onyx preamps

[saemskin]

more specifically the 800R.
How's the quality on these? Any users here?
My MOTU 828II is officially full, and I will very soon need more analog inputs and this seems to be a nearly perfect solution to that and the selling off of my Focusrite TT Pro. I hated that preamp, horrible compressor, and \"EQ\" unit, and I'm glad its gone. My MOTU pre's sound just as good.

My plans are to use the onyx as a dual purpose extra I/O and preamp, plus later on getting something by Universal Audio as my \"good\" preamp, probably the LA-610.

Thoughts?

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

We did a preamp shoot out of a bunch of mid-priced preamps once, including an Onyx 1620 that just happened to be lying around at the time. The Tube Tech MP-1A preamp we were using as a reference pissed all over every single one of them EXCEPT for the Onyx, it not only had a similar tone quality to the MP-1A but even lower noise in this test (I'd still choose an MP-1A over it, of course )..

Too bad about the 800R price increase, I still don't understand what Mackie was thinking there.

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

Update: Mackie dropped the price back down to $999 yesterday.

 

[saemskin]

Thanks for the help Eric, now I have a technical question for you.
It appears that the 400F is more of a Soundcard because it has all types of IO and a firewire output.
The 800R appears to have no Firewire output, so is more of a \"traditional\" preamp.
Sweetwaters latest brochure shows a 12 channel onyx (1200F) a bigger 400F.

My main objective in the coming months is the buy a decent sounding preamp, *and*additional IO for my MOTU 828MKII as its full now. THe 400F appears to cover both of these, but I'm not sure if it's to be classified as a soundcard and will conflict with my MOTU? If I cant use both at the same time, I would be better off getting another 828 and a preamp I've yet to decide upon.