Hi,
I've been looking closely at the n12, seems very interesting. I've read the manual, went to see it at a dealer, but no real hands-on experience yet. Here are my thoughts so far:
Pluses:
+ Excellent concept of merging analogue style mixing with DAW functionality.
+ Reassuring design implementation, putting the ADCs and DACs as close to the analogue signal interface as possible, and emulating analogue-style processing in the digital domain.
+ Signal processing takes place within the mixer itself, independent of computer.
+ Simple and quick compressor user interface.
+ Flexible routing, inserts on mic channels.
+ One function per knob!
+ Great subjective look and feel. Sturdy, professional, classic ... okay, even conservative, but sometimes (not very often) that might be a good thing
Minuses:
- No support for out-of-the-box analogue summing
- Only one Aux bus (although thankfully separate from reverb bus)
- No channel EQ bypass button
- "Wet" monitoring usefulness highly dependent upon system latency. Will it still work at 96kHz sampling rates?
- Development of integration features relies on cooperation of separate organizations. Will all future versions of Cubase include support for the n-series?
Best,
-joachim