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Post by gravesnumber9 on Jan 6, 2023 14:46:26 GMT -6
I've been meaning to grab one of these for a while. Yeah, Sterling is not exactly a premium name but I've used some of their other utility pieces and they work. Plus they have like zero branding on them which I like. I've got a Sterling portable phantom power unit for gigging that has never died. Anyway, it's 20% off and has cool features that you don't often see for $69. - Internal power so no adaptors to lose - Power switch (yeah, you'd think that would be standard but you'd be wrong) - Rubber feet as well as mic stand mount - Expandable - 8 headphone outs (4 x 1/4" and 4 x 1/8"... why 1/8"? Who knows.)- Two sets of balanced inputs for A and B mixes - Very generic branding. Basically a black box. I don't know if this thing is any good... but for those features and that price? It looks like it beats the pants off what PreSonus or Mackie are offering in the same price range. I'm gonna give a shot. www.guitarcenter.com/Sterling-Audio/4-Channel-Professional-Headphone-Amplifier-1500000143760.gc |
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,107 
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Post by ericn on Jan 6, 2023 15:53:05 GMT -6
Yeah the price is right, yeah the feature list is right, but I have 2 clients who between them have gone through 3 of them I’m not a fan. OK John Larabee , VP of GC’s private brands is an old friend, he was at my wedding reception but I’ll slag Sterling products all day. These things are designed to look good on a comparison sheet, and make money for GC sonics are not a priority. For very little money and a decent sounding headphone amp that is built 10 times better far more easy to rack mount, and sounds good, just buy a used Symetrix 1/2 rack 4 ch or 2,3 or 4. I have sold them to broadcasters, Studios, video editing guys and when people were using wired IEMs a ton to touring companies ( why waste RF space on the drummer and Keyboard player?).
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Post by plinker on Jan 6, 2023 16:39:41 GMT -6
What price are we thinking of?
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Post by gravesnumber9 on Jan 6, 2023 17:10:51 GMT -6
Yeah the price is right, yeah the feature list is right, but I have 2 clients who between them have gone through 3 of them I’m not a fan. OK John Larabee , VP of GC’s private brands is an old friend, he was at my wedding reception but I’ll slag Sterling products all day. These things are designed to look good on a comparison sheet, and make money for GC sonics are not a priority. For very little money and a decent sounding headphone amp that is built 10 times better far more easy to rack mount, and sounds good, just buy a used Symetrix 1/2 rack 4 ch or 2,3 or 4. I have sold them to broadcasters, Studios, video editing guys and when people were using wired IEMs a ton to touring companies ( why waste RF space on the drummer and Keyboard player?). I don't know, I've never had a problem with Sterling stuff. I would never use it for anything that "mattered". Did a quick search for the Symetrix 304 and there's none immediately available that I can find. Let me just throw my use cases out there and tell me if you think the Sterling is really that bad. 1) I need to bring it back and forth between two locations so rack mounting is not possible/needed 2) I actually already have four headphone jacks in my mixing/overdub room so in that room this would be used in a scenario where the whole band is in there plus a girlfriend or something. Bust out the Sterling for a few more jacks. 3) And the other scenario would be when I'm tracking stuff in my rehearsal space which I use to do drums as well and which is much less frequent. Probably once or twice per month at the most. So we're not talking about a piece of equipment that's going to get a ton of use. We're talking something is "when you need it you need it" but that will spend like 8 hours a month in use and the rest of it's life in a drawer. |
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