Spent two days straight at the helm of the ProDesk mixing monitors for some particularly picky people who, despite their pickiness, didn't have the budget for more than 6 mixes. A good time was had by most, however, and I finally got the chance to really kick the tires on the new toy.
As usual, it sounds stellar. I'm so used to it now I don't notice that what goes in comes out the same until I have to work with something else. The controls are all very responsive, it is easy and quick to get the desk to do what you want. Variable high pass is a godsend, and the EQ sounds great even when you get a little whacky with it. I did miss the ability to drop a band into a narrow bandwidth mode, but that's not the fault of the desk.
Defeatable EQ, HPF, very flexible pre/post auxes... all a joy. Extensive metering, also wonderful. The main meters are very nice and large, although they didn't get much of a workout this time so I had less of an opportunity to play around with their ability to display dynamic range. I did very much appreciate that the board still sounds great even if you leave a little less headroom than you'd thought... one singer suddenly discovered his stage voice when it came time for the actual show, and the bassist and the drummer both didn't really start playing until the show started either, so I was in the red a little on a few channels. Listened for a bit and decided not to play the gain pot versus aux pot game, left it alone because it sounded totally fine.
The surface was also very easy to get around on. Very little thinking to remember which aux gets what channel to which wedges. Of course, it's hard to get too lost on a 6 aux console, but the color scheme and layout made it simple nonetheless.
One of these shows was also multitracked, and the direct outs of the desk worked like a charm. Through some quick experimentation we determined that they are pre just about everything, which was perfect for the task at hand.
Some photos of one of the shows, courtesy of John Cavanaugh: