dbx DriveRack Studio ?

[Nerve Nickels]

Anybody using it???

Is this product bullshit or is it actually a good option for an optimum reference set-up?

http://www.driverack.com/studio.htm

[tINY]

Depends how much they want for it. I'm guessing they'll want about $2.5K. Then, you need to get 5-6 channels of amp and build your own or hack a pair of monitors.

If you are going to that much time, troubel and expense, you might want to check these guys out too...

http://www.deqx.com/dsp-product/pdc26.html




-tINY

[Nerve Nickels]

tiny, nice link...


sweetwaters price:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DriveRackStu/

[tINY]

That's less costly than I would have guessed. As long as you can ditch the presets and control the x-over, EQ, and compression parameter-by-parameter (I hate to say "manually") then it should be a pretty good way to improve your monitors.



-tINY

[Drumsound]

I did a record this summer at a remote location. Caldo 71 brought me in to help. We took his entire rig to a house. He has a drive-rack and he swears by it. He says it helps his mixes translate and that he can hear what's going on in his mix better. He used the measurement mic and ran pink noise and let the drive rack do its thing.

I could not put my finger on it but I think that things was screwing with the sound of the speakers and the room. I felt there was some kind of phase anomaly. I felt uncomfortable with the thing. AND it doesn't have a bypass switch. That really pissed me off.

I'll get Caldo 71 to stop by and comment.

[Caldo71]

Yeah, Drumsound thought he heard some kind of digital funnyness going on that he couldn't put his finger on...I can't say that I did personally, but I'm used to mixing in the box and Drumsound's rig is fully analog, so it's hard to say...he may have been hearing something I'm just not sensitive to...either the DriveRack or just the converters on my MOTU stuff or the digital summing or some other digital artifact somewhere in the chain.

The bottom line is that it IS a DIGITAL device (A/D and then D/A), so SOMETHING less than ideal is going to be happening in there for sure...particularly in a $600 box where you wouldn't expect totally pristine components....and as DrumSound mentioned...no bypass.

BUT...this is what I WILL say as I am a devotee regardless:

A.) Since pinking my control room with the DriveRack and then saving that preset to use as my studio EQ, my mixes translate from control room to car stereo in ONE SHOT with no back-and-forth bullshit where I have to re-EQ the master, burn a new CD, and go test it in the car and the boom box and do that shit four times. What I hear in the control room for the most part is what I hear when I burn a CD and try it in the real world. And I mix in a room that has LOTS of problems, and this used to be a big struggle for me before.

B.) If there are indeed some converter or phase issues, I DON'T CARE, because it's just basically a fancy EQ that I stick before my power amp and monitors...it doesn't ever make it into the mixdown chain, so it's not coloring my final product in any concrete way besides how I percieve and EQ the audio when I'm mixing.

C.) It has all these other bells and whistles besides the pinking function that I DO NOT USE...those other features were kind of the key selling points of their sleazy ad campaign for the product that turned a lot of people off, but my monitors/power amp aren't even on the list of ones that it's supposed to be able to calibrate to, and I could give a crap about it's output limiting and all the other stuff. I'm very wary of any of those other features as they could do exactly the opposite of what I really wanted...a neutral listening environment. Really for me it's worth the price just for the self-pinking deal, and the bottom line is that it's helped my mixes translate a lot so that's my spiel.

[Drumsound]

I didn't even think that it could be an AD/DA issue. Very interesting. Does it have a word clock input. It would be interesting to see how it reacts when clocked to an outside source.

[Nerve Nickels]

Thank you Caldo and Tony,

Looks like a TOOL I might look into as an extra 'check' like you stated...it is cheap enough...

to bad No wordclock, No digital I/O...

I'll look to see if there is anything else on the market for pink test's w/ programble eq to follow...

I'll DL it's manual and see what it's do'in...

thanks for postin