| Hey DW. A fair amount of venom in your comments. Regardless of name and/or the morality of a business doing a phoenix from difficult economic circumstances the issue should be the quality or not of the product. I feel I need to add a dissenting view.
Your comments regarding the DFC are interesting. When Siemans merged AMS and Neve together they had a problem as both were producing digital desks that had zero common technology. The Logic series of consoles were simple to use, stable and flexible in regard to sample rates, pull downs and so forth. These desks had very advanced digital technology but were a bit weak in regard to analogue. They suffered from having expensive hardware, so users needed to engineer around weaknesses created by conservative purchasing rather than inherent issues with the products.
The Capricorn had a rather limited and simple digital platform. But, oh my the analogue side was great. The Capricorn held some level of respect in the music industry, but was not really economical to build and had real operational issues in the digital chain. So the question was, whose technology would dominate after the merger? It made sense to bolt the analogue front end of the Capricorn on a Logic and get the best of both worlds and that is indeed what the first Libra’s were. I frankly loved the sound of mine but the Frankenstein arrangement was doomed from the start. The biggest problem was that the Neve converters could not deal with anything other the absolute 44.1 or 48k. So the desks were useless in any picture context where 44.056 and other variations are commonplace. (Skywalker had what looked to me to be a Capricorn surface on two Logic backend towers, I assume to overcome these issues). So it was not long before all of the Neve technology made way for the tried and basically reliable Logic platform. Your comments about the products coming out of Neve development are a bit wide of the mark.
The DFC was a development of a Logic 2 that was intended to overcome some operational shortcoming that prevented the Logic being as friendly for film mixing as users such as myself would have liked. We installed a Logic 2 into a film mix room in 1995 with considerable success. But in 1998 the DFC variant became the first fully viable digital film mix console anybody was making and facilities, including ours, bought like ‘em like belladonna at a bikers convention. In essence the DFC is just a Logic 2 with a different Tran base. In the back it is pretty much the same, save for the Encore automation. Encore did appear on a few Logic consoles including the desks at Decca and Air, but it was not until the Libra and DFC did the encore become the standard. By the late 1990’s the backend of all AMS desks was the same hardware with just different surfaces. In fact our last DFC was really just a new surface that we bolted onto our Libra tower. So development of the DFC did not hinder development of the Libra. Quite the opposite. We actually took a really early Logic 2 backend (with horizontal SSP’s that we bought for spares) and put a desk together with that Libra Front end left over from the DFC upgrade. It worked fine. The platforms are all the same and develop in concert.
You comment that AMS wanted to jump on the bandwagon that was being led by the SSL ‘A’ platform for Live. The Libra Live predates the A platform by a number of years. NBC replaced their 4 and 6k’s with Libra lives because there was no digital SSL product available, thus ending (or pausing) their long association with Oxfordshire. As I recall the first Libra Live console went to the David Letterman theatre. The installation specification called for a Mackie analogue console running in parallel as a fail-safe measure; as this would be the first live to air application of any digital console. I seem to recall that the Macke was decommissioned not long after once confidence in a digital platform was established. So I think that SSL followed Burnley into that market.
I am an end user. I have no relationship with AMS other then I like the gear and keep buying it. I Love our three DFC’s, the Libra and all my old Logic 2 and 3’s. The technology moves forward and maintains a sonic edge over every other digital product I use. I have owned many SSL’s as well, and am making an album right now on an old 4K G and am loving it. But digitally SSL just has not been able to compete in my view. (Although I like the SSL 300. Not because of the sound but the workflow is great).
I know a some users have suffered engineering nightmares with AMS. No argument there. But we have accepted that when you commit to leading edge developing technology you either get in early to influence development and be prepared to put in some late nights, or wait until the product is no longer in development and enjoy the stability that comes with waiting. Can eager engineers desperate to get their hands on the latest technology understand this before they send a purchase order?
Buying an AMS digital desk is a bit like buying a customer formula 1 car. You can’t expect to just jump in and drive it. You have to engineer it to your specific needs and driving style and keep doing so. If you do it well you will have a machine that will out perform anything else there is. If however you simply want to go to the shops to buy some tea, perhaps a Mini is more what you need. I understand they build those on Oxford as well.
Dyno
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