Anyone have a Mackie Onyx Producer 2.2.?

vonLayzonfon

I bought one of these for my father for Christmas as he wants to start recording his songs.  It's just simple acoustic guitar + vocals, so a 2 input USB interface is ideal.  Gear4Music had the unit at an excellent price just before Christmas, it has the added bonus of also having MIDI (should he want to branch out) and as far as I knew, Mackie make decent, studio grade equipment.

I gave it a quick test once it arrived just to make sure it worked, and to have a look at Tracktion, because I know I'm going to end up ding helpdesk services once he's got it.     I manage to give him a quick, half-hour tutorial and leave him to it.  He's a bright spark and I'm confident he'll be okay.

Fast forward a couple of months and he tells me he's having issues with it.  He says everything's too quiet.  He can't hear anything in the headphone monitor (direct) until it's pretty much maxed, and barely making a waveform in Tracktion.  If he turns up the input gain on the unit it has virtually no effect until it overdrives: If gain is 0-10 then you don't see an effect or the 'signal' LED lighting, until 8 and by 9 it's clipping.  It's the same for guitar and vocals.  He's using a decent dynamic mic and a selection if very nice (Taylor/Takamine/Lag) electro-acoustic guitars.

To cut a long story slightly shorter, after a bit of back and forth and me spending some time with it (adding electric guitars into the mix, which behave the same way, and also testing with Reaper and ASIO4All) I find exactly the same behaviour.  I can get it workable, but it's not really ideal.

I the meantime, dad's been talking to Mackie tech support to see if he's doing anything wrong, and they have suggested sending it back under warranty.  I do this and this is the response I have just received:

"Our engineer has tested this unit, but he believes that the fault description you’ve provided is normal behaviour for these units. He’s advised that you should be using the XLR inputs for low-level signals, and the XLR inputs are functioning correctly. We don’t believe there is a fault with this unit unfortunately."

Before I go back at them with a low-level rant about being fit for purpose, does anyone here have any experience with this unit?  I should point out that I have a Zoom R16, and have had a small amount of time with a Focusrite Scarlett Solo and have not noticed this issue with either of those.

Cheers.

wave100

Does this happen with both the guitars and the mic? 

vonLayzonfon

Yep.  Everything we've tried so far.

wave100

Is the mic a normal low impedance mic which connects to the interface with an XLR cable?

vonLayzonfon

It is. I forget what dad's is, but I have a bunch of t.bone MB55s. 575ohms @ 1kHz, according to the specs.

wave100

The only things I can suggest are that the Hi-Z buttons are engaged inappropriately or it's a shit device - something Music Radar failed to point out in their review. Do you have access to a different interface that you can try to see if it works any better?

vonLayzonfon

Yep. My Zoom R16 works fine.
Mackie have agreed to replace it in case it's faulty, so we'll see how the next one goes.
Thanks for your input.