Digidesign Eleven Rack Guitar Multi Effects Processor Gold

You can go read about all the technical specs of this unit all over the web, and there are a million reviews of this product that are all favorable, and I have to say I agree. I was micing a mesa boogie dual rectifier into Cuebase before getting the eleven rack, and it sounded great, but... the variations on the different cabs this thing offers and the sound quality is superb. Unless you can afford to buy 10 different cabs for your home studio, you can not beat this unit. There is no color to your recordings (It records and plays back exactly as it sounds). The interface with Pro Tools is very intuitive, and being a Cuebase user, I jumped right into recording songs with a quick 5 minute read of the quick start manual. You can assign any of the guitar effects to apply to the bass or your mic through the xlr front input or the left or right inputs, which makes for some crazy vocal and bass capabilities. Long and short of it is, I just got done recording my first song completely through this unit and it sounds totally awesome. (I cheated and used my drum machine). My only problem with this unit is that you have to buy a $50 down load in order to mix your songs down to MP3. Without it you can only mix down into wav. files. No big deal, just a minor inconvenience. If you can afford to get an Eleven Rack, do so. You will not be disappointed.

If Eleven Rack would have been around in the 80"s, Nigel Tufnel would have been using it with glee. I have been using Line 6 PODXT for about 5 years, but this is even better. The "true Z input" is a great feature offering a realistic impedance response when lowering volume pot on the guitar. The Amp models are great. I am a guitar player, song writer, and a professional recording engineer, and having this around as a sonic tool opens up musical horizons for me and my clients. It would be nice to have access to real vintage amps, but a lot of us aren�ۡ���t that wealthy. So for people like me, Eleven Rack is a dream come true. For those naysayers that suggest the plug-in version is equally, if not better; they forget about one critical aspect. The plug-ins eat up processor memory, RAM, and offers you more latency which in turn makes you start to fiddle with all the playback engine options and so on. Eleven Rack feels more realistic than anything else I have ever used. This is a homerun tool for your recording studio. If I were to pick anything negative to say then it would be that I suspect Digidesign and Avid will offer more amps, mics, cabs, and effects at an additional price in the near future. After spending a lot of money on this, those "upgrades" should be free. But, to sum it all up, it still goes to 11...

Everyone seems to be raving about this "eleven rack". But for those out there who play hard and heavy metal type music, this thing does not cut it! It seems to be geared towards session players and classic rockers. Does not do the brootalz!!!

The site write-up, as well as the documatation and videos at the Digidesign website, pretty much does all the features enough justice. Thoughtfully selected presets, some named in the game show topic convention of the artist who inspired them ("Irish Echo" and "Lunar Steps" are my particular favorites), and the ability to modify them or create your own is obviously huge. The ability to function as an A/D-D/A interface, with five separate streams going to ProTools simultaneously, and pre and post amp streams available for tracking or performing dry and wet, is major. Free ProTools 8LE included - what can I say? But where this piece of gear really distinguishes itself from other effects is the build quality. And it should, shouldn't it? If you wanted presets and streams, you'd use your DAW and any number of quality plug-ins (Eleven, anyone?) and interfaces. What the Eleven rack has in spades is grunt. Every piece of it, down to the anodized orange plug-in reminiscent "skin" of the front panel, is hefty and stable. The panels don't flex when you push connectors in, and the knobs don't wag when you twist them. The phone and guitar jacks have a firm but smooth action that has to be felt to be appreciated. The case has a solid clunk to it when you wrestle it into your rack, not a chintzy clink. The rack ears even have generous bolt holes, taking care of lining up the screws even on the oddest rack case, but are sturdy enough to hold the Eleven in place with just two screws (not that you should). Again, there are no flies on the features and performance of the Eleven Rack, and you can find out all about that from the product page and the other reviewers, but what you won't hear anyone mention, and what you can't know before you order one, is that this is an extremely well built and well thought-out piece of gear.

The Eleven Rack woaooooooo totally impress I own this baby, out of the box the sounds are ok but when I tweak it to my taste it blow meeeee awayyyyy! I own tube heads and it really sounds like one! Great Fx easy to use very user friendly, then you can use the the screen to change things or you can connect it to your computer and change the settings, the plugins are amazing, you cant take it to a gig or play live with this baby, but Also is a Interface with PROTOOLS LE 8 JUST WAIT AND SEE THE NEW PROTOOLS OMG! You can't ask for more? the same sounds that you like to play with you can record it with a very professional sounding interface with a excellent preamps, If you are a Studio Player you can take it to a session and also can communicate with other protools interface, or use it to record your Ideas or your tracks at home, this is the solution for manny Guitar Players and hard worker Musicians. Get it you wont regret!

As a partner is a large sound company for over twenty years, sound and recording is what I do. Our company owns all of the amps and cabs the mics, and even most of the pedals modeled here, so needless to say I know what this stuff sounds like. My partner and I are both guitar players and are true tone freaks so we constantly are buying and testing various guitar effects and modeling gear. This one has hit the mark. The sounds are spot-on true reproductions and the True-Z input loads the picks-up so it plays and feels right. Digidesign has done a phenomenal job on the interface �ۡ���� both the tactile control on the front of the box and on the GUI loaded on the PC. Editing is easy and intuitive unlike that in Axe-FX. Digidesign didn�ۡ���t try to create a million presets, and they didn�ۡ���t try to emulate every amp / cab on the face of the earth. Instead they put their effort into true reproductions of the significant gear. They focused on the sound, not bulk presets. As for recording, what can you say it Digidesign / ProTools. It comes with a full version of Pro Tools LE and enough free plugins to really allow you to lay down a professional sounding guitar track. The Magic box eliminates all of the issues of recording real amps, mic placement, noise, bleedover, ect. Another HUGE benefit is that the configuration of the Eleven Rack can be written to and recalled from within Protools. So if you need to go back and clean-up some track later, you simply recall the recorded config and perfectly matched sound. It also will record the guitar dry, so you can experiment (re-amp) with sounds when mixing down. The tactile controls and the MIDI interface allow me to use this now when I play live. Twenty years of slinging heavy PA has taken its toll on my forty-something back. I play a diverse line-up of music and I have never been happy with just �ۡ��̏one�ۡ�ݕ�_ sound. I had been using a Bradshaw rig with multiple Egnator modules and a four-twelve cabinet. It sounded great but it weighed a ton. Now I go with the four space rack (Eleven Rack, TC Electronics G-Major 2, a Rocktron velocity 300 power amp) and a two-twelve cab (Avatar Vintage closed back loaded with one Celestion Vintage 30 and one G12H30) and I have everything I need and the four space rack weighs less than 40 pounds loaded. The Voodoo Labs ground control pedal works flawlessly with the Eleven Rack and allows full control of the box remotely. The last BIG question, how does it compare to other software / hardware products? It�ۡ���s ONLY competitor is Axe-FX. I believe it�ۡ���s a toss-up between the two. AX-FX is deeper in feature set , far more difficult to configure, and about twice the price. When played live, I would say that Ax-Fx sounds slightly better, but it�ۡ��� sonic quality will only be noticed by the trained ear of a true tone freak. In closing, the sonic quality of both the Eleven Rack and Axe-FX are really amazing. The quality of sound you get in a live setting is significantly dependent upon what you play them through. Don�ۡ���t think you can buy either of these units and a fifty dollar amp and that it will sound good �ۡ���� it won�ۡ���t. I own both, and I play the Eleven Rack simply because it sounds good, and it�ۡ���s easy to tweak.