Soundtracs is also pretty clean and extremely quiet even in my older home with crappy power. The Soundtracs has more depth while the Mackie is clean with less depth. To my ears the Soundtracs sounds way closer to big studio consoles I've used than a Mackie does. It's even been moved around quite a bit and no problems. On the flip side, I haven't had any problems whatsoever with my Sondtracs and I've owned it for several years. I could re-seat those ribbon cables and some problems would go away.for a few weeks and then come back. A year later, the main channels started to do it too. My 8 buss only lasted maybe 6 to 9 months after being purchased new before Mix B and several Auxes became intermittent. And don't forget the bad ribbon cable issue with the Mackies that happens all the time. In addition, there is a phase reverse switch on the Topaz while there is none on the Mackies.
It also has individual phantom on each channel unlike the Mackies "groups of 8" phantom switching. The Soundtracs has dedicated Mute and Solo for both Main and monitor channels which the Mackie does not. I still wouldn't get a Mackie over the Topaz though. Some at studios where I used to work and a lot on my own. The Soundtracs will stomp the Mackie as far as sound, EQ and features go. I don't know firsthand, but I've heard the Topaz to be quite serviceable, anf a similarly sized one for a similar price would be worth looking into, IMO. Like any tool, I suppose, it's the user that really defines it, but for $700 if you need a 24 channel in-line desk, that's a good deal. (XM radio lately seems to really agree, too. I have friends who use one in their home studio (and I mix their records for them there, too) and the recordings aren't just passable - they rock - if I do say so myself. It's otherwise a pretty clean mixer that, while not imparting much 'character' of its own, can get the job done well while kepping out of the way, for the most part. I've found that it's when the board is pushed to extremes is when aspects of it really fall apart - cranking the EQ too hard (boosting, not cutting), running the busses or pres at the top of their range, and so on - it's a headroom issue, really, and if one observes good gain-staging practices it's not too tough to not run into. No, it's not the best EQ around, but if you don't try anything too severe with it, it's quite useable. For 700 bucks, if it's in good working order, you should be able to make very good recordings with it.
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