Re: Presonus 32.4.2Al
Hi Tim,
I recently did a couple of modifications to my MixWiz2, and was pretty amazed to find that in the mid 90's A&H were using single sided PCB's with through-hole parts. While my MixWiz has been completely solid since I bought it (also in the 90's), the engineering involved would rank up there with "bear skins and cave knives" compared to a digital mixer.
The skill set needed to engineer a good digital mixer is night-and-day different than that needed to create a great analog board. In-fact, I would go so far as to say that the vast majority of work on a digital board is the firmware and DSP algorithms. The A/D, D/A, physical inputs/outputs are off-the-shelf stuff with plenty of examples out in the wild on how to use them successfully.
In a previous thread somewhere I was arguing that the pre-amp design is trivial and easy to do. The idea that "MIDAS" designed pre's are any better than say A&H pre's is kind of silly. The sound of a digital mixer is almost entirely determined by firmware and DSP.
On your other point, the "great cryout" may indeed be due to lower volumes. I can't imagine how someone would not notice the kinds of issues I have read about on the Si .... and they seem to be easy to reproduce.
I remember that Presonus had some issues early on (actually I still hear about lockups now and then), but eventually got a decent reputation for reliability ..... from most users.
I wonder if the SL32.4.2AI isn't a re-write of major portions of their code in addition to being a full 32 channel mixer offering. That would account for the delay.
