THE RIGHT CONNECTIONS
And because what goes in, sometimes needs to go back out, and then come back in again, the Onyx 1200F includes balanced Sends and Returns for inserting outboard gear like compressors or guitar processors into the signal path before sending it to your Mac or PC. The 1200F's rear panel is brimming with modern connections including FireWire, wordclock, S/PDIF, AES/EBU, two ADAT Optical I/O ports, and a 25-pin d-Sub connection with eight assignable balanced analog outputs. (Okay, take a breath here.) Also remarkably crammed into this production powerhouse are dual MIDI Ins and Outs, footswitchable Talkback facilities, two sets of control room monitor outputs, and four fully assignable headphone mix outputs. Try putting an I/O package like this together for anywhere near this price, and you'll see why the Onyx 1200F is such an incredibly sweet solution for anyone serious about recording and producing audio on their computer.

OVER-ENGINEERED VS. OVER-MARKETED
So many FireWire audio interfaces have hit the market recently, lumberjacks have been working overtime to produce enough wood to make paper for all the advertising. So one thing that can get lost in the rush to produce "me-too" FireWire products is quality. As a wise man once said, "haste makes lousy audio quality," so Mackie took the extra time to over-engineer the entire 1200F signal path, including mastering-grade AKM^® AK4358 8-channel ADC(s) and AK5385 Stereo DAC(s) converters—the same top-notch, phase-accurate converters you'll find in our flagship Digital X Bus consoles. Of course, the Onyx 1200F's "sound quality" is a function of its entire system — the superb Onyx preamps, the well-engineered summing circuitry, 64-bit floating point processing, and just plain good audio design. Put simply, there is no other box that does so much or sounds this good, at any price.

A MATRIX SEQUEL THAT DOESN'T SUCK
The Onyx 1200F's little brother, the 400F, was the first FireWire audio interface with a true 64-bit onboard Matrix Mixer with floating-point DSP. In the 1200F, a next generation 30 x 34 DSP-controlled Matrix Mixer lets you route any input to any output with panning, level control, mute and solo controls, storing your mixes for instant recall at a later date. (It's also worth noting that this high-powered DSP Matrix Mixer is the reason you can route any input to any output with an amazingly low .65 milliseconds of latency.) When tracking, you can even create four distinct headphone mixes, one for each musician. All settings can be stored via included 1200F control panel software, and this routing is retained when the unit powers back up—even with no computer attached. In this way, the 1200F can also serve as a standalone rackmount digital mixer (just in case its five thousand other features weren't enough).