It's the Alesis, but I haven't fully checked out bassmankr's comments yet, not sure if you can monitor in
or out full stop, or whether you can monitor both simultaneously so long as pairs are not doubling up as in and out.
Got to check.
I've got the 9652, no limitations. Same system as the raydat minus the extra adat port and aes/ebu.
XR seems like overkill now though to be honest, I think I underestimated the used prices on an XR!
Anyway, buying new, an SSL alphalink AX costs £1,300 as opposed to £1,700 for an XR. I doubt the SSL converters are going to be inferior to the XR, but really don't know.
Maybe I'm being greedy but 24 channels doesn't really seem to be enough!
It's annoying because even with the raydat you'd have to get another 8 channel adat converter on top of the SSL for example to make the most of it.
It's academic for me at the mo as I'm not in a position to buy, but I like to have these things figured out in advance.
I want a mixer, got to feed it. Would actually work out cheaper to get another used 9652 and the SSL (preferably used), keep my ada8000 and have enough potential in/out to keep me happy for quite a long time, probably forever.
It's either this route or wait for a decent hybrid mixer that will take a decent amount of adat channels, give me nice analogue eq and 100mm faders, then all I need is a couple of 9652s, the mixer and a nice stand-alone stereo D/A fed from the mixer's s/pdif control room outs.
Perhaps the A+H R24 will deliver, but there's still a lot of attraction in a nice second-hand well-regarded analogue mixer doing it the first way.
It's actually less stressful considering these things when you
don't have the cash to buy yet! (But not quite as satisfying
)