Compact Audio Mixer Review: Mackie 1402-VLZ3

The whole reason to have a mixer in your editing suite is to, well, mix stuff. Most small studios, whether home-based or small business, have at least a half-dozen audio sources that occasionally need to be either captured or routed for different monitoring outputs. Getting all of these sources to blend in perfect harmony is the job of a reliable mixer, like the Mackie 1402-VLZ3.

The 1402 is a 14-channel mic/line mixer that packs some unique electronic wizardry inside. There are few external design surprises, and that's not a bad thing. If you've used a compact mixer before, you'll have no trouble feeling your way around this board. Ten channel strips feature the usual suspects of knobs, buttons and faders to tailor the signal.

At the top, two Aux Send gain knobs route your signal to outboard effects or additional monitoring or processing. The equalizer section is just below and is comprised of three knobs that add or subtract 15dB of gain around 12kHz, 2.5kHz and 80Hz, for your highs, mids or lows respectively. At first, having only three EQ controls might seem limiting, but Mackie handles this by shelving the lows and highs and peaking the midrange. This combination provides very smooth control over the entire range of the signal with just small adjustments.

The pan knob is below the EQ section and has a nice feature Mackie calls Constant Loudness. When panning, the apparent loudness remains the same, and this is not how all mixers handle panning.

Besides sounding great, we like our mixers to feel good to use; knobs should turn smoothly, buttons should depress consistently, even from an off-center punch, and sliders should glide gracefully. Each rotary knob on the 1402 has a central detent that lets you know you are at "unity" or have "normalized" that control, so that it is simply passing the signal through unaltered. We checked out two different 1402 units for our review. The first had six knobs that varied in the way they felt when turning, from nearly frozen to just very stiff. The second unit had two that were notably harder to turn than all the others; the other four did feel quite good and turned very smoothly.

The buttons all have a very positive feel, and each is marked with a small white strip at the bottom that makes it easy to tell if it is engaged or not. .

When our flesh hit the faders, we noticed two things: first, they didn't move as smoothly as others we've felt, and second, they make a little noise. Not noise into the mix, but noise generated from a semi-ridged membrane designed to keep out dust and perhaps even wayward adult beverages. If you are mixing with headphones or are in a live environment, then you won't hear what we're talking about. In a relatively quiet edit bay, it may be only a minor annoyance. The six-channel faders from the left control mono sources slide a little more easily than the four stereo faders to the right; a difference that Mackie does acknowledge.

The 1402 provides three types of input connections: XLR, balanced/unbalanced 1/4" TRS phono and unbalanced RCA. The XLRs all took connections smoothly and positively. The phono plugs all gripped firmly and consistently, and the RCAs felt solid..

On the output side, 1/4" TRS phono jacks provide channel inserts along with Alt outputs and control room sends. The 1402 uses balanced XLR connectors to feed a line-level main output signal to your speakers or, by the push of a switch, even another mic-level device like a second mixer. Mackie folks must have been getting enough feedback about users accidentally pushing this switch on past models, because now it is recessed and requires you to consciously depress it with a pointy object like a phono plug.