Yamaha AW4416?

[prslunatic]

The new Yamaha AW4416 digital workstation looks very appealing. Does anyone have any input on this particular unit? So far I've only read about it and was wondering if any of you with strong recording backgrounds could shed some light on this thing. From reading about its specs, it seems to be a pretty powerful studio and somthing that I'm carefully considering. If you think you need to read up on it before making a response, go to www.yamaha.com for all the info. Any thoughts are tremendously appreciated.

[rjt]

A lot of people will try to talk you out of a stand alone DAW and into a computer DAW. Just to clear the air about that. I am not one of them. If you would like a stand alone DAW, the Yamaha seems to have pretty good specs. It has 16 tracks of 48khz 24 bit recording, a lot of the other new ones, like the Akai, lose tracks as you add recording specs. It has a higher bit rate processing and more faders (which are motorized), so it has some feature which should make it stack up nicely against the Roland VS 1880. With two card slots for ADAT, additional inputs etc, it has a lot more power as a mixer than many stand alone DAWS. That being said, it may well sell for about $3,500 with the CD and is about twice as heavy and big as the Roland and Akai. I have heard the Roland and the new Fostex but have not heard the new Akai or Yamaha. If it sounds good (and Yamaha makes a good digital mixer) it could be the cream of the current crop.

[The Green Hornet]

Yea Verily:

But, how long will it take the average normal music buff, like me, to learn how to run the Yamaha rig? I checked it out on the web and the presentation was just like a Yamaha manual.

Green Hornet

[rjt]

Good question. I have often used eith a tape machine or for a couple of tracks, a computer in the past. All of the fancy new software has a pretty steep learning curve. I just bought a Dakota card and Tango AD/DA converter for the computer and it came with Cool Edit...that will be a task to learn. I have my name on a Yamaha pre-order list because I need some portability. Normally, stand alone DAWS take less time to learn than one or more complex programs, and are a bit harder to work. If you use them a lot, they aren't too bad. I have a Yamaha digital mixer which I liked, so I hope the new DAW will be great!!