Versatility, versatility
I've found a new use recently for my trusty old VF16 that had been stored away for couple of years when I and five of my colleacues decided to form a band. Before we bought a decent PA system couple of weeks ago we used to rehearse in one of company's conference rooms plugging everything (electric drums, 2x Pod, BassPod, synth, sax and vocals) directly to VF16 and monitoring with headphones powered with a cheap Behringer headphoneamp.
What a great way to rehearse! Just hit the record button and you'll have instant recording of your rehearsals to analyze afterwards. After two months and about 10 rehearsals we were ready to perform a 50 minute gig playing cover songs before a crowd of 300 colleagues which I consider pretty good progress since there were two of us who had never played in a band before yet alone played a gig and two who had appeared just once before an audience of 20 people.
I just can't stop to admire the foresight of those engineers at Fostex who designed the VF16(0) platform ten years ago. What other SIAB of those days has remained so useful for almost 10 years? OTOH I can't understand why they dumped this successful platform instead of updating it with something like USB connectivity, 24bit recording and SSD disk to bring it up to meet the today's requirements.
