Here's a cut and paste of the January 2006 Sound on Sound (UK) review. For the sake of brevity I've only included the first two and the last four paragraphs, but they give a good sense of the review.
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"Although the prodigious 32-track playback of Korg's new D3200 is enough to turn heads on its own, the company haven't rested on their laurels. They've also included a a 44-channel, 12-buss mixer, a respectable set of digital editing facilities, powerful multi-effects processing, a programmable drum machine, and MIDI control/synchronisation. The machine is no slouch on the hardware side either, with a decent array of I/O facilities and an intriguingly knobular user interface.
"The 32 playback channels are assigned to 16 hardware faders in two banks which you can switch between at the press of a button. There's also a dedicated fader for the drum machine and the Master fader which controls the overall mix level. Each track, including the stereo Master track, has seven virtual tracks for storing alternative takes or ideas. Up to 100 songs can be stored on any single drive, although there's only really space for about 20 medium-length 32-track compositions on the 40GB drive provided. Still, there's no real need to pack the drive with songs when they can be backed up to CD-RW media using the onboard burner or filed away on a PC or Mac hard drive via the rear-panel USB connector.
Multitrack Monster
"The D3200 is a pretty impressive product, albeit with a few significant flaws which threaten to undermine the rest of the designers' good work. Korg might have got away with the small screen if it was on a much simpler machine, but for a 44-channel mixer it is way too small, and no matter how you adjust the contrast knob it never seems to have enough definition. The Irony is that the software itself has been carefully designed to be as user-friendly as possible — as demonstrated by the extensive use of pictures to illustrate many of the functions. I'm sure it all looked great on the software developers' computer monitors, and must have suited
the D32XD (for which it was originally intended), but here eye strain is a definite possibility! Incorporating a larger screen, or a socket for connecting a monitor, might have added to the cost, but it would have made a dramatic difference.
"It would have been nice to have had dynamics on every channel, as on Yamaha's AW machines, particularly as that would have freed up the effects processors for other things. It's also a real shame that the compressors and gates don't have a side-chain key option — professional engineers use triggering all the time, so this is a missed opportunity to widen the product's potential.
"The short-throw faders are another negative aspect of the machine — they make small adjustments difficult, especially if something needs to move by nothing more than one decibel. It is possible to change level in tenths of a decibel on screen by turning the data wheel, but grabbing a fader is more intuitive. The halved track count in 24-bit mode, the restricted EQ on some mixer channels, and the lack of a pattern editor in the drum machine must also count against this unit.
"The D3200 does score highly in other areas though. The USB and CD-RW facilities are very well integrated into the operating software, the editing options and the array of signal inputs are impressive, and there seems to be a hardware button or software page for everything you want. ClickPoint is a nice alternative to the touchscreens Korg have tended to use in the past, and the knob matrix works effectively for controlling a whole range of different parameters. I can't think of another multitracker with anything quite as good.
"There's no denying that a lot of effort has gone into the design of this product, but I feel that a few too many cuts were made to break the £1000 barrier in the UK. Having 32 tracks is a big selling point, but I would have settled for a 24-track machine with a bigger screen, longer faders, and more dynamics processors. Nevertheless, if you have good eyesight, you should still be able to get some great results with this machine." Tom Flint, Sound on Sound 1/2006
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In my opinion you'd do well to look seriously at either the Yamaha AW1600 or
the AW2400. The 1600 has 16 tracks and the 2400 has 24 tracks with both machines main drawback being halved track counts if you record at 24 bit resolution. I've had an AW16g - the older brother of the AW1600 - for the past 5 years and found it very good sounding, easy to use and trouble-free.
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