Mackie FreePlay Reviews

My wife has been teaching music for 30 years to 4th, 5th and 6th grade music students.

At over 100 music students per class, she's been yelling over drums, trumpets, clarinets and all the other band instruments for years. She simply cannot compete with all those instruments while trying to talk with all the students while conducting . . . and there's no way she can go from class to class and carry a mixer, amp, speakers and microphone, along with sheet music and other items necessary to teach music.

Now she walks in with the battery powered FreePlay and a Countryman Wireless Earpiece and never has to compete band instruments and talking students ever again.

And there is simply no way to plug in the FreePlay while outside on the field practicing marching band instruction and yell to over 500 students at one time, until now.

Teaching from one room to another and yelling outside during marching has caused her to lose her voice constantly over the years, until now.

With approximately 10 hours of operation with one charge, she can teach all day and never lose her voice again.

She simply comes home, plugs in the FreePlay to charge at night, and be ready for another day of competing with music instruments and loud, excited students ever again.

She has two FreePlays for full physical stereo separation, so when she plugs in her Roland RD-800 and her Countryman Wireless Earpiece, she can accompany her students and speak to them without yelling . . . ever again . . . while having full stereo sound. Stereo is important for great sound, and makes her Roland RD-800 Piano sound better than a single keyboard amp in Mono.

The Macking FreePlay is about as light at a 4 slot toaster.

What else can I say?

WOW.

I love this Mackie FreePlay. I've used it for an outdoor climate change event--running on a very good long-lasting battery which was powered up by solar energy. :-) The audio quality is so good that I now use the Bluetooth feature to stream my Spotify channel into the house. Great bass and complex depth in the music. I also like the button-options to adjust the quality of the audio to the project--voice, streaming music or instrumental performance. I'm grateful, man.

The Mackie FreePlay is a great all in one system! Has a great sound, is lightweight. The 4-channel mixer comes in handy for split-track CD's for the church choir. The Bluetooth option is great and you can control the system from your phone. Customer service was exceptional!

I've had this product for a month now and as a guitar/vocal entertainer have really put it through several applications. From small rooms to the beach gig on the Gulf of Mexico it really does what the video says it does and more! I run my laptop on the stereo line input, mike on channel #1 and my Strat running thru my Digitech RP1000 on Channel #2 and the Freeplay really does the job! I use the mixer app on my S5 smartphone which is virtually a carbon copy of the Mackie FX8 mixer and the effects are also the same. On bigger gigs I run a pair of Mackie 15 Thumps, FX8 mixer and a srm 150 for a monitor. But if you run the Freeplay off the tape out or headset jack to the Freeplay line in you'll be amazed at the improvement of the overall sound coverage in a room or large venue just by putting it on a stand behind you.
I was thinking about a small amp for jamming. I plugged the RP1000 from the headphone jack to the Freeplay stereo line in and WOW! It sounds great! It cured that problem.
I highly recommend you call Patrick at Sweetwater and buy it.
You won't regret it!!!!!!

This is an excellent pro quality live sound box that has everything that I need to connect two XLR Mics or Guitar, Aux In, wireless Bluetooth music streaming, and full wireless control of the entire system including volume, effects, equalizer etc.

Before this I tagged along my Mackie Mixer, Power Amp, Speakers to give a live performance.
Also, I was always at the mercy of the sound guys who tweaked sound as per their liking :(.

Now I just carry this small boom box 100% independent system FreePlay with my professional Shure Mic, a speaker stand and my phone ! The best part is that I have full control of my sound the way I want it to sound, so no more dependency on the sound guy !

I just used this at a New Year's Day party and people were amazed with the quality of sound and how I was controlling it all remotely ! It's very easy to use and sounds great if you know the basics of what each control does to your sound. If we don't know how to control the buttons then even a $10,000 system will sound crappy.

This is an excellent system if you are performing at a small venue of up to 100 people.
I still have a bigger system that I will continue to use it at bigger venues.

Above all, go for this Freeplay, you too will love it !
Sweetwater gives two year warranty so that is a bonus to purchase from them.

I wish Mackie had put a slot for speaker pole built in, instead of an optional wedged plastic that I had to buy for $69 that is good if you are keeping speaker on the floor.

Also, I wish there was a Phantom power on the Freeplay.
I can't use my professional condenser mic without an additional power supply :(

I did have a minor issue with connecting Mackie Connect App same as John B. had posted in the review section. Fortunately for me, it was a very easy fix by a Mackie technician and I did not have to return the unit to Sweetwater.

I play solo acoustic guitar and small group acoustic music. Got this unit several weeks ago. Have had a chance to put it through it paces. Overall for the money and size it's a great little unit. Always, my main concern is sound quality. If it doesn't sound good, all the bells and whistles don't amount to anything. I play a martin OM with a fishman blend pickup and use the fishman platinum pro preamp eq box. The tone is quite good with this setup. It is plenty loud enough for any small audience situation. Not for a wild and crazy bar, but that' not what it's intended for. Portable, easy setup and take down makes the unit shine.

I use the bluetooth mixing app to control it. Able to control everything from this tight little app on my iPhone 6+ as well as stream anything over from the phone. Full EQ, verb and delay can all be mixed and controlled from the app.

Overall I give it a thumbs up.

The best way to describe this PA is awesome. It has a lot of power and very pure sound comes out of it.
I am a pro saxophonist and make a living playing at restaurants, weedings, hotels etc. most of the weddings ceremonies now are at the beach, so I look forward for the battery option, I tested at home with battery power and believe me it respond perfect. For what I do that cover audiences of 80 to 100 people works great. My setup is backing tracks and saxophone.
The effects are superb, and controling all with the app on my iphone via Bluetooth is very handy and work flawlessly.
Thanks to Robert Williams at Sweetwater for always provide great info and handle all very fast.
Now looking foward to buy the lithium battery pack, the stand adapter and the carry bag.
Thanks Sweetwater
I am super happy with this little beast.

I bought this for busking at Farmers' Markets and when I first used it I was really impressed with the vocal quality of using the microphone but couldn't get a loud enough signal when plugging my pre-amp equipped acoustic guitar into the 1/4' input. It then occurred to me to try a battery operated Direct Box to convert the signal coming in from my guitar and use the XLR input (which has a much hotter signal). PERFECT! Now the guitar sounds as good as the vocal! I now love it! I have used it with much success playing open-air markets and think the effects sound good and the mixing app is a home run to make adjustments on the fly. This is perfect for busking! Just buy a direct box (the only reason it didn't get 5 stars). I like the ART XDirect...works perfectly for $.

I have been doing a lot of small restaurant and piano bar gigs lately. I had been taking out my behringer keyboard amp which was just too heavy, and does not sound that great either. I have also used Mackie SRM450's for years and know how great Mackie speakers sound. This looked like the perfect solution for a simple vocal + piano set up in low volume environments, and it is. The speaker, like all Mackie active speakers, is almost perfectly tuned. Built in reverb is good enough, and the 3 band eq and mixer app make an external mixer unneeded. I purchased the kickstand accessory which does the job but is a little awkward and the thumb bolt connection is a really weak spring loaded type thin that can come undone. The boombox look is kinda weird at first but makes perfect sense from a practical standpoint, and it grows on you after a while. Bottom line: it sounds really good for vocals and accompaniment, and music playback. Could work really well for general public address up to maybe 150 people if elevated, more if they are being quiet. I also bought the bag and battery. They are worth the extra spend.

Awesome lil' all-in-one PA system. I am a saxophonist that plays quite a few small banquets, receptions, etc. The FreePlay is small and battery powered, but don't let the small size fool you! It is packed with power!!! My other battery powered PA did not have effects built it like the FreePlay does. Built in bluetooth makes playing with backing tracks a cinch! Being able to make adjustments to my volume and effects on the fly via phone app really rocks! The only thing preventing me from giving this awesome little speaker 5 stars is, it doesn't have phantom power which makes using a condensor mic tricky when you are trying to use battery power only.

I would had given this speaker a 5 star rating, but I ran into a little issue when I received it from Sweetwater. Everything was working fine and was easy to setup. I had it working and paired via Bluetooth with my iPhone 6 Plus while listening to Spotify and Pandora. I saw that there was an App available to download which gives you even more control and settings for you Macki freeplay speaker. That's when the issue arises, the MackieConnect App will not connect to my speaker. It was weird because I can connect to it via Bluetooth to listen to music but was unable to control it using the app. It would not go pass the DEMO screen and according to the manual and videos online it's suppose to say MIX when you're connected. I called Mackie tech support immediately thinking I was doing something wrong and explained the problem to them. They asked me to try connecting the app with another phone, which I did and it still would not work. Tech support said that the speaker has been out for sale to the public for 6-7 months and that they never heard of this issue. So I called Sweetwater and a replacement was issued. Unfortunately for my luck they were out of stock for another two weeks. Once I received the new speaker, I had no issues. I was able to connect to the app with no problems. Very happy with this speaker. The MackieConnect app makes a big difference in sound cause you can adjust your highs, mids and lows. Thanks Sweetwater!

It is a great idea, but implementation is a little weak. My biggest gripe is that testing with multiple dynamic microphones on the hotter 20db XLR inputs it just isn't very loud even with the unit pegged. Put something with a mic preamp like a TC Helicon play live in front and it's a completely different experience. More than loud enough and sounds great. I like this combination and will use it this way. It's just disappointing that it doesn't sound like this without an extra pedal/preamp.

After two years being the owner of a Helicon Voicesolo FX 150, the great advantage of the Freeplay in comparison is the Bluetooth connectivity, but at the time of the volume, no, no way, the helicon with only 150W just kicked away the freeplay. Unfortunately, for the first there is not even an app which you can at least control the device. Because I am a professional singer, I did this test: I took both devices to a friend's farm, outside the home he did sing karaoke songs first with the Mackie, then after several songs, I changed only the device, leaving exactly the microphone and the TV, disconnecting one and connecting everything to the other. Man, the Helicon really kicked, at the point that some lady from a far away house came to see if it was a real singer or just the music (yeah, my friend is good!). We were about 30 people, they coincided in the opinion favorable to the Helicon, the Mackie has a deep bass but mentioning even in the box that has 300W, against the 150W of the Voicesolo? Mmm, someone is not telling the truth, BTW the Mackie is good since my daughter who is a music teacher for little kids always works at low levels. All that she wanted was the convenient BT, the battery feature is a plus for her because sometimes she gathers the kids in one side of the classroom and to find a nearby outlet was a pain in the neck, so Freeplay welcome!

We do early childhood music classes and we need something that can blast the guide music track so it can be heard a dozen three and four year olds pounding on four 8" x 22" gathering drums. The Free play gets the job done but we have to max out the on-board aux volume and we get a lot of hiss. And we're using a patch cord into the FreePlay instead of Bluetooth. By comparison we use a Roland AC 30 in one of our class sites. It doesn't have Bluetooth so we have to connect the iPad using a patch cord 1/8 at one that splits to two TS jacks at the other end. Each of the TS goes into the two channels on the AC 30. With the iPad on the same volume level as we use on the FreePlay, we can run the AC 30 at 50% volume and it's louder than the Mackie at full volume--and no hiss. I don't know how they're measuring at Mackie but the 30 watts on the Roland AC 30 is giving more volume with no hiss than the alleged 150 watts RMS on the FreePlay.
On the positive side, the FreePlay can be used with either D batteries or a rechargeable battery, a feature we need when we do demos and can't rely on every site to have easy AC access. The remote control via phone or pad is also nice to have if you need it. I use the remote control feature more for solo gigs than in the classroom.

I recently purchased one of these units thinking it would be suitable for small venue performance as a monitor with a Bose L1 system I was very disappointed that the sound is so small, 350 watts? not a chance, it is more like a cheap boombox, the vocals sound great but guitars just don't come through. It will be just fine for street-corner busking but not much else.

I was really looking forward to enjoying the hype of this product and quickly set it up and used it on a small club date. Though it worked, I was not able to hear myself as well as my old SRM 150 which I had recently fried. My bluetooth pairing was not smooth and it frequently just disconnected so I had no control except for the rear knob which I had to try to adjust while playing and singing. I also had an occasional spike of high volume which was not acceptable. I was also disappointed in finding an external power supply instead of a direct line cord. The price of the battery and case is also a bit of a sticker shock. My overall feeling is this is just a little better that a boom box and doesn't suit my professional needs. I would only recommend this to someone who really needs a battery operated unit and doesn't mind spending and extra $165.00 for the case, battery and pole mount adapter.

Bluetooth connectivity is great and the free play provides a good sound quality. Battery operation allows for freedom of use yet I am stumped on how to use this product?? do I sit it on the ground where the sound gets lost or tote a table around with my gear to set the freeplay on? A simple pole mount would make this product easier to use.

Sound is a tad echoey and at times flat.Some regret with this purchase...