Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Digidesign Digi 003 Control Surface & Audio/MIDI Interface [Mac/PC] review

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.

After many rumors, Digidesign recently announced the replacements for their popular 002 and 002R interfaces. The new models are called, perhaps unsurprisingly, the 003 and 003R. As with the M Box 2, it's clear that these are not intended to provide anything radically different from their predecessors. 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. 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. 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.