Sound devices 552 mixer & SD/SDHC recorder

[d1rtynyc]

552 Production Mixer | Sound Devices, LLC

Sound Devices does it again with a amazing portable 5 channel mixer with a built in 2 channel high definition SD/SDHC recorder.

[tsvisser]

is $2895 the correct MSRP?

[rumleymusic]

The going street price for the 442 is over $2400, so I doubt the MSRP would be $2895, maybe in GBP, not in dollars. This adds an extra preamp, conversion, and recording, my guess is somewhere between $4000-$5000 logically.

Edit: Though I see nothing about lundahl transformers and the figures are not as impressive as their other models, maybe some corners were cut, and the price really is $2895.

[Baithak]

Originally Posted by tsvisser

is $2895 the correct MSRP?

Sound Devices 552 Portable Five-Channel Mixer - Mixers - Trew Audio

Baithak

[NicStage]

Originally Posted by rumleymusic

The going street price for the 442 is over $2400, so I doubt the MSRP would be $2895, maybe in GBP, not in dollars. This adds an extra preamp, conversion, and recording, my guess is somewhere between $4000-$5000 logically.

Edit: Though I see nothing about lundahl transformers and the figures are not as impressive as their other models, maybe some corners were cut, and the price really is $2895.

The price is $2895 and no corners were cut. 5 Lundahl transformers.

Nic Stage,
Sound Devices, LLC

[yoink]

Originally Posted by NicStage

The price is $2895 and no corners were cut. 5 Lundahl transformers.

Nic Stage,
Sound Devices, LLC

When is it officially on-sale? I noticed no Owner's Manual was online yet. We just got a quote on a 302 & 702 yesterday!

[NicStage]

Originally Posted by yoink

When is it officially on-sale? I noticed no Owner's Manual was online yet. We just got a quote on a 302 & 702 yesterday!

Owner's manual will be up before the end of the month. Dealers will be getting demo units around the end of the month and we'll start shipping orders in October.

[d1rtynyc]

Originally Posted by NicStage

Owner's manual will be up before the end of the month. Dealers will be getting demo units around the end of the month and we'll start shipping orders in October.

Awesome.
I am telling my customers about now.

[yoink]

It is an amazing product at an amazing price. We're going to contact our dealer to see how we can get in line.

[reflixtinian]

awesome

[arimaka]

very nice!! wish it could multi-track using it's 5 inputs...

[JackFlashAudio]

Just wondering if anyone had a chance to use the 552 yet. Very curious to see what navigating menus through the voice prompt (SVEN Synthetic voice enhanced navigation) is like. removing the LCD must have saved some money in the design, seems like a good idea. anyone?

[yoink]

I've had mine for a month. It's wonderful.

Instead of re-hashing everything I'm going to quote from various posts here and and on JW Sound.

First thoughts:

I picked up my 552 yesterday. I couldn't forsee a situation where I would need to constantly fiddling with the menus in the field.

But you're right SVEN is a little hard to understand, especially the first menu item. It's nice SD thought to include those plasticized cards.

I'm still in awe of the ergonomics of this box... everything is so well layed out for field work.

Later on (and this same forum I might add....)

More importantly, having now used the 552 for some time, it's a phenomenal piece of production gear. There's a cosmetic issue with the new carbon fiber shells, but that doesn't affect how it sounds and works - and it's clear that SD really did make a serious point of optimizing battery consumption for use in the field. In "regular" usage I've never changed a set of batteries because they ran out. Merely, charged the ones I was using and swapped in some new ones. I haven't even seen the battery meter drop to the red!

Also of note, there have been complaints about the returns on the 442 when coming from certain cameras, I can say the 552 performs very well in that arena. We use the SD Hirose breakout cable.

For what it was designed to do: work in the field without much thought of fiddling this thing is great. But it's performance has been so good, we've been using it as a studio preamp as well during post.

Oh and SVEN is fine. It took a little while but now I have more or less no issues with him. More importantly once the mixer was setup as I wanted, I only refer to SVEN for remaining recording time, nothing more. It's not like I'm constantly changing setups anyway.

And, with the direct outs and a multichannel recorder you can multitrack.

One last thing: we've been using it almost everyday. I can't speak enough about how wonderful it is. It just works.

[skygod]

Originally Posted by d1rtynyc

552 Production Mixer | Sound Devices, LLC

Sound Devices does it again with a amazing portable 5 channel mixer with a built in 2 channel high definition SD/SDHC recorder.

Looks retro. Looks cool. Interesting preamps and lundy trannys, but does NOT record indiv tracks to SDHC. Just to two bus mixdown if I'm not mistaken. Absolutely useless utility wise for me @ $2895 when for the same money the The JoeCo Black Box does 24 tracks @24/96 to a USB glyph, and based on conversations with sweetwatwer there have been successful multitrack recordings direct to sdhc as well. Anybody try the BBR1 with and SDHC yet? I read one poster's review on gearslutz about his experience with the BBR1 that he returned, but he gave absolutely no reasons why other than 'PM me and I'll let you know.' Every review internationally states that the Black Box is the happening piece. I have a feeling that the $2895 1-rackmount space amazing unit was too big a dent in his wallet otherwise? Maybe couldn't squeeze it into his rack already too full of API and Lexicon and Eventide outboard? <sniped by Remoteness> Who knows.... Happy New Year all-

~skygod~

[tourtelot]

HI Skygod-

I was the person that didn't like the JoeCo box. Sorry I didn't get back to you personally but at the time, there were a ton of PMs about it and I guess I missed your's.

First, I think it's interesting that you would think that I didn't like it because of the price. Wow! Why would you assume that I didn't have some real technical issues with the BBR1? I wish my thrift was the case; I would be a lot less in debt if price was the issue on gear I bought

The 552 and the BBR1 are two completely different pieces of kit; seems pretty obvious to me anyway, and that maybe an engineer would have them both if he did enough different work to justify the expense of owning both. The BBR1 wouldn't fit into a ENG bag very well, and I'd hate to carry around 24 units of RF receivers to fill up the inputs Nor, as you stated, would the 552 be the proper device for a large multi track job.

I worked very hard at not trashing JoeCo at the time; I certainly had one of the early units, and all involved with my purchase and return, JoeCo, the US distributor and the retailer, were absolutely professional about the whole situation.

It just didn't do the job for me. It had some real problems; a clock that failed, some build quality problems, and a user-interface that I just didn't care for. That's it. Just wasn't my machine. Bought a vintage Mackie MDR and it seems to do the trick; yes bigger, heavier, and all. But it is the machine that does what I need how I need. That's the thing about sound kit. No two of us do it the same.

If you need a multi-track machine, I fully endorse your right to check out the JoeCo It is certainly a brilliant idea whose time may/has come. But if you need video/film production sound kit, I believe that you will find ANY of the Sound Devices units do their particular job elegantly, professionally, and sonically, and you will be hard pressed to find such an array of capable equipment from any other manufacturer.

D.

[philper]

Originally Posted by tourtelot

HI Skygod-

I was the person that didn't like the JoeCo box. Sorry I didn't get back to you personally but at the time, there were a ton of PMs about it and I guess I missed your's.

First, I think it's interesting that you would think that I didn't like it because of the price. Wow! Why would you assume that I didn't have some real technical issues with the BBR1? I wish my thrift was the case; I would be a lot less in debt if price was the issue on gear I bought

The 552 and the BBR1 are two completely different pieces of kit; seems pretty obvious to me anyway, and that maybe an engineer would have them both if he did enough different work to justify the expense of owning both. The BBR1 wouldn't fit into a ENG bag very well, and I'd hate to carry around 24 units of RF receivers to fill up the inputs Nor, as you stated, would the 552 be the proper device for a large multi track job.

I worked very hard at not trashing JoeCo at the time; I certainly had one of the early units, and all involved with my purchase and return, JoeCo, the US distributor and the retailer, were absolutely professional about the whole situation.

It just didn't do the job for me. It had some real problems; a clock that failed, some build quality problems, and a user-interface that I just didn't care for. That's it. Just wasn't my machine. Bought a vintage Mackie MDR and it seems to do the trick; yes bigger, heavier, and all. But it is the machine that does what I need how I need. That's the thing about sound kit. No two of us do it the same.

If you need a multi-track machine, I fully endorse your right to check out the JoeCo It is certainly a brilliant idea whose time may/has come. But if you need video/film production sound kit, I believe that you will find ANY of the Sound Devices units do their particular job elegantly, professionally, and sonically, and you will be hard pressed to find such an array of capable equipment from any other manufacturer.

D.

Agree pretty much although I had a better time w/ the JoeCo. If you need multitrack the size of the 552 the Tascam DR680 might work for you (at about 1/3rd the price). The 552 is meant for hard bag work on verite (and other) style dialog video shoots, in all sorts of situations, weather, and configs. The recording feature is gravy on a very seriously capable video audio "axe". The JoeCo is really targeted at FOH mixers whose clients want a multitrack recording of their shows but won't pony up for a separate person to do the work. It's kind of a pain to set up, but for a tour once you got your patching and track naming and etc etc together it would make a very nice recording off the FOH direct outs pretty easily, every night.

phil p

[MichaelPatrick]

Originally Posted by tourtelot

The 552 and the BBR1 are two completely different pieces of kit...

I worked very hard at not trashing JoeCo at the time... It just didn't do the job for me. It had some real problems; a clock that failed, some build quality problems, and a user-interface that I just didn't care for.

I only played with it at AES. The build quality and the interface didn't inspire confidence. When I asked Joe about the converters he said it was sort of standard parts nowadays - he clearly wasn't proud of anything special in that aspect of the design. It's just too bad, because they could have a killer 1U box if they just cared a little more about getting it right.

Originally Posted by philper

Agree pretty much although I had a better time w/ the JoeCo. If you need multitrack the size of the 552 the Tascam DR680 might work for you (at about 1/3rd the price). The 552 is meant for hard bag work on verite (and other) style dialog video shoots, in all sorts of situations, weather, and configs. The recording feature is gravy on a very seriously capable video audio "axe". The JoeCo is really targeted at FOH mixers whose clients want a multitrack recording of their shows but won't pony up for a separate person to do the work. It's kind of a pain to set up, but for a tour once you got your patching and track naming and etc etc together it would make a very nice recording off the FOH direct outs pretty easily, every night.

Phil, that's an excellent summary and comparison that the OP should read.

[JEGG]

Originally Posted by skygod

I have a feeling that the $2895 1-rackmount space amazing unit was too big a dent in his wallet otherwise? Maybe couldn't squeeze it into his rack already too full of API and Lexicon and Eventide outboard?

~skygod~

Thanks, skygod. That was the information I needed.

[Brackish]

Originally Posted by NicStage

no corners were cut. 5 Lundahl transformers.

Which of the other SD gear uses Lundahl transformers?

[MichaelPatrick]

Originally Posted by Brackish

Which of the other SD gear uses Lundahl transformers?

302 compact production mixer
442 field mixer
MM-1 portable mic preamp & headphone monitor
MP-1 portable mic preamp
MP-2 portable stereo mic preamp