New Digidesign 003

[Andrew07]

http://www.digidesign.com/index.cfm?...0&itemid=24692

What a fucking waste. A new wordclock and new plastic shit on top. Also it looks like Digi will be discontinuing the 002 line as you can see it's no longer listed in their 'products section'


fuuck

[Futant55]

I'm happy with my firepod. I just ordered another one, and I'll have 16 mic pre's for only 1,000, and I got a free 100 mic with each one. For 1,300 and only 4 mic pres it seems overpriced to me, and what makes this one better than the 002?

[Andrew07]

Originally Posted by Futant55

I'm happy with my firepod. I just ordered another one, and I'll have 16 mic pre's for only 1,000, and I got a free 100 mic with each one. For 1,300 and only 4 mic pres it seems overpriced to me, and what makes this one better than the 002?

That's the thing it's not any better than the 002. It has a new wordclock and supposedly better preamps, but all 002 owners have gotten better clocks and/or outboard pre's to combat this problem. I'm guessing this line is aimed at non-current Digidesign owners, but I have no idea why Digi won't offer some mid-level setup.

[brandondrury]

No one ever said that Pro Tools was cheap! It sucks to see the new crop come in, but it is inevitable with any piece of gear. I'm sure I'm going to hear all kinds of new hype about how great the new 003 is even if the plastic is the only thing that has changed.

Pro Tools has its ups and downs, as we have all discussed before.

The Presons Firepods are a tremendous value. I was shocked when they first came out. We'll see if they end up being reliable in the long run (which is my only concern because their features / $ is about as good as it gets).

As long as Pro Tools (HD) is considered the standard in the billion dollar studios, their home recording hardware will cost more. The laymen is convinced that Pro Tools is somehow required. Nothing could be further from the truth. People pay more for Pro Tools thinking they are getting extraordinary quality. Instead, they end up with less cash for the zillion other things needed to do this whole recording thing right.

I just wish that more people understood the difference between HD3 and 002. Oh well.

I'm very happy with Cubase SX3 / Delta 1010 rig (although I wish it wasn't PCI).

If I could only find that robo hot chick with big boobs that could sing her ass off....that's what I really need.

Brandon

[studiodekadent]

Digidesign should at LEAST support 8 channels of S/MUX ADAT, so you can get more i/o out of their interfaces. But NOOOOOO..... they want you to only have 10-in-10-out at 96khz.... WHAT ABOUT THOSE THAT RUN MIXERLESS STUDIOS, mmmm???? Where do we come in?????

FUCK DIGIDESIGN. Yeah, Protools sounds great, but its overpriced, its i/o hardware is a ripoff.

[brandondrury]

Yeah, Protools sounds great, but its overpriced, its i/o hardware is a ripoff.

I want to add that Pro Tools does not sound any better than any other software out there.

Brandon

[CBarx]

For those of you who are frustrated with the options on the 003, I just thought that i'd enlighten you that digidesign released the 003 to be in compliance with the new lead laws. The reason they ceased the production of the 002 is because they had too much lead in them, so the 003 wasn't designed so much as a successor to the 002, but a way to continue the 00X line. They did throw in a few upgrades since they had to take the time to create a new model. So for those of you who are looking for an upgrade, don't get your hopes up too high.

[brandondrury]

Lead? What components contained lead?

Brandon

[CBarx]

I'm not exactly sure which components contained lead, but i know there was a significant amound of lead and mercury involved in the manufacturing of the 002 (at least enough to require a halt on the production of them....). But again, do a little research and you'll find the differences between the 002 and 003, such as an added headphone jack, upgraded clock, upgraded pre's (no longer focusrite), and some added headroom (but thats about it)

[Charlie_M]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

If I could only find that robo hot chick with big boobs that could sing her ass off....that's what I really need.

Would be nice if she had $$ and a fishing boat too... if you're going to dream, dream BIG ! ;~)

About the lead, normally the lead is in the solder. The move to lead-free solder normally requires a new PCB design. If you're doing a board spin anyway you might as well repackage the thing and call it something else (003). Not saying that's all they did because the prevailing view seems to be be that the 003 is an improvement over the 002 in some respects. I heard the pres are noticeably better.... still not quite a tits-on preamp to get excited over but a noticeable improvement is what I've heard. Also I heard the converters are better than the 002 has. I have no idea how much better but I doubt they are in a different league from the 002. I would imagine the are better by an amount roughly in line with the amount of progress that has been made on the chips since the time the 002 was designed and the time the 003 was designed, but this is purely speculation on my part.

I'm not sure how old the 002 is but normally in places I've worked when we do the board spin for ROHS (the rule that requires lead free) compliance, there are often newer/better chips out since the day you designed the original so it is possible to sometimes get improvements in performance AND a reduction in the BOM cost at the same time. Even if you can get all that, it still takes a while before you break even on the deal since you have to recoup the overhead associated with the board spin (engineering/design time, layout, etc...).

I had wondered what the 003 was about... really it didn't seem to make sense to me to make such a minor upgrade. If it was ROHS, that would explain everything.

Charlie