April, 2004 – Las Vegas, NAB Show – At this year’s NAB show, Mackie is unveiling their latest digital recording console based on the versatile dXb platform that was unveiled at the AES show last October. The new dXb.400, which joins the dXb.200 that was introduced at the NAMM show last January, incorporates an up-market feature set designed with professional recording and post production applications in mind.
“The significant excitement generated by the dXb concept at the AES show last October revealed a universal acceptance for the platform,” stated Ken Berger, Sr. Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at LOUD Technologies Inc. “Because the dXb platform is so versatile, we’ve been able to introduce two uniquely-equipped models for two unique markets, in a very short period of time.”
Both dXb.200 and dXb.400 share the same basic architecture including the unique dual touch-screen interface, 96kHz operation (optional to 192kHz), on-board automation and DSP, twenty-five 100mm Penny+Giles optical faders, fully configurable I/O card cage and a FireWire I/O card option for streaming to/from desktop or laptop computers. Both models are also compatible with select VST plug-ins and both integrate Mackie Control Universal functionality for controlling Pro Tools, Logic and other popular audio software applications.
The dXb.200’s individual feature set and price make it the logical progression for current Mackie Digital 8?Bus (d8b) users. It features a 72 x 72 channel I/O matrix at 96kHz (or a 36 x 36 matrix at 192kHz) with 64 channels of full dynamics (compressor/limiter and gate/expander) and EQ (four band parametric) processing.
The new dXb.400 features a more expansive 96 x 96 channel I/O matrix at 96kHz (or a 48 x 48 channel matrix at 192kHz) with an additional 8 channels of processing. The dXb.400 is also equipped with more advanced surround mixing and monitoring functionality that includes a 24-bus architecture, flexible panning assignment, bus/return switching to an assignable speaker matrix, as well as “fold down” monitoring. The dXb.400 also ships with a Universal Audio UAD-1 Powered Plug-ins(tm) Card pre-loaded, providing instant access to popular plug-ins like the Teletronix(tm) LA-2A(tm) and 1176LN(tm) compressors.
