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Author Topic: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020  (Read 78955 times)

Alex Lindsay

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #40 on: July 22, 2008, 05:55:46 PM »

Peter Etheredge wrote on Thu, 02 August 2007 15:03

Ales Dravinec 'Alex' wrote on Thu, 02 August 2007 08:45



Cons & wish list:

#2 considerable 'pop' at power on and power off. Not a catastrophic one, but there it is.





Ales you of all people should know that this isn't an issue because proper power up protocol calls for the mixer to be one of the first things turned on and amps/powered speakers the last thing turned on, so having a pop isn't an issue! Power down is the exact opposite making this again a non issue.   Smile


As yet I haven't seen any APB's over here in the UK, been seen as there has been some reference to the Midas Venice for comparison, and having much time loving my venices, and having to agree with all the criticisms on it's routing limitations, etc, I feel the need to add my two-pennith-worth to the discussion.

On a couple of occasions the power to Venice had been cut, not due to any fault of the mixer. Whilst the system was silent, and nothing was happening. It remained silent throughout powerdown and back up again. On one occasion I had a 30Kw rig connected, wound up on full and not a click could be heard.
Surely this is down to the presence of mute relays?
Would there be a cost consideration on these in the APB, with it's 14 outputs?
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John Petrucelli

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #41 on: July 24, 2008, 08:21:16 PM »

Alex,
On our larger consoles we do have output mute relays that operate during power-up and power-down. The upcoming ProDesk-4 console, which is in the same market class as the Venice, will have these output relays along with an additional, external connector that will allow the operator (or safety system) to mute all 18 outputs with a single contact closure.

Regards,
JP
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John Petrucelli
APB-DynaSonics

Bob Henley

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #42 on: December 14, 2008, 02:14:56 PM »

I've had the road test ProRack for a couple of weeks, and now that our show is over, I'll get down and write a review.

In short, I loved using out. It'll be hard to pry it out of my tech's hands tomorrow when I send it off.
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Bob Henley

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #43 on: February 01, 2009, 04:23:04 PM »

Well, this is a bit late, but I’ve been really busy in the past couple of months and this is the first time that I’ve got a chance to write this review. I received the Road Test APB Prorack House from Bennett Prescott in late November. I had read good things on these forums about ABP, and I have to say, they’re all right.

Here was my situation: I was the technical director and scenery designer for a play to be performed in our “black box” studio theater. That theater’s sound system is designed for pre-show music and sound cues—it consists of a half-broken Behringer Eurorack, a QSC Model 1200, and a pair of EV SH1502s. Adequate for those purposes, but the play we were performing was set in a radio studio. The director and myself wanted to use the microphones to differentiate between “on air” lines and lines that were simply directed towards other actors. What we had wasn’t up to the task, so I posted a thread in the marketplace and Bennett was kind enough to offer us the Road Test ProRack for a couple of weeks.

My first comment upon receiving the ProRack was the weight.  The Prorack is about the same size as the Eurorack, but significantly heavier. I took that as a good sign, and after opening the package, I realized that this is really a well-built piece of equipment. Everything felt “the way it should”. No cheap crap here- the faceplate, knobs, buttons, and faders were all great.

Me and a couple of my techs set up the board the next day. Of course, I just ignored the manual and went straight into plugging in. We couldn’t get any sound out of the board until we realized that the “line” switch had to be pressed to use the ¼” line inputs. Probably should have read the manual.

We got all the mics wired up and working (despite a shortage of cable- there were shows going on in our main theater that needed that equipment). Because of the odd configuration of the room we ended up needing two “zones” of coverage- Left, Right, and Center. Thanks to the ProRack’s multitude of routing options, we were able to do that and then put an effects speaker on the mono output, giving it a long fader instead of an aux knob.

You might note some odd EQ settings in the pictures. That’s because we were trying to make the mics sound bad- like something out of the 50’s. The ProRack EQs worked great – just as good as those on our Soundcraft MH3 that we have in the main theater. The sweepable HPFs have to be one of my favorite features: it makes life so much easier when trying to control handling and footstep noises.

Pre-Post switches on each pair of AUXs are great and give infinitely more flexibility than having some locked to pre or post. One last comment: unlike some cheap Yamaha boards, it’s possible to put your finger down and sweep across all the mute buttons rather than pressing each individually. Nice in an emergency when you don’t have mute groups.

All in all, a really great mixer. It felt like using the MH3, just in a small version. I could barley pry it from my techs hands when it was time to send it back. We’ll be purchasing one as soon as the Eurorack finally dies (which will probably be sooner rather than later).

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Bob Henley

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #44 on: February 01, 2009, 04:24:56 PM »

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Bob Henley

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #45 on: February 01, 2009, 04:28:35 PM »

Here's the set. The room is the radio control room, which we filled up with unused and cool looking sound equipment. We had two EV RE11s, two EV RE10s, a N/D757, an AKG D190E, and two Shure 55SHs out on the set. Not exactly from the time period, but the audience doesn't care.

index.php/fa/20730/0/
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Jordan Wolf

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #46 on: February 01, 2009, 06:59:58 PM »

What show was that?  It looked like 1940's Radio Hour to me.

That one picture looks like it should be in a magazine advertisement for the mixer! Smile

Glad you liked it so much...it further confirms my thoughts about the company and its products.
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"A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."
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Bob Henley

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Re: APB Dynasonics ProRack H1020
« Reply #47 on: February 02, 2009, 09:33:54 PM »

Jordan Wolf wrote on Sun, 01 February 2009 17:59

What show was that?  It looked like 1940's Radio Hour to me.

That one picture looks like it should be in a magazine advertisement for the mixer! Smile

Glad you liked it so much...it further confirms my thoughts about the company and its products.



Thanks!

The show was Loving Lives by Alan Haehnel. It's a comedy about a radio show on the verge of being canceled.

I took the pictures with my Nikon D200, an 18-55mm lens, and my grandfather's flash unit from the 70's. I'm pretty pleased with the results, but I just got an SB-600 flash and am wishing I had that available then.

The pictures are originally 3872x2592, I just scaled them down to 800x536 so they would display right here.
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Tom Germain

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APB-Dynasonics Pro Rack House
« Reply #48 on: March 24, 2009, 08:21:25 PM »

Recently, thanks to Bennett Prescott, I've been fortunate enough to be able to demo an APB-Dynasonics Pro Rack House mixer.  I've had use of the mixer for about a month and I've just finished testing it out in my home, project studio.  Although the mixer is of course designed for live sound reinforcement, I've found that it really has a wealth of features that makes it a very nice 'front end' to a multitrack recorder.  

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During several sessions of use in my home, it has served as a front end to a 16 I/O MOTU DP6 system, with the direct outs of the Pro Rack House feeding the line level inputs of two HD 896 interfaces.  For playback/monitoring, I used the first two stereo input channels, #13 and #14, to bring back a separate stereo submix from each of the MOTU interfaces.  This arrangement worked out just fine, with 12 mics utilizing channels #1 through #12, to capture a drumkit in my 'live room,' and still four additional preamps available in channels #15 and 16.  The first of these I used in mono for an electric bass, which was patched directly to Ch #15's line in, and the other, I used for a stereo keyboard that happened to have balanced, line level outs.  Finally, I used Auxes 5 and 6 to feed a stereo cue mix.


It's really a wonderful little console, and though I do wish it had some features that a studio-targeted recording console would have, the sound quality really is exceptional.  The preamps always provided a very full, smooth, and yet punchy sound, which I really enjoyed.  One of my goals was to test the usefulness of the board's EQ during tracking drums in particular, and since the board is set up (from the factory) with the direct outs pre-EQ, I decided to send channels #1 through 4 to the 4 mono groups, which have their own set of direct outs.  These channels carried signals from both two kick mics (an AKG C4000b inside, and an SM57 on the attack head), and two snare mics (SM57s on both snare top and bottom).  I toggled the EQ 'on' for channels 1-4 and got nice results doing things like adding a bit more low end to the inside of kick mic - via the fixed low freq band - and also adding both some 'snap' to the kick and presence to the top of the snare via the sweepable hi-mid bands.  I also was able to get rid of some unnecessary low end on both the kick's attack head mic, and the snare's bottom head mic, by using the sweepable hi pass filter... very nice sounding EQ!


One weekend, with my brother visiting, I also had a chance to record both a scratch lead vocal and an electric guitar track for a new song of his.  It's a rough track, but I recorded everything through the APB pres.  (I will provide a link)  By the way, since I positioned the APB Pro Rack House on the desk in front of me in the control room, it was very easy to re-patch whenever I needed to free up a channel or two to record something new.  We micd up my bro's electric guitar cabinet with a Rode NTK tube mic, having also split the signal so I could capture a clean DI track simultaneously, and then afterwards used the same tube mic to track his vocal.  My brother happens to have a very dynamic voice and yet not once did he overload the console's preamp.  I did not have to be overly cautious in setting the preamp gain, I got a healthy level, and the pre still had plenty of headroom.  We just got excellent results without any hassle!


One slight issue for me has been the built in fan that runs constantly whenever the Pro Rack House is on.  Although it's quiet, after a few hours in the control room, it did start to be a bit much.  In my control room (about 10' x 13'), I think this only posed a problem because of the pre-existing noise - that caused by a Mac Pro computer.  Anyway, I decided to send an email/query to APB about the fan and whether it could be disabled, and I received a very quick and helpful response from John Petrucelli of APB.  He let me know that a switch could be added to allow the fan to be manually switched off and on, as needed.  Although he didn't recommend using the console with the fan off all the time, he did suggest that the controlled room temperature of a studio/control room should allow fan-less use of the Pro Rack House without any problems!  That modification, combined with another - setting the console's direct outs to tap signals post-EQ, which is a modification offered at the APB factory - (I think) will make the Pro Rack House a perfect match for small, home and project studios.  

Please feel free to ask questions.  It's been a total pleasure working with this console!
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Tom Germain

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Re: APB-Dynasonics Pro Rack House
« Reply #49 on: March 24, 2009, 08:23:12 PM »

More Photos...

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