Thought I'd add a quick update.. I'm still very happy which is a good start!
Overview:
Having done around 30 shows on the desk since it's purchase I thought i'd let everyone know how i'd been getting on with it. It's worked faultlessly and without drama which has pretty much been as I'd hoped, no crashes or mid-set resets. The only thing I did do was forget to recall my 'standard' group setup with one band so trying to soundcheck them on 'acoustic' night patch made it a bit longer. I'd realised too late but fought through.
I've done gigs both at the 'Rigger' where I'm the head engineer and also with my own system on a couple of external gigs. The music types have been varied from blues, through classic rock, modern metal all the way to folk and cajun types with a number of acoustic singer / song-writer types. It seems to happily handle it all with enough features to get the production just where i need it.
Sound Quality:
It's a great sounding desk. Whether it was analogue or digital, it's a truly great sounding bit of kit. It posesses that super smooth 'modern Soundcraft' sound which I would say is at least on a par with something like a GB8 or above. Last week, I made a point to do a show back on the old A&H GL3000 as a comparison just to see what the difference was. I was quite surprised at how 'stiff' the GL sounded, the low end was still warm but it seemed to have a bit more 'honk' in the 1Khz region whilst the top end felt almost brittle. A real eye opener to be honest as I've always thought the GL to be a great sounding desk.
Ease of use:
Having used it most days since purchase, I'm finding it really very easy to get round at speed. To be fair, I don't think I'll ever get round it as fast as an analogue board but things have become pretty much 2nd nature without me having to scratch my head.
Auxes have two ways of being accessed which is really handy if you're dealing with 1 person / 1 wedge. I can either select the channel (guitar for example) and have the options of sending to Aux 1-4 and the two FX units -or- Select the Aux 1 bank then have the option send every channel (if desired) to Aux one. I can then repaet 2, 3, 4 etc.
Access to the dynamics and manipulation of is easy, straight forward and simple. It's all layed out in front of you in two button presses. 1: puts the current state of the dynamics onto the channel meters (gain reduction and gate open / closed) 2: puts the controls onto the 'E-strip' which is the row of horizontal knobs. Pressing 'dynamics' near the DRO shows the control you're manipulating visually for even greater control.
EQ is not quite the usual affair but simple enough to use anyways. It's of 3 band fully parametric design with bell filters on each band but the LF and HF can also be used as a varied frequency shelving filters if thats desired. Each channel has 100 Hz HPF so you don't need to waste a band of EQ using it as low-cut. It's sort of more flexible than the four band EQ on the GL.
Changing the parameters of the FX is quite intuitive also although remembering to press the right button when saving the patch name is important as it will name it as 'FX patch 3 ' or whatever rather than what you just spent 10 minutes dialling in. Same with the mix / snapshot saves too!
In the master section, things (such as channels, groups etc) can be queried and the desk will show you the routing or assignment which can be handy if you think things have been routed wrong. Very handy as a quick visual reference.
FX and Dynamics:
Just as good as my big rack of external gear (almost!) To be fair, the gates and compression have a certain 'flavour' to them, almost a bit DBX which suits me fine as I've used many a 166 and 266XL. They're more effective and better sounding than my Behringer gates and comps not to mention the extra parameters make detail tweaks all the better. The 2 internal Lexicon FX are a distinct improvement over my old Yamaha SPX units but not quite as clever as my TC M1. The only thing that I do miss is a tap delay facility but it does offer a multi-layered delay which is pretty 'big sounding'. I've had time to program some of 'my' patches into the FX now and I managed to build them quite quickly but more importantly managed get them sounding right usually first go. Overall, both facilties work very well, especially when it's considered they're internal and on every channel.
Quirks:
It does do the odd thing that bugs me but they don't distract from what a great bit of kit it is. 1: When a channel is muted, it doesn't mute the auxes so sometimes when I need to mute both, it's a page change to mute the aux too. 2: I'll pre-face this by saying that it's something I need to get used to, it's not the desks fault. It works using dBFS scaling so I've found '0dB' to actually to be around -10dBFS. On the panel it states 0dBFS = +18dBu but there's no way -18 is 0 on this desk. 3: All master controls don't exceed 0dB. I've seen this before on older Spirit desks and it's not too much of an issue, just wished the master L/R fader and all groups ran to +10 like most other things. Not that I usually use past plus five but to me limited to 0 just bugs me a touch. 4: Lack of extrenal analogue outputs. I have LR, Aux 1-4 and a couple of headphone and control room outs but thats about it. All group outs, direct outs and indeed pretty much any other out is digital which is great for linking into the computer but limits connectivity to other devices.
Conclusion:
It's brilliant, reasonably simple, very effective and sounds great all in one neat box. My business partner is so impressed he's pick up an original 328 to do his gigs on. I don't think he's quite up to speed with it yet but much like mine, it's pretty quick and easy to pick up.
Hope this helps anyone considering one.
