FW-1884

The FW-1884 combines a DAW control surface with a FireWire audio and MIDI interface. The surface has eight motorized, touch-sensitive 100mm channel faders plus a master fader, with pan, solo, mute and select controls on each channel. It also has dedicated controls for four bands of parametric EQ, a jog/shuttle wheel and shortcut keys for popular DAW applications. Control works natively with several DAWs and through HUI and Mackie Control emulation with others, including Pro Tools.

On the audio side there are eight balanced XLR mic/line inputs with phantom power (switchable in groups of four) and an insert on every channel. Converters are 24-bit/96kHz, and up to 18 inputs can be used at once. Eight analog outputs allow stereo or 5.1 surround monitoring, and a headphone output is included. Digital connections are eight channels of ADAT lightpipe and stereo S/PDIF in and out.

The unit connects to a computer through two FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports. It also has four MIDI inputs and outputs, word clock in and out, and an assignable footswitch jack. It can act as a standalone 18x2 line mixer without a computer, and the FE-8 sidecar adds eight more fader strips. Cubase LE and the SoftLCD scribble-strip display application are included.