Question about board merit.

[TechieGeek]

I have a Mackie SR 32.4-VLZ mixing console with XDR mic preamplifiers. I acquired it recently and didn't think to ask about the merit of that particular board. What can you guys tell me about it?

[soundlight]

It's a proven standard for lower-mid-range analog boards. Fairly decent preamps for a console at that price, and a good set of routing features. I've used the 24.4 on a number of occasions, and it performs very nicely for the small gigs that it's used for. The one good thing is that these boards are built like tanks, so it should last a while. It's amazing how long the local sound company has had their one 24.4 that I've used. It's still in great shape, even though the screen-printed markings are rather worn.

[Eboy87]

I second what soundlight said. It's great for its niche. The only thing I've heard bad about them, besides only having 60mm faders (I'm a big proponent of long throw faders), is that there was a run that was plagued with the ribbon cable problems like their little brother. Still, they're chugging along, some after more than 10+ years.

[highschooltech]

I have to agree, the preamps on the board are fairly decent and it is like a tank.

[Peter]

Yep, It's a great board to learn on as i have seen it all over the place and has logically setup groups and all the basic features. The only warning I would give is to be careful trying to multibus on this board. Some people never multi buss and that's probably best in my opinion but if you do, be very careful doing it on this board as it will provide some particularly nasty distortion if you overdrive the main outs!


For those of you scratching your head about what I mean by multi bussing... (I'm not even sure if that is completely the right term for it) I am referring to putting a channel into multiple groups and then feeding all the groups back into the main bus. There are various reasons you may want to do this, but you have to be careful because you can make your signal way to hot for the main bus really quickly, and that's when you'll run into distortion of the nasty type.

[avkid]

I've slowly stopped using subgroups at all on the 32-4. The noise floor, on ours at least is terrible when using the subs.
The talkback section will probably go crazy on you and then stop working at the worst possible moment.

[SHARYNF]

Very common board, some had the ribbon problem but not as common as with the 16xx series, make sure you use the trim to get the levels up so that the faders are not down in the mud. Watch out for the tape to master section etc, since you can wind up with no sound at all driving you crazy trying to find out what is wrong , and it is just that the tape input is over riding the inputs.

Sharyn

[avkid]

Originally Posted by SHARYNF

Watch out for the tape to master section etc, since you can wind up with no sound at all driving you crazy trying to find out what is wrong , and it is just that the tape input is over riding the inputs.
Sharyn

That is, in my opinion the single best example in recent analog mixer history of a good design gone horribly wrong in implementation.

[soundlight]

Oh yeah...the mackie "music-break" style function. That one has thrown me for a loop a number of times.