Mackie 802 VLZ4

For the last 14 years I have been using a Mackie CFX12 mixer which fitted every need in my professional entertaining career. I would have been happy with it for the rest of my days in the business but as I looked at ways of reducing the equipment size and weight that I must carry five nights a week to different venues I had to consider downsizing my desk as one of the changes. On scanning specs and reviews of different small mixers I was not surprised to find that the only one which fit the bill was again Mackie. So I ordered a VLZ4 802 from Thomann and was delighted to find that not only was it massively lighter and smaller but the sound from the new preamps was so crisp that it has revitalised my sound. Although I preferred having faders to rotaries for the gain levels on channel and main volume, I have found the rotary knobs detent better into position and remain in place when being handled into and out of the case. This gives me far less set up worries. Also as I need to drive a vocal harmoniser from both my tracks and my guitar, therefore I need a reliable aux out and this one works perfectly. What surprised me most though was the amount of headroom I have from this little desk, absolutely amazing. Well done Mackie!

I was looking for a good quality mixer to connect various synths and grooveboxes to a hardware recorder and allow me to send signals to 3 different places - Hardware recorder, FX Loop or direct to the main output.

This is the smallest unit I could find that had 8 channels as well as alternate/cue out, FX loop and stereo return channel. The only other mixers that offer this are much bigger.

Sound quality is great, EQ is powerful and I have no need for cheezy built in FX. The flexible routing of signals makes this a real swiss army knife of audio.

Sometimes its a little confusing trying to get the FX loop and Alt send working together so you always hear FX when you want to, but thats just a setup and practice issue.

Of course there are a few small things that would be nice extras - level control for the Tape In/Out, stereo Aux send - but for the price and size, this is an amazing piece of gear.

This mixer is my favourite so far. It has really really good sound and build quality, the knobs feels like they are made of one solid metal piece from the body of the mixer, and the rotating feel is very nice. I really appreciate the colours of the knob, they are only few different colours and they are subtle, as a result it does not look like a carnival or a toy like some other mixers.

The output options it has are amazing. The 12 LED level indicator is very nice and smoother than many others I bought in this price range.

One minor negative is the power supply and the top right corner of the unit near the mackie logo, they get very hot after a while of operation.

If you do not mind not having a USB dac input and sound effects I would totally recommend this mixer, I do not use any sound effects, and I have other dacs, so for me this mixer is, so far, my favourite in the 8 channels mixer range.

Fantastic bit of kit. It's more expensive than some of the competition, but the build & sound quality are better. Although I don't put any "critical" audio through my 802, I did some listening tests against other micro-mixers and this was by far the best; particularly when you start EQing. The I/O & routing is very flexible too.

If I were looking to fault it, I'd comment: There's no input trim on the stereo inputs, it uses an external power brick and you only get one mono aux (good news is it is switchable pre/post fader) - but what can you ask of a tiny 8ch mixer!?