Skip to main content

I'm a bit interested in the 32 channel Sound Workshop Series 34 consoles. Does anyone have any experience with these boards? I've heard good things about them so far and would like to know your opinions!

Thanks!

Comments

dvdhawk Tue, 04/27/2010 - 21:42

I used one of those for several sessions in the early 90's. We didn't have any complaints at all with the sound quality. It was more or less on par with the other consoles we'd used at some other studios back then (A&H, Trident, Scorpion, Soundcraft) Just maybe a tad higher noise-floor, but that could have been somewhere else in their system.

We were recording to Otari 2" tape and this console allegedly had what was loosely called automation that could be printed mix data to tape. We were only to do one song at this studio, had a beautiful mix happening and were ready to record the final mix to DAT (the master medium of the time). Then the in-house engineer insisted since we had this thing right where we wanted it, we should print the automation info to the tape before recording the final mix. That turned out to be a big mistake, something went haywire in the process and without anyone touching a button, knob, or slider the mix went completely to crap. We spent a couple hours after that trying to get our mix back to where it was before the 'automation' and never did completely recreate the magic. It was almost like a HAL 9000, willfully preventing us from getting our good mix back. "I'm sorry... I can't let you do that Dave.... "

So all in all, a respectable analog console of the era - don't trust the 'automation' feature.

moonbaby Wed, 04/28/2010 - 12:53

There's a yahoo group for SW products. I didn't think the 34 Series had automation, but maybe they did. If I remember correctly, the 34 was introduced right after the SW line was bought out by Otari, but before they got into the really big frame models (like the Elite and the President). Pretty good sounding, straight ahead engineering and components.

x

User login