Aphex 1788 Remote Controlled Mic Pre-Amp
(Editor’s Note: This may be the toughest review I have ever had a part in. Because, to be very plainspoken, l have never used a single piece of gear that made this much difference in the overall sound of a system, and
it will be hard to write about it without sounding like an Aphex shill. So please understand
D5 and the digitally controlled Showconsole use, given the fact that the pre’s are separate from the control surface anyway. ) Like many of you, we listened with interest until we realized that what he was proposing meant not using the beloved pre’s in our favorite consoles, which is the point at which most
for the MON (Aux) output. The optional digital module consists of a
units is the same as controlling one of the old units The totally new software is PC and MAC compatible.)
It is all solid and well built. The only complaint would be the aforementioned crowding on the back
going in that Aphex did not write the review or influence it. They got the same fact check opportunity as any other company, but nothing else. We even returned the gear in just
“He was impressed enough with the sonic difference that he is
considering buying 24 channels of 1788s instead of a new console. “
challenge for those of us with stubby fingers.
From left to right on the front panel are eight LED ladders for monitoring headroom, with a numbered
72
If someone says the word “Aphex,” your first response will likely be,”Aural Exciter,”right?
Yes, that piece is the thing most of us associate with the Sun Valley, Calif. company, but if there is a shred of justice out there in the big wide world, that exchange will soon go like this: “Aphex?””I788.”
Marvin Caesar, Aphex president, has been bending ears for a while now about the effects of long mic lines and splitters on a system in terms of both loading and degradation of sound quality. He has been an evangelist for the idea of
of our eyes glaze over and we start thinking of possible reasons he could be wrong. Well, he’s right.
The Gear
The Aphex 1788 is a pretty neat piece of gear. In
two rack spaces, you get eight
channels of mic pre’s complete
with a splitter. Stock, the units provide separate analog outs for
FOH and MON, and the optional
digital out provides simultaneous digital streams in TDIF, AES/EBU
and ADAT LightPipe formats.
Note that all three digital outs
are active at the same time.
Recording resolution can be as high as 96 kHz in the AES/EBU stream and 48 kHZ with the others.
The crowded back panel has a mic input XLR and FOH (Main) output XLR for each channel, and a
connections are
as setup time on our gig was limited, we opted not to use it. I had the advantage of a short tutorial at Aphex prior to the gig, and Paul would have been approaching the system cold. So we decided that I would control the units from MON, rather than having Paul control them from FOH. (Aphex says that when many units are linked together via serial control, the system can be sluggish. Aphex has developed a new control system that uses LAN technology over CAT5.
The speed of controlling 16
70 Hz LoCut, polarity reverse and the limiter (one of the unit’s coolest and most useful features). Next to the channel buttons is a switch that allows you to choose multiple channels to control at the same time. (Note that when adjusting
gain on multiple channels, the changes are relative. In other words if there was a 6dB difference in the channels to begin with, that difference will remain as gain is raised or lowered.) Surrounding the single gain knob are switches to choose between gain stages (input and output for both FOH and MON) and the switches for the options mentioned earlier
