preamps are the kings of this product. The DSP mixer, can be better in configuration.

Solid and well-build, you don't have to worry about a thing with this device.

Fair. The price is like the middle way, the most part of people can afford it.

The future will show, so far so good, not a problem.

Mmmmm, nice looking! Absolutely gorgeos. Great work from designers of Mackie.

Pianist, Rhodes&Hammond

Rock, Blues, Fussion.

Pretty hard to beat this sound quality for $700; probably hard to beat for twice that amount. Acoustic drum tracks--particularly snare--are outstanding. Very satisfied.

The matrix mixer could be a little better with more tracks than 10. Also, disappointed that the Traction 2 that comes with the interface doesn't come bundled, as it does if you buy it alone. 4 Onyx pre-amps do compensate for the lack of plug ins, however.

Mackie through and through. Well built, simple, intuitive.

Hard to beat, in almost every way.

Well, tech support calls back, which is more than I can say for a number of other interface manufacturers. They aim to please and know what they are talking about.

It has practical design, is easy to use and is well built. High marks in my book.

Musician

Rock, Hard Rock

The preamp's are amazingly pristine. The digital to analog converters are too shrill for my taste.

Preamps!

I never liked the drivers. They're better now, but 3 years ago they were a nightmare. The CPU load still drops out with Nuendo.

After three years my ONYX is not perfect. One of the phantom powered pre-amps is "ify". The volume control spikes on the right monitor and I pray it doesn't break. My first one was broken but zZounds paid for fast shipping and was great about it -- which is why I buy everything from them.

When it works, you're not having latency problems, it's awesome. If the AD/DA converters were better I'd put up with everything and give it a 10/10. If I had to get it again, I'd get an RME fireface or PCI device.

Mackie tech suppport has never been very helpful. zzounds was great and more helpful.

It's physically beautiful and the preamps are the best I've ever heard. They make up for a multitude of sins. I absolutely wanted it and now that I have it use it a lot. I take good care of it and love it inspite of everything I wrote.

Professional Musician

Experimental

The preamps are beautiful and the sound is clear but I have to play with latency, occasional clicks, pops, etc, to get it to work.

Love the preamps and inputs.

It's pretty straight forward. I've built two computers for this system and I made clear music with it. It can be problematic.

I take great care of my onxy and it has is the 2nd one. First screamed and had constant popping. 2nd one will make a noise when turning volume on/off and left fader will sometimes not work.

Aside from all the criticism, it's a great product and I've done great work with it. However, it's not as transparent as some firewire devices and I have to work extra hard to get it to work.

Some of the people at Mackie are not easy to deal with.

It's physically beautiful. Preamps are awesome. Features are great.

Recording Engineer

Alternative

VERY clean sound. I got it to use as my main sound card, playback, recording, and mixing. I use it for small project studio tasks and usually only have 1-2 channels recording at once. The outputs to the mains and headphones are very clear. Recording guitar, vocals, and synth is also top notch.

For what I wanted, a small component that did pretty much everything, it has all I need. Of course I knew this BEFORE I bought it. I use it for recording, playback, monitoring (speakers and headphones). I got this to simplify my studio configuration. It sits on my desk next to my LCD. Nice and simple.

Manual is very clear. Everything is clearly marked. The software is fairly simple. If you know mixers and have a little bit of experience with computer recording, you should do fine.

One knock against it because my computer behaves a little strangely if you decide to turn it off when it's connected. Otherwise, not a single bug. I only use it for recording 1-2 streams at a time though. I'd recommend for anyone to thoroughly test any component in their real life setting and return it if it doesn't work out. Every product has its quirks and share of unsatisfied customers ranting on newsgroups.

Value is moderate. I'm just paying for the quality of the AD DA converters and the convenience of having all the features I need built in. You could probably get all the features in something cheaper, minus the quality of course.

Never used them. They do have a support forum and they are big enough that I hope they actually take notice of major problems.

It looks nice I guess.