This All-in-One Streaming Device is Almost PERFECT

so Macky who if you don't remember Mackey released that giant mixer called The dlz Creator that I actually fell in love with and they're a longtime very professional audio company but they just released this little device called the mainstream and they made it very clear that they want to be taken seriously by the content creation industry or I should say by content creators and this is I think they did a very good job by the way this is a really cool device with a lot of really cool stuff um also a lot of really creative stuff but also a couple potential deal breakers for you and some of you actually if you've got a very trained ear might be able to hear one of those deal breakers this microphone right now is going into this device and it sounds pretty good I'll be recording the entire thing through this device and I'm not trying to say it sounds like garbage but some of you if you know you know and I'll explain it later so this is the Mackie mainstream welcome and it is an all-in-one device meaning it's both an audio interface and it's a capture card hub for your camera and that might sound familiar to to you because recently Road released the streamer X which is an audio interface with a capture card built into it but when this device first came out and I did a video on it I had some concerns about it and it seems like Mackie has actually fixed a lot of those concerns with their device like for example it's $100 cheaper also you can plug a webcam into this or even plug a stream deck plus into this so let's talk more about this thing hey can I show you the before and after of lighting this shot you ready this is the before this is after this looks a lot better doesn't it every one of these lights by the way is an amaran light here we'll start it over and we'll turn them on one by one first we've got the f22c panel on my face we've got a 150c as my fill light a 60x as my hair light their pt4 C tube light to light up this side of the wall and then another 150c with a spotlight on it to light up this wall listen the 150c and 300C here super cool C stands for color so you can make it any color you want so you can get super flexible with them that's how I get this bluish tint on the right side of my face that looks really cool I've been using this in our merch photos lately and I don't have to use any of those like color gel inserts which I would lose so fast and then also the spotlight SE is really cool you can drop in filters for really cool light effects you can also use the built-in shutters to light a very specific area anyway I will link to both the spotlight SE and the 150c in the description down below I'm obsessed with amaran lights but if you've watched any of our studio tours you already knew that huge thank you amaran for sponsoring this video and of course making every video on this channel look good so look summary of this whole thing all-in-one devices can be really cool there are a lot of reasons why someone would get an all-in-one device first it makes the experience simpler you have your audio and your video all in one device all all in one device two if you plan on moving your streaming setup to a different room like maybe doing a kitchen stream it's very easy this this is your entire setup right here and then also o cost savings for $300 which is the price of the Mackie mainstream you get a mic interface mixing Hardware you get hot Keys up top and you get a capture card I'll have Dustin do the math of exactly what that would cost with Elgato stuff the problem with all-in-one devices is it's all in one so if you want to upgrade a single portion you kind of have to kind of have to toss the whole thing when the road streamer X came out I had a hard time figuring out who it was for because it feels like it's designed for a new streamer someone who doesn't have an audio interface or a capture card but it's $400 so it's not really priced for someone who's brand new into this but then it's kind of missing some Pro features you should get at that price point and you can't really upgrade it because it's an all-in-one device anyway you can see my problem there so it became very Niche like only the people who needed exactly what this did ended up buying it and it wasn't really useful for anyone else enter the Mackie mainstream let's take a look at exactly what's different on this thing and how they made it better first thing you notice is that it's a lot bigger and there are a lot more knobs on this this thing and I like a lot of knobs you can quote me on that you got five dials on this thing you have a microphone gain dial right there you have a PC volume dial there you have an HDMI dial there and we will get into that in a second and so those are your input dials on the left side on the right side you have your output dials so you have your headphone volume right here and you have your monitor like big boy speaker volume dial right there and we will get into that in a second too then you have these two nice little rubber clicky mute buttons on each side so on this side you have your Ox in mute and your microphone mute and on this side you have your HDMI mute and your headphone speaker mute and these buttons on here in fact every button on here is a very satisfying clicky button like here just just listen to this and these buttons can basically do anything you want to do so they're they're essentially F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 and F6 so in OBS you go to hot Keys you want to change to this scene and you set that hoty as F1 this will change your scene so it's like a super simplistic and minimal stream deck up there all right let's get into the ports on the back of this thing here cuz that's where it gets really interesting so starting from this side you can't see it cuz it's covered up by my mic Jack but this is a combo Port so you got XLR as well as quarter inch just so you can see what that looks like it looks like looks like this you got your gaming headset Jack so if you want to use your headset mic you'd plug in right there and then you got this phantom power button as well as this little Hardware button to turn on and off mic monitoring so if you want to hear yourself or not hear yourself you click that button right there which is kind of neat then you got an oxin which they label with a phone but I'd say that's probably going to be more commonly used with dual PC setups it's it's just a line in Jack you've got a quarin headphone out right there as well as big boy speaker outs that's a big deal I'm kind of Pumped about that I love that mackie's entire lineup has big boy monitor outs like this for people like me who love using speakers or people who want to sit at like an editing desk with you know bigger speakers at them that's huge so really cool addition right there especially since you have a dedicated knob just to that output then you get your HDMI in andout as well as three USB ports and there's a lot different here from the streamer X not that this needs to be a giant comparison video between the two this is its own device but the fact that you've got so much more IO so much more control and it's still $100 cheaper there's got to be reasons for it and there are a couple here first off the microphone preamp in here is not the same preamp you see in the giant dlz devices it doesn't have 80 DB of gain it only has 60 DB of gain and uh one of the deal breakers in fact this might be the biggest deal breaker for you guys I think 60db of gain would be about the minimum that you'd need to power an sm7b I'm using the sm7 DB that has its own preamp built into it and it's powering its own 28 extra DB of gain so I'm I'm only using about 30 DB of gain from this device and this was kind of a bummer I don't know if it's specific to this one device maybe I got a little bit of a bum one but let me show you what happens if I turn off the pr and I just use a regular sm7b and I crank up the gain here because so far and you probably agree with me this has sounded pretty good let me change this check check check okay I've got this cranked up to maybe 95% I'll go up to 100 this is it at 100% you hear that I'm sure you do I don't know if I got a bum pramp in this thing I'm going to reach out to Mackie and send him an audio file of this and say like hey is this in all of your devices is this what happens when you crank it all the way up or is this just on mine so I heard back for Mackie looks like it was a problem with my particular device cuz I asked him to send a clip of him using it with an sm7b and then show me the gain dial here's what he sent I'm ty I'm with Mackie I'm here at the Mackie booth at Nam 2024 if you're at n feel free to come check us out we're here until Sunday we'd love to see you and you can check out the new Macky mainstream you can use any microphone you would like these preamps sound amazing and they will get the job done for you so I don't know if it was the preamp or some kind of interference but it's good to know the device actually sounds great that was the deal breaker I mentioned in the beginning of this video if you like crank this and listen really closely you can still hear it really really small but it's definitely nothing anyone's going to notice at least in a live stream and probably not in a YouTube video either did you notice it before this point before I pointed that out leave it in a comment down below and while you're down there hit the like button cuz it helps out the video a lot and um subscribe to the channel that'd be great another area they saved some money was in the capture card where just like the road streamer X it's got 4K 60 pass through that also means that I wouldn't put anything like a PS5 or any current gen console through there cuz there's not going to be any variable refresh rate you're not going to get high frame rates just 4K 60 but the capture is only 1080 60 versus the 4K 30 inside the road streamer X so it'll work great for a camera it'll work great for a switch it'll even work great for a current gen console if you're only playing at 4K 60 anyway and if you're only streaming on Twitch where you can only stream in 10860 it's actually fine and I think for most streamers that's probably a good way to save money this is where it gets really interesting I thought this was going to be like the streamer X where this one is power it's got a little lightning bolt next to it and then these two go to two different PCS that's not what this is this this is your power and your connection to your PC these two are additional USB ports like a hub you've got a built-in USB hub into this this one is a USB 2.0 this is a USB 10 GB Port which is why I mentioned you could have your console plugged into here and then plug a webcam into your HDMI 2.0 or 3.2 spots or let's say you've been using this for your capture card and you want to upgrade to a mirrorless camera and you want to upgrade your capture card to do HDMI 2.1 you can plug your camera into here and then plug something like a new uh the new a media capture card into this USB 3.2 spot and get that 4K 144 pass through as well as higher end capture or if you want to get really crazy here and you want a virtual mixer that can separate your teammates from your game sounds from your music you can plug a stream deck plus into the USB 2.0 spot then you would essentially feed this through the wavelink software and use this as your microphone input and this just becomes like your Hardware mixing interface for your your headphones your speakers your 2pc setup while you're mixing your software inputs through your stream deck plus I kind of plan on doing something like this with my switch to make this an audio interface for my switch and my TV and my giant monitors I don't want to play the switch through my TV speakers I want to play through my giant macki speakers so I can plug my switch through here through the HDMI into the TV capture the audio and then go out through the speakers this is kind of a really cool versatile device because all the hardware it's got built into it something you should know and I think this is a really weird Choice even though this input right here is a 10 gig USB port this port is only a 5 gig so yes you could plug one of the brand new HDMI 2.1 capture cards into here but you need to make sure you're not maxing out the 5 GBS per second bandwidth right here especially if you're using the camera capture right here you'd probably have to turn down the capture to like 1080 60 Max I don't know what theoretically you'll actually be able to do with these capture cards where the where the threshold is going to be but just know that there is that maximum bandwidth of 5 gbits per second last thing about about this you should definitely know they're also releasing software for this called the Mackie Matrix which gives you that mixing capability that I mentioned before with the stream deck plus where it gives you a bunch of virtual inputs and outputs so you can separate your game volume from your teammate volume from your music volume and you can also output a different output to your stream and to your monitors and to Discord and even a fourth one in case you want to do a VOD track to Twitch this should be coming out within the next week or two tops is what they told me it's definitely not as polished of software as like the beacon soft sofware or the Elgato wavelink software so you should be aware there and that's why I mentioned plugging in a stream deck plus cuz that will be a better experience you'll get a better software mixer and you'll get Hardware dials to control it rather than using your keyboard and mouse but it's worth knowing that if you don't have some of that hardware and you want those capabilities that will be coming out in the next couple weeks in fact I've already tested it and used it I've sent them a laundry list of things I want them to change but for the most part it does what it's supposed to do but what are your thoughts on this do you have any if so leave them in a comment down below and if you don't just leave your favorite emoji for engagement thank you and also while you're here go ahead and run to Senpai dotv pick yourself up a Vitruvian Wu t-shirt cuz this thing's dope and it's available right now and also YouTube members get $5 off of anything they buy it's 2 a.m. and I'm sick so I'm going to end this like the video subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and uh I'll see you in the next one happy [Music] streaming

Channel: Senpai Gaming

Views: 60,561

Keywords: Alpha Gaming, Stream Doctor, OBS, Tips, Streaming, Harris Heller, Alpha, Gaming, Live, Overlay, Design, Stream, Twitch, Doctor, How, To, How To, Help, Mixer, Youtube, Broadcast, Alerts, Streamlabs, youtuber, growth, stream, streamelements, harris, heller, money, monetize, income, full-time, full time, career, beginner, beginners, setup, widget, graphics, audio, review, camera, mic, pc, lights, lighting, webcam, elgato, starting, new, dmca, copyright, strike, strikes, copystrike, algorithm, learning, start, make, videos, first, gear, lens

Id: frAKjIK2nq8

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024