Big Console Quality Preamps

Even the most expensive microphone is compromised when you run it through a cheap mic preamplifier. Before Mackie, that was what you got unless you spent $20,000 to $200,000 on a big console.

When you buy a Mackie mixer, you're getting a preamp so good that many engineers actually carry one of our mixers with them to supplement (or replace) the mic preamps on big consoles. And as for the analog 8•Bus pre-amp, suffice it to say, it's recorded more platinum albums than any other 8•Bus console.

At any gain setting, our mic preamp design gives you an incredible amount of headroom, whether you're miking a kick drum on stage or a nutjob voiceover announcer in a studio. Mackie preamps are also astonishingly quiet – especially to anyone who has put up with the noisy mic preamps found on many other "affordable" compact mixers. Our published spec of -129.5dBm Equivalent Input Noise is real and verifiable. So is our mic preamps' minuscule 0.005% THD measurement. They're capable of capturing the most delicate detail of any performance – whether you're dealing with an angelic choir or a scruffy speed metal band.

The usual approach to designing a compact mixer's mic preamps is to get a catalog and pick out inexpensive, off-the-shelf integrated circuits. But you get what you pay for. We do it the hard way: with discrete circuitry. The only other place you find these kinds of electronic components is in megabux British consoles.

When you're shopping around and see comparably-priced mixers with more preamps, remember... they may look like female XLR connectors on the outside. But it's what's inside that counts.

We're not finished. What's inside our new VLZ PRO series mixers is even more mind-boggling.

R.B. of Glenwood, FL sez: "I would give you feedback on your products, but it's hard to improve on perfection. If there are improvements to be made, you Mackoids will figure them out and the rest of us will be surprised as usual."
Surprise, surprise.
Get ready for XDR.