Line 6 has delivered their awesome new Flextone HD, a 300 watt stereo guitar head that sports all the great modeling technology you’ve come to know and love from the folks at Line 6.
We’ve had a number of people inquire about the “results” of our recent Mackie seminar where the HDR2496 was debuted. We hadn’t planned any special report about it. If you were here you got to see a great demo, but the reason demos are done is because it’s difficult to articulate those kinds of subtleties in written form. However it has come to our attention that there’s a shortage of good information out there on not only the Mackie HDR, but Tascam’s competing MX-2424 unit as well.
Anyone familiar with the format of inSync knows we can’t delve into the level of detail that would be required to properly cover these products, but we do plan some more detailed coverage in some of our materials. We’ve already featured both of those machines in recent (but different) issues of our Sweet Notes newsletter. You can find those in our Publications section of our Web site.
The best source for this type of info, however, is our sales staff. These guys are all passionate about what they do and spend their lives at work and at home learning about all this gear. Don’t be afraid to give us a call (800) 222-4700 and pick our brains on this stuff. There’s more to learning about products than clicking on a Web link. We can be especially helpful in comparing and contrasting specific features of the two machines, especially in the context of what YOU are doing in YOUR studio and what YOU are uniquely concerned about (you won’t find too many Web sites that ask you what your concerns are, for example).
The big question many current MDM owners are struggling with is whether to continue down the path of the ADAT or DA-xx format, add or switch to a DAW, or perhaps get one of these hardware machines. These are exactly the types of questions we are prepared to dig in to. The answer is different for everyone. Obviously the lines between DAW’s and these hardware machines are blurry. Nowadays it’s reasonable to do basic tracking on a DAW, and both of these machines claim to sport a fair amount of DAW type features. The Mackie appears to be further ahead in this regard, but Tascam claims similar features are on the way in future software versions. Tascam is ahead with flexibility of file transfer and archiving. Both machines sport removable media bays. Mackie claims very inexpensive storage due to their IDE format. You’re looking at under $250 per drive (heck, remember when we used to pay that for 2-inch tape?), but a drive will hold over an hour of 24-bit audio. Neither machine is likely to do 96k anytime soon, but it’s nice to know the option will eventually be there.
Ship Dates: Mackie is threatening a few units in late April, but we really think best case is late May (remember, that was “best case”). Tascam currently says units will begin shipping around the beginning of April, but there’s no promise of any significant quantity. Keep an eye on our New in Stock reports for those. Unfortunately that’s about as deep as we can get here. More information is coming in daily on these products so feel free to check back with us frequently for updates. Orders are also starting to stack up for them, so if you want to be the first on your block to get one you need to be moving now.