Mackie 402VLZ4 Mixer

today let's take a look at a sub $100 mixer great for podcasters the maxes for 0-2 dlz alright so the first thing you're going to notice when you pull this out of the box I think is probably two things the size it's they call it ultra compact because it is here's my hand here's the mixer it is practically fitting in the palm of my hand so it's really small you still get the two XLR inputs here and another stereo input for three and four so lots of power packed into a little package that is solid I mean this thing it's not plastic not even aluminum this thing is steel so it's nice and heavy which could matter if you're traveling with it but it's still very travel friendly you can still just throw this in a backpack and be on your way no problem so they say it's built like a tank it's true it really is built like a tank I you could probably hammer a nail in with it or you could probably Drive a truck over of course your knobs might break but the point is it's really well made and so that is the thing that you notice first which I really like that has a lot of value to me things that just feel like they're made really well are important because those things tend to last so it's still in the lineup of sub 100 but just just barely it comes in at $99 so it's just under and I'm doing the sub 100 mixer shootout so I have three other mixers which you'll see videos for each of those mixers and this one so far I like a lot a whole lot so I chose this one out of the four mixers for the sub $100 mixer shootout I chose this one because of its build quality not necessarily the size are all pretty small also because it has the Onyx preamps and that is Mackies best preamps so for me having a really good preamp is where it starts and sometimes where it's slow and I plug this in and I test the preamps are they clean okay does the audio come through nice and clean without hiss any self noise that the preamp and the components inside are contributing to when you turn up that game knob because when you use dynamic mics which is my suggestion for podcasters because we record in situations or studios or you know a home office that isn't ideal for recording a dynamic mic can help with that limiting things like out external noise right so rejecting some of that sound if you have the studio for a condenser mic and you prefer it that's totally fine this has phantom power on it so you can actually use phantom power with your condenser mics but I prefer a dynamic mic but that's going to take more gain okay so you're going to have to pretty much use the gain all the way at its highest most of it and this one the Mackie goes up to 60 DB plus 60 DB of gain some are 50 you can probably get down as low as 40 I've heard they're 70 but I haven't seen that mixer yet which would be cool if it's clean this goes up to 16 I find that to be plenty so I have recorded some audio samples just audio only with these so check out the description for the link so you can listen to that and I would use headphones to really get an idea of the difference in the the game when you have to crank it up and this one you know again that's the first test you know you pull it out is it built nice this is built nice or you know the knobs are really nice and apparently these are sealed so they sort of resist dust and it's just sitting there out there on your desk and again the first thing to do is to plug in the preamp and if I put it all the way up is it creating extra noise in my audio this one does not it's really clean now something to say about that this is not a USP mixer this is a all analog mixer has no digital connection so you're going to have to bring this one in to your computer via the analog out either the tape out and the RCA or the main outs now this doesn't have pan knobs but it does have this one switch that will pan channel one to the left and channel two to the right and that is sort of a trick to get two separated channels when you're recording in the software for something that doesn't do actual multi-channel so it does have a switch for that despite not having a pan knob all right somehow I managed to lose the ending part of this video so I've jumped back in to finish off the review fortunately I shot the b-roll so a couple things left I don't want to say about the Mackie 4:02 vlz and that is another advantage that I really enjoy about this mixer is it has a higher resolution led meter so in the other sub $100 mixers that I've taken a look at usually you get like four LEDs and it goes from anywhere from minus 20 then up to six and zero right so between minus 20 and 6 you don't really know where your levels sit this one has a high-res led meter and it covers much more of the range 8 LEDs so it's much more granular and what you can see you can tell more accurately where your audio levels are at so I like that higher resolution LED meter on this Mackie some other things that seem superficial but they're not at least not when it comes to my enjoyment of the mixer is it has an on/off switch so the other mixers you actually have to unplug in order to turn the power off this one has a nice on/off switch so you can turn it off when you're done and walk away from your desk seem small but I really like having an on/off switch go figure also the plug the way this plugs into the mixer itself the power plug has a nice three prong grounded plug that locks and this little locking feature is really nice because you know that the plugs not going to necessarily get stepped on and pulled out normally that shouldn't happen but if you're on location that could be an issue but having a nice little lock there it's a nice touch and an interesting little addition on this mixer if you look on the back it has these little three little holes apparently these go to a mount that will then go to a typical mic stand so you could take a microphone stand you know that has like three legs on it at the base and put this little mixer on top of there and it works as a stand for your mixer so not something that I necessarily would use but it's neat to know what those little three holes do and maybe for you that's something that would be cool a cool way to mount the mixer depending on your setup and then of course I guess my biggest downside to this mixer especially for podcasters is it doesn't have an aux-in channel doesn't have an auxilary out channel which is what you would use to do a mix - set up typically for recording Skype Google Hangouts or whatever VoIP software you're using this doesn't have it so I'd have to look at one of the other ones the behringer are the other Mackie are good options so considering all of that I really love this mixer if I didn't need an aux end this would be the mixer that I would probably purchase because it's built so well and it sounds so great in terms of the amount of gain it gives you the amount of clean gain it gives you so if you need the aux-in you'll need to look at another mixer otherwise this mixers built really solid and I enjoyed using it ok I will see you next time the winner is less than f Lou

Channel: Ray Ortega

Views: 67,988

Rating: 4.7617865 out of 5

Keywords: Mackie (Brand), mixer, audio, 402VLZ4, review, demo, XLR, preamp, gain, Onyx, podcasting, podcaster, podcast, gear, microphone, professional, mixing, hardware

Id: BESXwoT3TJA

Length: 8min 8sec (488 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2015