All About The Avid Mbox
22 FEBRUARY 2019Whether you’re a professional or amateur musician or studio technician, it’s likely you’re familiar with the Digidesign brand. Long revered as a provider of high quality interface devices and recording equipment for the right price, Digidesign is the penultimate home recording product range.
The Digidesign brand has been owned by Avid for quite some time now. The original take-over of the brand occurred in 1995. From this date until 2010, the brand-name was kept intact, and Digidesign continued to release their products under this brand-name. In 2010, Avid announced that the older brand-name would start to be phased out.
But what kind of impact does this have on the range in the long term? Will the quality of the recording devices be significantly impacted? And if so, what changes have/will be made to the device?
The Mbox 3 is the first in the range to come under this new branding. Along with the name change, the devices have had a radical overhaul (in terms of aesthetic design and appearance). In addition to this, some of the hardware has been increased, and the features of the device expanded.
One of the biggest changes following the rebranding is the fact that the devices now support a range of software interfaces. Previously, the only way to use an Mbox was with Pro Tools (also owned by Digidesign and now Avid). Following the release of the Mbox, this is no longer the case. This is excellent news for technicians who want to use another software package such as Cubase. Previously this was impossible.
Another significant change is that the Mbox 3 Pro now uses FireWire as its primary method of interfacing with a PC/Mac. Something users may not be immediately aware of is the fact that although the device interfaces using FireWire, it still requires another source for power. There is an external power supply, which may make the device too physically large for small recording set-ups, or users who require a mobile recording device.
Digidesign, long known for its high-quality recording devices, is starting to be phased out as a brand by its parent company, Avid. The look and feel of the subsequent ranges is changing significantly as a result of this.
The new devices released under the Avid brand (and in particular the Mbox 3 range) seem very promising in terms of current features and as an indication of where the brand is headed in the near future.
Let’s hope Avid continues the Digidesign tradition of offering great, high-quality recording devices within the price range of amateurs and beginners.