I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve just about had enough of news about the unsinkable boat that sank. I was back in Belfast recently and I get the fact that these days, Northern Ireland is all about the tourism, and part of that is making the most of the ship-building heritage. This obviously includes the aforementioned cruise liner, and the clearly previously unheard of story about what happened to the vessel, that tragic day in 1912. So now the Titanic exhibition is up and running and seems to be a roaring success we can move on to other things…
As other news hasn’t had a look-in, you won’t have heard about our new product unless you came to see us in Frankfurt. New product? Did I say new product? Indeed I did, kind reader, as I am proud to announce the imminent release of the DS8000, our all new audio distribution system. Not to be confused with the DN8000,
Way ahead of its time in my opinion!
a past classic from KT which I may have had a hand in (!) , the DS8000 is a complete redesign of our DS800, taking on board all the comments and wishes we’ve received over the product’s lifetime.
I know it’s a drawing on the poster, but that’s how hot-off-the-press this was!
I could wax lyrical about all the amazing new features and sell sell sell it to you, but instead I’ll tell you about my favourite bits, and then you can download the datasheet and read all about everything else. How does that sound?
Early on in the project the decision was made regarding the cosmetic and industrial design to maintain certain elements of the layout so that the new unit wouldn’t look out-of-place next to the DS800, so the familiar sockets on the left, controls on the right layout has been preserved. It makes total sense as well – placing the controls beside the input/output XLRs they relate to might make sense on the drawing board, but once you start plugging cables in, suddenly all those controls to switch on phantom power, solo channels, adjust gain, even see meters can become lost in a sea of cables.
You’ll not be too surprised by the controls layout either – 48V is at the top now out-of-the-way, and Solo is at the bottom of the meter. The mic/line switching has gone as there’s a wider gain range on the switched control. The coolest feature is one you may never see until you plug the unit in and start using it…the picture below should give you a clue…
The comforting glow of knowing you’ll be able to see all the controls in the dark. It’s just like valves 😉
Notice anything? No? Look closer. It’s dark. Yet you can still see the controls. That’s right – we’ve now got subtle (and it really is subtle – no-one will go blind looking at this!) panel downlighting so you can operate the unit when it’s stuck under your gloomy stage, without recourse to your Maglite. All racked up in a group they look really good, even if I do say so myself.
I did take these quick shots with my phone, as we’ve yet to get the publicity shots done, but their candid nature just adds to their charm, don’t you think? 😉 Here are a couple more – just to tantalise you – the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice the word-clock socket and the D-type socket cut-out ready to be fitted with an AES interface – this will get you fully digital, perhaps going into a pair of DP548s for post-mic processing, without losing any of the analogue splits.
Anyway – there’s more info on the datasheet itself, including full specs.
“O/B Splits and Ground Lifts, raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…there’s a song in there somewhere…and a mysterious D-type.
Availability is likely to be in the middle of the year – keep an eye on the website for the official release, and don’t say you never get a scoop on here!
