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Audioarts/Arrakis consoles
- Thread starter shure
- Start date
The original Arrakis consoles in the early - mid 1980's were were junk. Hopefully they've improved, but I haven't given them a second chance to prove themselves. I have 2 Air2+ consoles in service for a year & another just installed. The first 2 have been perfect (typical Audioarts). The one just installed has an intermittent power connection...replacement console on the way. The beauty of these is that it's total plug 'n play. If you need to swap consoles, it's a 15 minute job assuming you have your ins & out cables marked well...I like that.shure said:About to purchase a new board. Anyone with experience using the Audioarts Air 2+ or the Arrakis ARC / MARC consoles? Reliability? Build? Good/bad experiences? Thanks.
If you don't mind unbalanced line inputs, then the Arrakis and AudioArts would be okay from that standpoint. Interesting though, that the AudioArts Air1, but only 8 inputs, has balanced 1/4" TRS connectors for ins and outs. Better from my perspective.
I'm having a hard time justifying a lot of money for audio consoles these days, since in so many cases most everything is coming from a couple of computer outputs, a telephone hybrid and a microphone. This is likely why the manufacturers are downsizing their products.
In general, AudioArts has a more consistent reputation.
I'm having a hard time justifying a lot of money for audio consoles these days, since in so many cases most everything is coming from a couple of computer outputs, a telephone hybrid and a microphone. This is likely why the manufacturers are downsizing their products.
In general, AudioArts has a more consistent reputation.
Anybody running SAS consoles? Or have an opinion about them?
shure said:About to purchase a new board. Anyone with experience using the Audioarts Air 2+ or the Arrakis ARC / MARC consoles? Reliability? Build? Good/bad experiences? Thanks.
I'd really like to get myself an Air2+ if I could afford it. As far as the Arrakis ARC series, I did the ARC-10 review for broadcast trade paper Radio World.
Arrakis has a bad reputation and that should tell a guy to run from them IMHO. Audio Arts is a excellent manufacture. I'd to with them between the two. Sas, without a doubt, makes some of the finest routers ever. If you can stand the pricetag they would be very hard to beat. We put one in a cluster in 1998 that's still happily running without fail. Sas is awsome.
Just put in an Audioarts RE-55E console; we bought a station and had to build new studios as their lease runs out at the end of the year. Would definitely recommend this model.
You really need to see their smaller consoles before you buy, however. The Air One --is really tiny, about as wide as keyboard, maybe twice as deep. May work great for a home studio, or a remote van, but not for studio use.
You really need to see their smaller consoles before you buy, however. The Air One --is really tiny, about as wide as keyboard, maybe twice as deep. May work great for a home studio, or a remote van, but not for studio use.
Just put in an Audioarts RE-55E console; we bought a station and had to build new studios as their lease runs out at the end of the year. Would definitely recommend this model. Totally Agree...EXCELLENT console
You really need to see their smaller consoles before you buy, however. The Air One --is really tiny, about as wide as keyboard, maybe twice as deep Gives you the impression you're operating a toy. May work great for a home studio, or a remote van, but not for studio use.
You really need to see their smaller consoles before you buy, however. The Air One --is really tiny, about as wide as keyboard, maybe twice as deep Gives you the impression you're operating a toy. May work great for a home studio, or a remote van, but not for studio use.
The 55E's are terrific! I installed two for a noncom and they've worked flawlessly.
Here's another vote of confidence for the Audio Arts 55e. It's tough as hell and will give you ALL the options you want, most likely. I've installed a bunch of them with NOT ONE SINGLE FAILURE. The couple I put in are five now and running like champs. They are easy to use, full-sized, and great. The small AudioArts stuff is fine, but are certainly not a 55e...
Consider this thought: How about used? Call Matt over at SCMS or another reputable used dealer and see what they have in stock. I put recently put in a 55e at a 1kw AM on a tight budget. The console was less than a year old when someone decided they didn't want to play radio anymore and sold it back to SCMS. The AM paid somewhere around 4300 and it had the phone pot and all the goodies with it. Check around... You may be supprised to find you CAN afford the real thing. Good luck!
Consider this thought: How about used? Call Matt over at SCMS or another reputable used dealer and see what they have in stock. I put recently put in a 55e at a 1kw AM on a tight budget. The console was less than a year old when someone decided they didn't want to play radio anymore and sold it back to SCMS. The AM paid somewhere around 4300 and it had the phone pot and all the goodies with it. Check around... You may be supprised to find you CAN afford the real thing. Good luck!
TomT said:Just put in an Audioarts RE-55E console; we bought a station and had to build new studios as their lease runs out at the end of the year. Would definitely recommend this model.
I'll second Tom here. I have installed three. two with the Audioarts prebuilt punchdown blocks and wiring harness and one without. I tell you the truth, get the prebuilt harness. I had the consoles up and running in about 3 hours with the harness. The one I installed without took me over 12 hours to get going. I have never been good at soldering in tight spaces.
This is a well built console with plenty of outputs to do just about anything you want to. One of the stations uses it for listener call ins and they love the telephone module.
OKCRadioGuy said:Consider this thought: How about used? Call Matt over at SCMS or another reputable used dealer and see what they have in stock. I put recently put in a 55e at a 1kw AM on a tight budget. The console was less than a year old when someone decided they didn't want to play radio anymore and sold it back to SCMS. The AM paid somewhere around 4300 and it had the phone pot and all the goodies with it. Check around... You may be supprised to find you CAN afford the real thing. Good luck!
Again, What you use should probably be assessed in terms of what you need to accomplish..
If you have no engineer, and little knowledge on how to build a radio studio, and are just worried about getting on the air, consider the Arrakis 8, and some consumer gear...it will work for you, you can install it easily, and it will interface with most transmitters and processing gear, which in my opinion, is one hell of a lot more important than anything else!
If you have a budget, and an engineer, follow their recommendations, and a lot will got with the audioarts/ radio systems stuff...it's probably more durable, and a lot of people like their looks...
Keep in mind, that in both of the previous statements, both consoles are fairly "light duty" consoles, and need to be handled with TLC...
Now, if you plan on running a 24 hour volunteer station, find a real, abet used broadcast console, and have it installed by someone who knows what to do with one. Three major things are gained, it's fairly hard to make a real console, installed right sound bad, they can withstand inexperienced, or just plain stupid operators, and give you that extra pro look when you are soliciting donations.
knowbetter said:Now, if you plan on running a 24 hour volunteer station, find a real, abet used broadcast console, and have it installed by someone who knows what to do with one. Three major things are gained, it's fairly hard to make a real console, installed right sound bad, they can withstand inexperienced, or just plain stupid operators, and give you that extra pro look when you are soliciting donations.
There are a couple of RCA BC7A consoles on eBay right now that would fit that bill They can take a licking and keep on ticking. One looks like it's gonna go for about $700.
knowbetter said:OKCRadioGuy said:Keep in mind, that in both of the previous statements, both consoles are fairly "light duty" consoles, and need to be handled with TLC...
Not in my experience. I installed two 55e's in an all volunteer noncom and have had no issues or failures.
I think the reference was to the two smaller Audioarts consoles. As I recall, they used RCA and 1/4 inch phone jacks for input connectors, which may be easier for the non-engineer to install--but also may create problems with the use of the unbalanced inputs.
Again, comes down to the planned use. A console for an unattended studio, fed by satellite or computer? Maybe an hour or two a day live?--these small consoles may be fine.
A live studio, especially for a program doing some talk segments, or remote broadcasts, or mixing a number of sources? The R55E--with pre-wired cables if engineering talent is scarce.
I wire my own pig-tails. The pin-connection order is non-intuitive; but I just keep the page with the pin-outs in front of me while I solder the D connectors. Yes, they send a crimp tool and pins, but I'm a leftie--too hard for me to use the crimp tool. I can solder faster, and more accurately.
If you can find one of these:
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Vacu-Vise-Posters_i2852178_.htm?AID=1577398651
Buy it! Makes the work go faster. Mine is about 30 years old.
Again, comes down to the planned use. A console for an unattended studio, fed by satellite or computer? Maybe an hour or two a day live?--these small consoles may be fine.
A live studio, especially for a program doing some talk segments, or remote broadcasts, or mixing a number of sources? The R55E--with pre-wired cables if engineering talent is scarce.
I wire my own pig-tails. The pin-connection order is non-intuitive; but I just keep the page with the pin-outs in front of me while I solder the D connectors. Yes, they send a crimp tool and pins, but I'm a leftie--too hard for me to use the crimp tool. I can solder faster, and more accurately.
If you can find one of these:
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Vacu-Vise-Posters_i2852178_.htm?AID=1577398651
Buy it! Makes the work go faster. Mine is about 30 years old.
"I wire my own pig-tails. The pin-connection order is non-intuitive; but I just keep the page with the pin-outs in front of me while I solder the D connectors. Yes, they send a crimp tool and pins, but I'm a leftie--too hard for me to use the crimp tool. I can solder faster, and more accurately...."
I'm with you on that one. SCMS was kind enough to send me connectors and even let me borrow their crimper. After trying a few it was pretty obvious to me that I'd do better soldiering connectors. I proceeded to go down to the local parts store and buy a bag of them. I may be different than others, but I can soldier those suckers pretty quickly. When I'm done, it's 100 percent and WILL NOT fail. I'm pretty good with crip tools normally, but since it's an AM station and most all inputs are mono, etc. there was a lot of bridging that made the crimp deal very difficult. Soldiering was just so much easier for me. I had prewired cables made up at a previous installation where I installed two R55e consoles. To be honest, I'd rather just wire direct to the equipment from the console like I did on the latest version. It's drop-dead simple, cheap and very easy to wire up that way. I did the latest one on a VERY tight budget. I prewired up a the extra channels I'm not using and just wiretied them up in a roll where I can grab them and hook them right up to what it goes to. Don't laugh too hard, but I used a left-over cut-off of the Gepco 26 pair multipair cable to go from the console over to the equipment and the in/out punchblock. It's extremely easy to see which channel is what because it's color coded and has a number on it. Of course, I labeled out stuff with a wire labeler too so the next poor guy someday if I'm not still doing the station's work will have no trouble figuring out the system.
What Audio Arts might consider doing someday is coming up with some really short pre-fab pigtails from their DB connector over to standard connectors. Something could be made up pretty easy from their manufacturing level of things. For those people that do not have soldiering skills or engineering help, they could probably sell more consoles if there was an easy way in and out of the console. I belive they do make unbelicals over to a rack mounted version that's rather expensive but maybe something that would adapt right off the DB connector would be cheaper and actually easier for today's plug-and-play crowd.
I'm with you on that one. SCMS was kind enough to send me connectors and even let me borrow their crimper. After trying a few it was pretty obvious to me that I'd do better soldiering connectors. I proceeded to go down to the local parts store and buy a bag of them. I may be different than others, but I can soldier those suckers pretty quickly. When I'm done, it's 100 percent and WILL NOT fail. I'm pretty good with crip tools normally, but since it's an AM station and most all inputs are mono, etc. there was a lot of bridging that made the crimp deal very difficult. Soldiering was just so much easier for me. I had prewired cables made up at a previous installation where I installed two R55e consoles. To be honest, I'd rather just wire direct to the equipment from the console like I did on the latest version. It's drop-dead simple, cheap and very easy to wire up that way. I did the latest one on a VERY tight budget. I prewired up a the extra channels I'm not using and just wiretied them up in a roll where I can grab them and hook them right up to what it goes to. Don't laugh too hard, but I used a left-over cut-off of the Gepco 26 pair multipair cable to go from the console over to the equipment and the in/out punchblock. It's extremely easy to see which channel is what because it's color coded and has a number on it. Of course, I labeled out stuff with a wire labeler too so the next poor guy someday if I'm not still doing the station's work will have no trouble figuring out the system.
What Audio Arts might consider doing someday is coming up with some really short pre-fab pigtails from their DB connector over to standard connectors. Something could be made up pretty easy from their manufacturing level of things. For those people that do not have soldiering skills or engineering help, they could probably sell more consoles if there was an easy way in and out of the console. I belive they do make unbelicals over to a rack mounted version that's rather expensive but maybe something that would adapt right off the DB connector would be cheaper and actually easier for today's plug-and-play crowd.
Stay away from Arrakis anything... it's junk. As for the 55e, have installed a bunch of them and they are little tanks! They run and run, have all the inputs/outputs you will ever need and are modular so if someone spills the soda that's not supposed to be in the studio you lose one channel, not the whole board. Get the prewire, and punch it down to a 66 block or Krone or whatever floats your boat. You'll be glad you did if you want to make any changes without pulling the DB25 connectors apart. Wire it all up (all inputs and outputs) to the blocks, then it's all there in as long as it takes to punch down a few wires should you need to. A little more $ and time in the beginning will save you lots of it on the back end.
The crimp connectors aren't bad, did those too... but would spend the extra $$ for the prewire kit having done it both ways.
The crimp connectors aren't bad, did those too... but would spend the extra $$ for the prewire kit having done it both ways.
I've done it both ways & after paying me to crimp and crimp and crimp some more, the pre-wire was no more expensive & got the project done quicker...plus, as stated above, having everything available on punch blocks makes changes a breeze with no disruption to the board op. The pre-wire option rocks my world.WNTIRadio said:Stay away from Arrakis anything... it's junk. As for the 55e, have installed a bunch of them and they are little tanks! They run and run, have all the inputs/outputs you will ever need and are modular so if someone spills the soda that's not supposed to be in the studio you lose one channel, not the whole board. Get the prewire, and punch it down to a 66 block or Krone or whatever floats your boat. You'll be glad you did if you want to make any changes without pulling the DB25 connectors apart. Wire it all up (all inputs and outputs) to the blocks, then it's all there in as long as it takes to punch down a few wires should you need to. A little more $ and time in the beginning will save you lots of it on the back end.
The crimp connectors aren't bad, did those too... but would spend the extra $$ for the prewire kit having done it both ways.
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