Finally! The 003 family is here and like the 002 family it consists of one rack model and one desktop model. F rom just looking at the specifications one quickly sees there is not much new under the hoods, but without having the opportunity to actually try them and listen to them we can’t say much about the improvements of such things as the preamps so we will still have to wait a little longer until we really know what the new family have to offer.

David Gibbons, senior director, product marketing at Digidesign had this to say on the DUC.

“The I/O complement had to remain the same, so the differences in that area are relatively few. The biggest change is in audio quality. The mic pres were completely re-designed, and we upgraded their dynamic range by almost 6dB, and their distortion performance by almost an order of magnitude from 0.004% to 0.0007% (note the three zero’s after the period.)

We found several ways to enhance the 002 control surface as we re-worked it for 003: it now includes dedicated automation controls, and you can use the meters to provide an auto mode status display. The 2-line display provides much better visual feedback for all functions, allowing you to see 6-character channel names at the same time as parameter value readouts. With a jog/shuttle wheel and an external clock input, the product is more at home than before in post production environments. And the updated MIDI mapping mode will make controlling other MIDI apps and devices much more fluid for music producers.”

There you have it…

More details about the two units can be found at www.digidesign.com