Presonus has made some great live stuff over the years. I can’t even count the number of their 8-channel comps and gates I have seen in racks. I remember an EQ that had a special secret weapon — a button that killed 60-cycle hum. Loved that. But over the past decade the company has been going more and more in a digital/studio/recording direction and we have had little to talk about in regards to their gear. So when I got the call about the Digimax FS, it was a pleasant surprise.
But the alarm bells went off when he uttered The Phrase. “It was designed for the studio but we are seeing a lot of them used live."
Now, this phrase can mean a few things. The most common is that it is total B.S. and they are just looking for another market. The second is that, sure, it could be used in a live setting, but why would you want to when there are simpler and cheaper alternatives that sound just as good? Finally (and this is rare), it’s really true. Someone had the gonads to take it out of the studio rack and on the road and found that it solved some problem and did it well. This is one of those times.
The Gear
The Digimax FS is a 1RU box that houses eight very good mic pres. No EQ or obvious bells and whistles, just eight quiet, warm, good-sounding mic pres. The front panel sports eight combo jack inputs — six at mic/line level and two at mic/instrument level. If you plug in an XLR, it’s mic level. If you plug in a 1/4” it is line or instrument depending on the channel.
To the right of the inputs are eight gain knobs with a paired clip indicator. A couple of nice touches on those knobs: First, they are in two offset rows, which makes them infinitely easier to grab and adjust. Second, the knobs feel substantial and smooth. Finally, the screening for each knob has the mic and line lettering in different colors, making it a lot easier to read. Next to that are selectors and indicators for internal word clock or an external sync.
But the really cool stuff is on the back. Turn the Digimax around and you will see a veritable forest of 1/4” jacks — 24 in all — plus BNC connec-tors for that hated word-clock stuff (the days of live guys being able to say “Word clock? We don’t need no stinking word clock” are rapidly com-ing to an end) and four ADAT LightPipe connections.
First the 1/4”ers. Eight are insert points (‘nuff said), eight are analog outs (they are labeled as direct outs, but as they are POST pre-amp…) and the last eight are called DAC outs and you will likely never use them live. The deal is that if you have eight channels of digital audio coming into the Digimax over LightPipe, then you get the outputs from those jacks.
The four LightPipe connections are the standard in and out (eight channels of audio on each) plus two connectors on the SMUX protocol, which allows you to send higher resolution signal than LightPipe was designed for by sending only four channels on each line.
The Gigs
The Digimax was pitched to us as an expander for small digital mixers like a Yamaha DM1000. And as such it works great — hook up the ADAT connections and a BNC cable and you just added eight input channels to your console. If the console sends word clock over the ADAT lines, you can even dispense with the BNC cable. Sweet.
The other gig we used it on was — again — expanding a mixer, but this time to feed an Alesis HD24 for a live recording. It worked fine. The only issues were that the tracks recorded via the Digimax sounded much richer than the ones coming straight from the board (everything went to the HD24 via LightPipe). The fact that they crowded so many connections on the back made it hard to get things hooked up, and it would be nice if the direct outs were XLR jacks. If it had been designed for live use, they might have ditched the DAC outs and gone with the larger XLR connectors. [Presonus responds: The DAC outputs are useful in a live application for the following: what if you need more analog outputs of your Yamaha Digital console? You send lightpipe to the Digimax FS and add eight more analog outputs using the DAC Outputs. —ed.]
The splits are good and quiet, so you can safely put the Digimax FS at the head of the line signal wise and send house the direct outs. You will likely never realize there is something in between the source and the board — except when you are digging through the workbox for enough 1/4” male to XLR male adapter cables.
Three of these and an HD24 fit into a six-space rack and are everything you need to record every show to 24-track digital for a lot less than you would spend for some other solutions to the same issue. Not as cheap as some, but definitely not the most expensive, either.
What It Is: Eight channel mic pre/digital interface
Who It’s For: Anyone who needs to expand a small digital mixer (as long as it has ADAT connections) or needs to feed an ADAT compatible re-corder like an Alesis HD24.
Pros: Excellent sound quality, you can probably use it without ever opening the manual.
Cons: No XLRs on the direct outs, output jacks are crowded too close together.
How Much: $799.95
Web site: www.presonus.com/digimax_fs.html