The new arrangement is ideal for having a second headphone output for the 'talent', allowing you to create a separate monitor mix routed to outputs 3/4, leaving the main outs routed to outputs 1/2 for the engineer to monitor without disturbing the talent.Īnother improvement is the addition of a second monitor output, which is great for having a second 'domestic reference' set of speakers attached to the system without needing another box to connect them. The headphone outputs are not affected by the Monitor Mute switch, but do follow the Mono switch. Both headphone outputs will be fed with the Aux In signal when Aux In (to monitor) is enabled.
The two headphone outputs normally mirror outputs 1/2 in Pro Tools, and are independent of the monitor outputs, but the second headphone output can mirror outputs 3/4 when the '3/4-HP2' switch is selected. Sync indicators on the front panel show the active external clock source, from word clock, SPDIF and ADAT.ĭigidesign have also introduced into the 003 family the second headphone output they added to the M Box 2 Pro. Unlike the M Box 2 Pro, what's more, the 003 can clock to external signals at up to 96kHz. This was a feature first offered in the LE range of interfaces with the introduction of the M Box 2 Pro (reviewed in November 2006: The word clock in and out ports let you connect BNC cables to synchronise your 003(R) to incoming word clock signals, and synchronise other devices to Pro Tools-generated word clock. Many prospective buyers will welcome the inclusion of word clock input and output ports on both the 003 and 003R. Most of the enhancements that have been made thus relate to the 003, as the 002 had more features than the 002R to start with! However, there are some improvements that apply to both models. Like the 002, the 003 combines a multi-channel audio and MIDI interface with an eight-fader control surface, while its rackmount sibling includes the interface without the control surface. There are some new features and many improvements, but the basic functionality or philosophy behind the products hasn't changed, and of course they still come with the highly respected Pro Tools LE DAW software.
As with the M Box 2, it's clear that these are not intended to provide anything radically different from their predecessors. The new models are called, perhaps unsurprisingly, the 003 and 003R. This should work on most of the Sapphire range of soudcards.Digidesign's LE range has received a comprehensive overhaul in the last year, and the new flagship 003 and 003 Rack incorporate many improvements over their predecessors.Īfter many rumours, Digidesign recently announced the replacements for their popular 002 and 002R interfaces. To set it up with my Focusrite Sapphire 24 Pro, I followed the following advice from the Focusrite forum. If you’re willing to live with this, and I was considering what the console cost me, you get an extra 8 audio input channels in your soundcard! Well worth the effort I’d say. However after digging around on internet forums for a while, I figured out a way of actually using it as a recording interface! This is through use of the ADAT output, allowing you to plug it into a ADAT capable soundcard and record seperate channels over optical.Ĭaveats: it has to be 44.1khz sample rate, and you still have to use the Digi 002’s analogue to digital coverters in the chain, which are pretty old now! It does have a stand-alone mode though, which allows you to use it as an analogue mixer, and that is pretty useful in itself if you want to drive monitors or record things from the master out.
It only works as a recording interface through Pro Tools, so you can’t just connect it via firewire to your PC and expect it to work.
Why? Because it is a Pro-Tools inteface, and Avid stopped supporting it about 5 years ago, so it won’t actually work under Pro Tools and Windows 10 (believe me, I’ve tried!). So I got given a Digi 002 console version, which looks like this:Ī fairly old style digital audio interface and mixer, which was all the rage back in 2002 when it first came out, but now is often found sitting in the skip.