I couldn't afford this one, either, but I lucked into a B-stock unit fresh out of refurb- it'd been in a tradeshow booth somewhere, and was in absolutely pristine shape. But since it was B-stock, I landed it for somewhat less than the current retail damage, thanks to Kurt over at Full Compass. I'd asked him back in July to keep an eye out for any B-stock units, and he came through just in time for Christmas...
And just in time to mix a couple of projects, too. Since this is the "review" forum, I suppose I ought to review the piece... It is clearly a _massive_ improvement over the Studio 32. Massive may be he understatement of the day: it is a pro-quality piece. However, it's not without its nits, minor though they may be...
Expected plusses: pres are very nice, and _quiet_. Much better EQ. The faders damn near feel like real faders, and they're 100mm throw instead of the little 60mm nubs on the usual compact board. Fullsize layout: there's room to reach all the knobs and buttons. No mixer should *ever* be without mic/line switching (having both inputs active at once on a channel is a crime against nature). Tape level trims allow the fader to be run in its sweet spot for mixdown. Good signal routing, with enough busses for comfortable A/B mixing, and separate headphone sends (wet or dry). It's nice being able to move at least a little EQ onto the B mix.
*Unexpected* plusses: The whole board is easily 12-18dB quieter throughout than the Studio 32, maybe even more. I wasn't expecting it to be that much quieter, but I _like_ it. Summing amps and line drivers have headroom for _days_, courtesy of the +-17.5 volt power rails (instead of the +-15 from the Studio 32). The machine control/mute automation section absolutely rocks: first time I ever had a board with good machine control built in. First time I ever had _any_ machine control, come to think of it... Hell, it's worth it just for the "return to start" button. I got out of the biz before autolocators were either reliable or affordable by mere mortal man, so having one in the big-ass middle of my own little ol' board board (and one that _works_!) is an outright trip. It is downright bizarre to be able to punch go on the board, and see the 1624 and Cubase both obediently start up... I don't need 3 arms any more!
I didn't think I'd use the mute automation much- fat chance. It is easy to use and set up, and it reduces the workload dramatically while mixing. Once again, it's worth it because the first thing I did was set up snapshot 1 as "all mute". Patched it wrong and got a feedback loop going? Recall 1... Silence. Ahhh. Note to self: always leave snapshot 1 queued up when repatching, so the "recall" button can be a panic button! The signal routing to foldback, headphones, and the control room is more flexible than I'd thought, and reconfiguring for tracking takes 6 less patch cables.
Minuses: Whose freakin' idea was it to build a _cooling fan_ into the power supply? That's outta here, as soon as I can get around to it. My supply has an aero resonance at about 400Hz: the variable speed fan hunts around for equilibrium, and when it finds it, it sites there and hoots, quietly. I'll build a convection cooled replacement, and free up 2 rack slots. The inserts are wired ring-send, instead of tip-send like the Alsesis, so I had to rewire all my insert-to-bay connections. Small spuds, that. It's delivered with the channel metering set up to monitor the tape path, so the first thing you do is pull it apart and change the jumpers to monitor the channel path instead... The timecode reader is just a little dodgy in record/playback with the setup I'm running- I'll have to swap over to SMPTE from MTC to make it really work perfectly. Haven't been able to get the machine control to properly control Cubase alone, yet. The board controls the 1624, and Cubase slaves to that. But I want to be able to use the jog/shuttle control with Cubase when not using the 1624. Track arming doesn't work with either the 1624 or Cubase, but that's not really a minus- I wasn't expecting it to... Hell, I wasn't actually expecting _any_ of the machine control stuff to work! I'll eventually pull the meterbridge apart and replace the Tokyo-by-night, curved LED main mix meters (which are completely redundant) with proper analog VUs, with yellowy backlighting and real moving needles and all.. I'm a VU guy, not a PPM guy!
I like being pleasantly surprised, and this unit exceeded my expectations by a sizable margin. It is very efficient to work with, right out of the box. In a couple of months I'll be able to do some _damage_ , I think. When I think that it cost less than 1/4 what the board did for my original studio back in 1981, and how much more it _does_, the mind just flat boggles.
Well you don't have to but I'd like it!
