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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: StuStu on March 04, 2015, 12:21:35 PM
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http://www.sounddevices.com/products/mixers-with-integrated-recorders/688 (http://www.sounddevices.com/products/mixers-with-integrated-recorders/688)
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Was just looking at this unit. Drooling as well. Hmmm I could sell my MixPre-D, SD 552, Chapman Stick and a few other instruments and maybe I can purchase one.....still drooling!
Look for used 663's and 664's hitting eBay, Gotham, Trew and other sources for auctions and or consignments. When the 663 came out the 552's flooded the used markets and at decent prices. makes me wonder if they will eventually discontinue the 552?
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Here's a video from SD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00t7D9IrP0A (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00t7D9IrP0A)
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I almost skipped over the email since I thought that it was "just a mixer" and clicked on it for giggles. Holy crap! Color me curious.
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Video made me laugh at first...loved the guy sweating bullets!
Nice upgrade from the 663/664, although I do not need all the channels offered. BTW, I noticed that the 552's are selling for more money new than the 663? of which I find odd.
I give a new SD product a 6 month + wait on what bug/fixes will be linked to this unit, but it looks damn good. 663 seems to have had and still has numerous issues and firmware updates.
Looking forward to checking this out at Summer NAMM in Nashville!
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No digital inputs?
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This is ideal for a location sound guy - seen request posts for a mix/recorder with "built-in" wireless on those forums
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Trew is selling them for a "Discounted" price of: US $5,499.00
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No digital inputs?
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.
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No digital inputs?
The notes I read in the spec note:
- Two AES42/AES3 inputs, eight AES3 outputs
http://www.trewaudio.com/store/Sound-Devices-688.html (http://www.trewaudio.com/store/Sound-Devices-688.html)
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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.
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I personally think this is a better direction in adding the wireless applications and digital options. This also has the option for either and SD or CompactFlash card. All common sampling rates are supported, including 192 kHz on up to six tracks
The only thing I dislike in re to SD products are the prices that seem to take an upward direction.
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I'd buy a sonosax r4+ at that price
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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.
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I honestly really like my 552 and MixPre-D! These IMHO are workhorses in the SD Audio field and are not excluding us tapers on the forum and what we do with live music.
There are many of the SD product line items that I agree with you 100% in regarding product line retirement or refresh them with current transfer features. Having a mixer with the Dig out, my 552 and MixPre-D still exceeds most of the use I put it through, even outside the realm of live music recording and is probably why the 552 was not discontinued.
I do use the internal recorder in the SD552 as a backup and it has come in hand on many occasions. I will say that this is a great feature to the SD mixer lines in adding the recorders. Never was sold on the 663 and the 664 is just outrageous in price this day. I picked up my 552 for $700 when the 663 came out. Now they are back up to a higher price than the 663...go figure.
Bottom line is that I will keep and stick with my 552 and MixPre-D. I just enjoy the technology and direction things are moving. Still allowed to drool over this ;)
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The used 664 market is already starting to reveal itself. Two of them posted for sale on JWSound in just the last few hours. I'm sure we'll see a huge sell-off of 664s and maybe 788Ts.
I think SD might have really screwed over 664 Users that spent a ton of cash on a new unit only, what, two years ago?
I also forgot to mention in my rage.. That 744T with Firewire 400 output is FOUR FRIGGING THOUSAND DOLLARS.
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I wonder how many tracks it will do at 96K? I assume 12? more?
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The 702/722/744 should have been refreshed 5 YEARS AGO or PULLED - FIREWIRE IS DEAD and these units have not had a hardware update in 10 years
If you don't believe this then you are smoking crack!!!
All they need to do is take the 788 feature set - have a few track options (software upgradable in most cases) and put into a 970 chassis (keep the 970's large color touch screen)
They obviously are focusing on the Pro Sound market only - but rightfully so as that is where the money is at
This unit is perfect for pro-sound - but for us the Aeta 4minx and Sonosax R4+ are top dog.
Even the Tascam HS-P82 smokes the 7xx series - by feature set and sound quality plus you can get 8 channels of pre's all at a cost of 1/2 a 744
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The 702/722/744 should have been refreshed 5 YEARS AGO or PULLED - FIREWIRE IS DEAD and these units have not had a hardware update in 10 years
If you don't believe this then you are smoking crack!!!
All they need to do is take the 788 feature set - have a few track options (software upgradable in most cases) and put into a 970 chassis (keep the 970's large color touch screen)
They obviously are focusing on the Pro Sound market only - but rightfully so as that is where the money is at
This unit is perfect for pro-sound - but for us the Aeta 4minx and Sonosax R4+ are top dog.
Even the Tascam HS-P82 smokes the 7xx series - by feature set and sound quality plus you can get 8 channels of pre's all at a cost of 1/2 a 744
From what I've read several places (including on SD's on site) the 7 series still have the best pre's, especially the 788 which is considered the top of the line preamp circuit. That's why they still sell, and why I still would want one - I think they are beautifully neutral sounding.
I'm right there with you on the FireWire issue though, and I have a FireWire card in my PC. For the 702 it doesn't matter because you just pop the card out into a reader, but for the others you're stuck with FW and that is really outdated at this point.
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The 722, 744T also take CF cards!
The 702/722/744 should have been refreshed 5 YEARS AGO or PULLED - FIREWIRE IS DEAD and these units have not had a hardware update in 10 years
If you don't believe this then you are smoking crack!!!
All they need to do is take the 788 feature set - have a few track options (software upgradable in most cases) and put into a 970 chassis (keep the 970's large color touch screen)
They obviously are focusing on the Pro Sound market only - but rightfully so as that is where the money is at
This unit is perfect for pro-sound - but for us the Aeta 4minx and Sonosax R4+ are top dog.
Even the Tascam HS-P82 smokes the 7xx series - by feature set and sound quality plus you can get 8 channels of pre's all at a cost of 1/2 a 744
From what I've read several places (including on SD's on site) the 7 series still have the best pre's, especially the 788 which is considered the top of the line preamp circuit. That's why they still sell, and why I still would want one - I think they are beautifully neutral sounding.
I'm right there with you on the FireWire issue though, and I have a FireWire card in my PC. For the 702 it doesn't matter because you just pop the card out into a reader, but for the others you're stuck with FW and that is really outdated at this point.
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I think someone would have to be very, very committed to SD to fork over the asking price for a new 744T especially when you'd have to add an external pre to use two of the channels for mics. And then I'd worry what would happen to my investment when SD releases a new model.
By the time you buy a new 788 and mics for all 8 channels, you could easily spend $15-16,000.
If you have clients paying for all this from your billing them, then it's a different story than paying for it out of your own pocket.
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I'd buy a sonosax r4+ at that price
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Is there any more information available on the new Sonasax unit for comparison?
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From what I've read several places (including on SD's on site) the 7 series still have the best pre's, especially the 788 which is considered the top of the line preamp circuit. That's why they still sell, and why I still would want one - I think they are beautifully neutral sounding.
I'm right there with you on the FireWire issue though, and I have a FireWire card in my PC. For the 702 it doesn't matter because you just pop the card out into a reader, but for the others you're stuck with FW and that is really outdated at this point.
IMO the 7xx (not including the 788 which is a different topology) suck!!! I cannot stand them at all!! They do not pair well with Schoeps and that's pretty much all I run! The hs-p82 pre-amps are much better, as are sonosax and aeta - It it pretty much widely understood that although SD make rock solid units but their Pre-Amps are second notch - top notch are Nagra, Sonosax, Aeta, and Aaton Caton - sorry but SD pre's are ok but not the best
If they where so great then no one would be running external pre-amps any more - but everyone I know that got an SD722/744 ended up upgrading to external pre-amp units after a short time with the unit.
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I couldn't disagree more. To each their own, but I think the 7xx preamps are perfectly fine and I own basically every portable preamp ever seen in a gear signature.
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I couldn't disagree more. To each their own, but I think the 7xx preamps are perfectly fine and I own basically every portable preamp ever seen in a gear signature.
Totally agree.
I'm just hoping this tanks the used 788T market.
It's already starting. >:D Seems like the 788s have been relatively immune to the price drops that happened to the 744. Until now.
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I couldn't disagree more. To each their own, but I think the 7xx preamps are perfectly fine and I own basically every portable preamp ever seen in a gear signature.
I have owned or run basically every popular pre-amp as well - Grace, EAA, Aeta, Apogee, Schoeps, Tascam, Sound devices, etc - I liked the sound of all but the SD Pre's, including the MixPre and 702 - I find the SD pre-amps rather brittle and stale sounding and I tried them with mk21, mk41, mk4, etc all in various environments
Maybe newer designs are better but I definitely do not like the 702/722/744 nor MixPre pre-amps with all my Schoeps (tubes, FETs, etc)
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I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that you perhaps don't like SD preamps? I could be wrong....
;D
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I have no problem with the SD products I have used. I have never run schoeps, so I can not cast opinion there. I have run other microphones such as Sennheiser, Neumann, Miktek, DPA, Shure and Audix through a 552 & a MixPre-D with great results. I have not recorded on any SD 7XX series recorders, as I use other recorders for my use.
Maybe it's the Mic's ?
Running them with the Neumann's, Telefunken's and Miktek's have been extremely warm and full for me.
Can't speak for the others. It's all good. The 688 goes way beyond what most would need or use here, but t is always interesting to read up on new product-technology and drool a bit at new options. Would be real cool if it had Bluetooth capability! What's next to hit the market? Pretty interesting past years with what's been hitting the market. I'm looking forward to what's coming up next in this market.
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Several 644 popping up on Ebay.
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No digital inputs?
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.
Ahh, me too. Would like to go down to a single recorder.
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I agree on the 722/702/744 front, but Schoeps>788 have pulled lots of great tapes. Especially the ones I've heard that Bennett Schwartz has done with Panic, and I cant stand Panic lol ;) And I've always thought that the 744 was a waste of money. $4k+ new for 2 preamps? Well fuck that haha ;D But I always run external preamps, so not a deal breaker for me
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Reference
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I used a 688 with a DPA 5100 surround mic system last month.
I was hired to record the Electroacoustica Festival. http://www.electroacoustica.org/
It was run parallel to the recording I made with Pro Tools via ethernet from the 8 track output from the Avid/Eucon S3 that ran FOH.
As far as I can tell (without A/B comparisons) the mic pre's are every bit as nice as the SD702 we also have in the locker.
The mix will be married to video so it's out of my hands at this point.