In praise of the Yamaha MG16XU Mixer
Nov 11, 2019 9:31:49 GMT -5
Marshall, Cosmic Wonder, and 2 more like this
Post by lar on Nov 11, 2019 9:31:49 GMT -5
As some of you may recall nearly two years ago I bought a Mackie 16 channel mixer. I had wanted a Mackie for a long time. Some of you warned me that Mackie of old and Mackie of late were different things and that I might be disappointed.
I thought the Mackie sounded pretty good. From time to time I ran into an issue or two but in the beginning I put it down to being unfamiliar with it. One of the things I noticed was that there didn't seem to be much in the way of headroom and the gain knobs seemed very sensitive. There was also a recurring issue of a slight high pitched feedback that I had a lot of difficulty dealing with. I was never quite able to determine exactly where it was coming from.
About 2 months ago we played a gig and the PA gave me fits all night. First, it wouldn't work at all. Then it worked for me and Jan but I was never able to plug in a friend of ours who is also a concertina player. When he got his rig out and plugged into it, it worked fine. We got up to do our second set and the whole things sounded awful. The very best sound I was able to get was with all of the EQ controls on settings that were backwards of what they should have been.
The next day I decided I was done with the Mackie. If I can't rely on it, it's useless to me. I ordered a Yamaha MG16XU Mixer. It came, I set it up and tested everything and since then it's been waiting for a full-fledged practice.
This past weekend Jan and I put the Yamaha through it's paces. Her first reaction was the that Yamaha seemed much "stronger" than the Mackie. After we talked about it a bit I figured out that what she meant was that the sound was much fuller even at the same volume. She was right. There just seems to be more sound there.
Jan's concertina has always been a bit of a challenge to set up with a PA. For various reasons, she sends the signal from the mics in her concertina through a Boss EQ and into the board. With the Mackie I was doing a lot of adjusting because Jan said her concertina sounded too shrill and thin. I had the concertina set up on the Yamaha in just a couple of minutes and Jan loves the way it sounds.
I also played both my D-28 and my Deering tenor banjo through the Yamaha. I am not a big fan of piezo pickups because of the "quack". I won't say that there isn't any quack through the Yamaha but I will say that my D-28 sounded a lot more acoustic through it than through the Mackie. I don't know why that would be. I just know that's how it sounds to me. It will be interesting to see if I get the same result at a gig where the overall volume level will be higher.
Running the Deering through the Yamaha was an interesting experiment. The complaint I've been getting is that no one can hear my banjo when we're playing out. I had the slider up all the way on the Mackie and the gain control turned up to the point where it was starting to clip. It didn't seem to matter how low I set the volume slider of the other instruments, the banjo just didn't seem to get into the mix very much.
My experience with the Yamaha was completely different this weekend. First, with the volume slider set to "0" I barely touched the gain control and the banjo was a little too loud in the mix. Quite a change! The other thing was that the banjo has a passive pickup under the bridge. I plugged it into the board without running it through a pre-amp just to see what would happen. I'll need to do a little more experimenting but my first thought is that I may not need a preamp. The banjo sounded great.
Our vocals also sounded more solid and full through the Yamaha.
I'm very impressed with this Yamaha board. At $500 it's not a budget breaker. It's also got a ton of features I'm never likely to use. We use a Bose L1 Line Array PA system so we've done away with monitors. So I'm not likely to use the various output buses or the headphone jack. If I get crazy, though, I just might try using the USB port to record into my laptop.
I thought the Mackie sounded pretty good. From time to time I ran into an issue or two but in the beginning I put it down to being unfamiliar with it. One of the things I noticed was that there didn't seem to be much in the way of headroom and the gain knobs seemed very sensitive. There was also a recurring issue of a slight high pitched feedback that I had a lot of difficulty dealing with. I was never quite able to determine exactly where it was coming from.
About 2 months ago we played a gig and the PA gave me fits all night. First, it wouldn't work at all. Then it worked for me and Jan but I was never able to plug in a friend of ours who is also a concertina player. When he got his rig out and plugged into it, it worked fine. We got up to do our second set and the whole things sounded awful. The very best sound I was able to get was with all of the EQ controls on settings that were backwards of what they should have been.
The next day I decided I was done with the Mackie. If I can't rely on it, it's useless to me. I ordered a Yamaha MG16XU Mixer. It came, I set it up and tested everything and since then it's been waiting for a full-fledged practice.
This past weekend Jan and I put the Yamaha through it's paces. Her first reaction was the that Yamaha seemed much "stronger" than the Mackie. After we talked about it a bit I figured out that what she meant was that the sound was much fuller even at the same volume. She was right. There just seems to be more sound there.
Jan's concertina has always been a bit of a challenge to set up with a PA. For various reasons, she sends the signal from the mics in her concertina through a Boss EQ and into the board. With the Mackie I was doing a lot of adjusting because Jan said her concertina sounded too shrill and thin. I had the concertina set up on the Yamaha in just a couple of minutes and Jan loves the way it sounds.
I also played both my D-28 and my Deering tenor banjo through the Yamaha. I am not a big fan of piezo pickups because of the "quack". I won't say that there isn't any quack through the Yamaha but I will say that my D-28 sounded a lot more acoustic through it than through the Mackie. I don't know why that would be. I just know that's how it sounds to me. It will be interesting to see if I get the same result at a gig where the overall volume level will be higher.
Running the Deering through the Yamaha was an interesting experiment. The complaint I've been getting is that no one can hear my banjo when we're playing out. I had the slider up all the way on the Mackie and the gain control turned up to the point where it was starting to clip. It didn't seem to matter how low I set the volume slider of the other instruments, the banjo just didn't seem to get into the mix very much.
My experience with the Yamaha was completely different this weekend. First, with the volume slider set to "0" I barely touched the gain control and the banjo was a little too loud in the mix. Quite a change! The other thing was that the banjo has a passive pickup under the bridge. I plugged it into the board without running it through a pre-amp just to see what would happen. I'll need to do a little more experimenting but my first thought is that I may not need a preamp. The banjo sounded great.
Our vocals also sounded more solid and full through the Yamaha.
I'm very impressed with this Yamaha board. At $500 it's not a budget breaker. It's also got a ton of features I'm never likely to use. We use a Bose L1 Line Array PA system so we've done away with monitors. So I'm not likely to use the various output buses or the headphone jack. If I get crazy, though, I just might try using the USB port to record into my laptop.
