DIGIDESIGN DIGI-001

If you are looking to get into a home recording system and not break the bank, you might seriously want to look into the Digi-001. Yes, it is not the latest and greatest unit by Digidesign and no it will not work on any Pro Tools version above version six four. But for the price you can find these things, most people can live with the shortcomings.

I currently own THREE of these units that I use. I have one in my main studio. I have one set up in a live rig and one as a back up. Hold on to your belts, folks – I have done some patient auction house hunting and I have a total of $350 dollar U.S. in all three of them INCLUDING the software.

They are smaller than the 002 and the 003 so they fit nicely in small home or production studios, the have eight analog inputs and eight digital inputs via ADAT light pipe and two more via SPIDF, there are two XLR connectors with switch able phantom power and they contain the rack ears to mount them.

I ask you. What more do you need for that price?

I have recorded a full fifteen CDs with this set up and more live gigs than I can mention and they have never even so much as once had an issue.

Now the Pro Tools folks say they don’t recommend anything other than an “approved” or “certified” computer system to run the units. Here’s the thing, I am running one of the units, my MAIN one on a Celeron processor with only a gig of RAM. The only difference I notice between that system and the Pentium four I use live is, I can’t run as many plug-ins before it starts to lock up. There ARE ways around that though through pre-processing the individual tracks instead of live processing.

I've only had this unit for a couple of weeks. The virtual effects have some pretty cool settings. Unfortunately, that is where the pros stop. As I said, the latency is bad enough that I would not keep this unit and it's going back to Musician's Friend fairly soon. To top it off, the software kills your sustain, so as soon as you pluck a string, the sound starts to cut out to non-existence almost immediately. When you go to record it on your own recording software, the output comes out completely dry, i.e. none of the effects transfer on to your recording software. And even if you don't mind a track being clean, you can't save the track in a format that you can export to anyone else unless they also have a jamlab interface unit ! Then, the feature that I like best about this unit, which is the drum loop capability, can't be recorded onto my recording software either ! I guess I got what I paid for, which was only $30. Because of the nature of the product, I was not able to test drive alternate models. So I bought a line 6 toneport, which I hope turns out better, and this unit is going back to the store.

What I like most about it is its simplicity, I would think its ideal for an informed beginner like myself. I dig the way its small and sits right up on top of my wharfedale monitors easily within reach.
It was pretty comparable to a few other manufacturer's interfaces, so I feel like I got a good deal. I wish we had affordable technology like this and the FirePod back in my band recording days, decent quality preamps and 24 bit digital converters all in one package.

Knowing what I know now, I might fork out a little extra money for a more dedicated field type recording unit and do without computer software for an even more portable setup, but for PC/Mac I would still use Presonus, either Firebox or Firepod. Most definitely.

My only problem with this is that there is no way to use my laptop speakers with it, you must use the mini-plug jack built into it. This is the first unit that Digidesign has introduced that can run Pro Tools without a full interface. I would recommend this to anyone who has a laptop and would like the convenience of editing and mixing on the go.

I've had this for about a year and a half and there is no going back from it. Although I wish it had more built in pre-amps, it does everything I really need it to do (most of which is to run Pro Tools with). The 002 is a bit pricey but since Pro Tools is the industry standard theres nothing that can really be done to control the price of it. All in all, I'm very happy with my 002 and I would recommend it to anyone looking to do multi-track recording with Pro Tools.

Buy it! You'll be glad you did.