Hi. Thanks for sharing your impressions!
What size is your frame and what modules are loaded? Share some pics of it here? What serial number and manufacture date?
Headroom is a bit low?? It’s +6dBu nominal, and I think can handle +23dBu cleanly, and that’s without the optional input transformers…add another (I *think*) 6dBu to that with the transformers. What inputs are we talking about? My experience is it’ll take whatever you throw at it. Am I correct you have balanced sources connected to it? Don’t think of the 928 as a color box. Think of it as command central for whatever exists that is connected to it, clean or colorful, and it’ll not get in the way, no matter what buss or path you’re using, of whatever defines your sources or outboard gear. That’s the first beauty of it. But there IS opportunity for color with the 928, not on the input side, but on the output side on the master busses and/or mono groups with the hybrid output drivers. So setup your inputs for clean signal management, but on the summing and output side try really driving the output levels. It’s not crazy obvious, but to my ear when you push the summing outputs the LF and HF ranges stay clean but the midrange gets this bite on the edges of the transients and leading program material…a dirty bite that brings a nice presence to the LF and HF material. I absolutely love it. And it does it without breaking a sweat. It’s pretty sexy. The circuit design is pretty sexy too…high quality transformer output nestled in the feedback loop of a high quality opamp-based driver…it’s slick. And the EQ…right…it’s clean…I feel like the hi shelf filter has a nice sweetness to it though and what I really like about the EQ section overall is I grab the knob that should address what I want addressed, turn it and *boom* it does exactly what I expect and need it to do. No fishing around because the EQ doesn’t sound good…I hear the problem frequency or mash, I know (for instance) it’s in the low-mid filter range, raise the gain, sweep the center frequency…there it is…cut…done. Hey that sounds better…on to the next issue. No drama, no “well that didn’t help”…just boomdone. It’s one of the easiest most satisfying EQ sections I’ve used on a console. Yeah it could be more complex…but then it would probably be too much for me. 4 sweepable bands with hi and lo shelf and two mid peaking filters is enough for me, plus the fact the mono input modules add switchable Q settings on the mid bands, and both mono and stereo modules have the 70Hz switchable HPF. There are three film caps (six on the stereo modules) that set the frequency of the HPF. I bought a bunch of film caps and dip headers so I can make up plug-in cap arrays to easily change the cutoff frequency of the HPF. So at some point I’ll mess with that. No it’s not as convenient as a swept filter, but better than fixed. Regarding the group compressors and master limiters, yes this console was built for the broadcast industry, so the capacitors that set the attack time range make for an overall short attack range. This may, depending on the program or source content, make the processors seem less “musical” because of the fast attack. The attack timing is program dependent, using VCA circuitry. But those caps that set the range of that attack timing are what determines that range. At some point I want to mess with those caps to increase the attack time range and see if that makes the compressor/limiter more musical. I will say though, my first impression was like yours, but that was right after first-blush impressions and all I had available to test with was program material that was already through post production. It’s really a different story when working with raw sources. Maybe that doesn’t apply to your experience but I feel less urgency these days to mess with it. But I have spare modules so eventually I’ll mess with it. It’s a high quality dynamics processor, but it seems it gets a little bit of a bad rap because, in my opinion, it’s misunderstood. It may not behave as one typically expects because, I believe it was designed with the broadcast world in mind. I’ve come to like it better as I’ve gotten to know it better, and additionally I’ll see what happens when I mess with it a little and adjust the attack time range.
