Meh, another swing and miss for SD. I just really hate the direction they are taking their product line.
I'm just hoping this tanks the used 788T market.
Out of curiosity, what don't you like about the 688? Honest question as I haven't had a chance to really investigate this device yet.
Sorry, I'm just being ranty. I will give this device time to pan out and I'm sure it has it's merits, but the 664 and 633 were, imo, complete failures for 'what we do.'
Here's a good write-up on my thoughts about the 633 for a while back. I considering buying one for a long time, but quite frankly I think the 744T is still a better option in most cases.
The 633 is a really nice device, especially for mixing, but I did a lot of research before ultimately deciding not to buy one. For the money, I feel like the 744T, given the current used prices, is a much better values and device for concert recording. Some of my thoughts were....
Three preamps is nice, but only marginally better than 2. Without 4 internal preamps, I see no benefit as I record almost exclusively 2 or 4 channels and I have run a three mic rig exactly once. You do get six channels, but only channels 1,2 and 5,6 can be stereo linked together. 3&4 must always be run unlinked which is annoying. It also makes me wonder if there are any differences in the signal path. I don't know the exact answer, but if the signal paths are different does it even make sense to use channels 3&4 for recording stereo? Spend a lot of money for matched stereo mics, only to run them through different signal paths?
If you want to use the 633 with an outboard unit like the USBPre2, MixPre-D, or Grace V3, you'll be unhappy to find out that the digital input will only record to channels 1,2, two of the three preamp channels. Hrmph. I think this is the single biggest flaw with the 633 and the design choice makes little sense. It might be worth asking, but I am pretty sure that when Input 1 is receiving a stereo digital signal, input 2 (along with 3) cannot be used for analog, and even if you could they can't be linked.
Furthermore, the digital input only accepts AES (SPDIF not listed in the specs as supported) and resamples all incoming signals to the 633's internal work rather than slaving to the external clock, which might be fine for live recordings, but not great as a transfer machine. The 744T has both SPDIF and AES I/O on all four channels and can slave to any external clock frequency.
Overall the specs and a significant number of features are still better for recordists on the 744T. Digital I/O on all four channels, more sampling frequency options, wordclock i/o, better EIN, lower THD, the list goes on. The 633 is definitely better it comes to powering options, dual SD and CF recording, and most importantly mixing, but I don't think it's necessarily better for what we do, especially given it's price point vs a used 744T, and the fact that it is still a superior machine for many purposes is a big reason why SD has not retired any of the 7xx devices.
One other comment... Mixer/Records are great, but holy eff... Sound devices is, in 2015, still selling the 702, 722, and 744T recorders as current products without making any enhancements. For the love of god, these devices STILL have Firewire 400 outputs. In my mind, this is nearly unforgivable. They need to either retire that recorder product line or refresh it. They've now delivered three 4+ products in a row (664, 633, PIX, and now 688) focused on the film and sound mixing industry, but there are still users that need recorders and not mixers. Namely, everyone on this board.
Topic: Sound Devices 688 (Read 12763 times)