Digidesign Digi 003 Rack Factory Complete

While I was in college it was an agreement from my parents that when I got into the Recording Degree program they would get me a Mac and a 003 so I could run protools for my projects. That was a good four years ago and I just have to say that the 003 has been a huge help. Not only was a I able to work on school projects at home but it was easy to carry around if I had to take it somewhere else to work on a project. (For a long period of time). I would recommend the 003 to anyone that is looking to do some medium size recording from home or various places.

It's a necessity if you're using Pro Tools LE. They sounds pretty clean, with no color which is to be expected. I really can't say I've had any problems with mine. It's a GREAT upgrade from the MBox though with all of the different monitoring options especially!

I love the sleek design as it doesn't take up much space and you get so much out of the box with Pro Tools. Although you can lay down a track on your first day, there is a bit of a learning curve to get the full functionality going. An added benefit was that I was forced to get an iMac as my version of Windows was not compatible with Pro Tools at the time. The Mac is all I use now. I would highly recommend the Digi Rack 003.

I've had a couple of different audio interfaces and I just have to say that the money is well spent here. You are provided with all the tools you need to get your home recording studio started. Plenty of I/O and a great piece of machinery.

I've been using this in my university studio, and it worked nice, but then they bought those Apogee D/A A/D converters, and the difference is incredible! I would recomend this interface if you are married protools.

This is a solid performing unit! I still have my 002 Surface Control for home studio use, and bought this rack unit 003 for mobile recording. Paired with a few choice channel strips and nice mics in a mobile rack rig with an Apple MacBook Pro and UAD-2 DSP card, this unit kills for getting extremely professional sounding recordings. Mobile tracking and mixing on the go is flawless! The new BNC Wordclock on the 003, along with it's S/PDIF i/o allows for use with such pro gear as the Universal Audio 2192, giving you a much nicer sounding converter and much more stable clock. I've had clients literally smack there heads at how far technology has come, stating that the mobile recordings I've done with this unit sound far superior to recordings they've done in a professional studio setting. The only downfall, or rather limitations of this unit, are the same as all Avid/Digidesign "pro-sumer" hardware; 96Khz max sample rate (vs. 192Khz), All external digital inputs only support a maximum 48Khz sample rate (ie. no SMUX support or S/PDIF to receive 96Khz A/D conversion from external converters such as Apogee or even the nice Presonus units on the market), no hardware DSP, and finally, the Digidesign hardware acts as a hardware dongle for the ProTools LE software, therefore you are virtually land locked to do any mobile mixing on the go. This is all addressed by simple buying there HD setup, but it's still not that mobile, and the cost is quite high. I may sound like I'm asking for the moon here... I'm not, but I know that all of this could be achieved by the company and very easily marketed and sold to millions of musicians world wide. Just a thought for you Avid : )