Hi, all,
I'd like post my first ever message on gearslutz, and share my first few minutes of testing with Trident 8t that I received a few days ago (finally, after 3 months of waiting!)
I haven't been able to put the mixer through "real life" tests yet, as my new studio isn't yet finished so I'm currently able to give just some first hand impressions and as I don't own a Toft console, I cannot do any direct comparison between the two, but I hope this is useful and interesting to some people!
The console does indeed look very very good! It's really even better looking in real life than in the pictures. As this is gearslutz forum I assume it's almost as important to some people as the sound
I tried running some line level bass guitar and some music that I consider to be well produced (read: older Red Snapper stuff etc) through the console. The bass guitar sounded very good, even without tweaking any EQ it sounded round and analogue (which is something that I like). Also, music played through the console sounded good with tight bottom end and quite nice analogue, smooth sound.
As the EQ was one of the main reasons I got the console in the first place, it was naturally my second test. I actually like it quite a lot. I compared the EQ quickly to TL Audio M3 Tubetracker EQ, and I found it to be much better sounding, especially on the low-mid and high-mid areas.
Next, quickly I tested the mic preamps. As I don't have my new vocal booth set up yet, and I didn't have anything else but Röde NTK and AKG 414 XLS mics to test the console with, I cannot say anything about the real quality of the preamps yet, except that they sounded a bit tight on the upper mids (I also tested the same vocalist quickly through the Tubetracker, which has very smooth, round, tubey sound, which may just suit our vocalist, and especially the two test mics better in this case). I'll try to compare the preamps with some Neumann mics, different vocalists, guitar etc. and decent vocal booth later.
However, the build quality is something that I'm really concerned of. When I received the mixer, it already had one push-button missing (!) which is quite amazing considering that I hadn't even gotten it out of the package yet! The aux/pan/eq pots feel REALLY cheap, they feel like they're directly connected to the circuit board, and not to the case of the mixer (or something, I'm not a technical guy!) so I'm really worried on breaking them! Even the pots in our $50 Phonic 8-channel "mixer" (used as headphone amp) feel of being much better quality. Also, one of the case screws was screwed in really badly (I'll post some pics later).
So, my first feelings are a bit mixed, soundwise I can probably think of using the console very well for some applications, but the build quality is something I find quite unbearable for a mixer of this price.
I'll post some more reports + pics later as soon as we get the studio finished, which should be in a few weeks.
br,
Sami