AW4416 Digital Audio Workstation (Church Production, April 2001)

As seen in the March/April 2001 issue by Kurt Gibson Have you ever dreamed about installing a recording studio in your church? Many folks have, but relatively few get to enjoy such a luxury. The realities of a studio — high equipment costs, cabling, setup, permanent space, personnel etc. — tend to overwhelm the benefits, making even a modest recording studio tough to justify in the face of other ministry priorities. Now, imagine what could happen if high equipment costs, cabling, setup and permanent space were eliminated from the above list. Imagine if someone created an affordable, professional-quality recording studio that fit in a small box. Would your dream of a recording studio be any closer to reality? The good news is that many companies now make one-box recording studios you could hold on your lap. Arguably the most-capable of this class is the Yamaha AW4416 ($3,599). It combines the power of Yamaha’s renown 02R digital mixer, an internal hard-disk recorder, an optional CD recorder, automation system and flexible editing software. With the AW4416, you can literally record a radio-ready CD with a few microphones and a set of headphones.

Open Up the Box
To grasp how much recording power is inside this little box, you can start by decipher the AW4416’s model number. At the heard of this Audio Workstation is a 44-channel digital mixer connected to a 16-channel hard-disk recorder. Of the 44 channels, sixteen handle digital audio playback from the hard drive, 24 will accept live inputs, and the last four are meant for two stereo effects returns.

Unlike an analog mixer that requires external effects to be inserted where required, the AW4416 offers a full dynamics processor (compressor, noise gate, expander and more) on every mixer channel except the two stereo effects returns. Every input also boasts a wonderful four-band EQ with true high- and low-pass filtering.

The AW4416 also has two built-in effects processors, each offering a great variety of effects such as reverb, delay, chorus and many others. You can also use your existing effects units with the AW4416; it offers six additional aux busses (sends). If you add these to the Yamaha’s eight main busses, stereo bus and cue bus, you discover
the AW4416 is actually a 20-bus mixer.

Keeping all these digital signals flowing properly between points A and Z is the job of the AW4416’s digital router/patchbay. You can send any signal to nearly any input or output (virtual or real) in the AW4416, including four “omni” outputs that can be used for a variety of purposes.

Other inputs include combo XLR/TRS on channels one and two, 1/4-inch balanced analog inputs on channels three through eight and a special high-impedance guitar input on channel eight. Channels one and two offer phantom power for powering a condenser mic, plus an analog insert point (for patching in an external compressor or other processor). The AW4416 also has S/PDIF digital input and output, RCA stereo output, headphone and monitor outputs with level controls, a footswitch jack, MIDI in/out/thru, a dedicated MIDI timecode output, wordclock in/out and a jack for a PC-compatible mouse. Whew!

If you want more analog or digital I/O, the AW4416 boasts two expansion slots. Several different cards are available from Yamaha, including ADAT Lightpipe (eight channels of input and output), Tascam digital (eight in/out), AES/EBU digital (eight in/out), XLR analog (four in or four out) and TRS analog (eight in). You could add one card for ADAT Lightpipe digital in/out, for example, and pick up an additional eight TRS analog inputs from a second card in the other slot. Other companies (Waves, for example) are offering cards that add additional effects to the AW4416.

Hard Driving Software
If Yamaha had stopped here, they’d have an impressive digital mixer on their hands. As it turns out, all that digital mixing, routing and effects power is just the tip of the iceberg. Deeper under the surface is a full-blown 16-channel hard disk recorder that records 16- or 24-bit audio at 44.1 or 48 kHz sampling rates. Unlike some recorders that compress the audio (and degrade its quality slightly) to pack more on the drive, the Yamaha records true uncompressed audio.

For each of the 16 audio tracks, the AW4416 allows you to record eight virtual tracks. You can then pick the best virtual track for playback. Though it takes some effort, the Yamaha’s audio editor allows you to combine sections from different virtual tracks (or takes) into a seamless performance.

In addition to the internal hard drive, the AW4416 has an optional CD-R burner ($250) that will record final mixes to CD-R or CD-RW discs. This drive allows you to archive song projects to free up drive space, and will also read and write standard Wave audio files. This latter capability comes in very handy when there’s a computer anywhere in your production process.

When it’s time to turn all those wonderful tracks into a great mix, the AW4416 turns into a powerful automation system — moving motorized faders and all. This allows you to turn out mixes with a high degree of precision, fine-tuning the automation of each track to perfection. The AW4416’s automation software is derived from Yamaha’s mighty 02R mixer, and offers nit-picky control over levels, pan, EQ and aux send settings.

If full automation is more than you need, the AW4416 offers “snapshot” recall of all mixer, effects and signal routing settings. About all that the program memories can’t store are input trim settings. For live mixing, this program recall capability is a godsend.

Another nice feature is the AW4416’s 16-part sampler. You can load snippets of digital audio, up to 90 seconds total, into 16 memory areas. Pressing the appropriate button then triggers the sound. Again, the ability to trigger sounds in a live performance setting (during drama, perhaps) opens up countless creative possibilities.

Hands On
If you suspect that any device with so much power must have a pretty elaborate user interface, you’re right on the money. The AW4416 has a hefty number of buttons, menus and displays. Thankfully, they’re clearly labeled, and many buttons have dedicated functions. A handy jog/shuttle wheel allows moving forward or backward through a song at various speeds, as well as changing numeric values in some menus.

One LCD and one fluorescent display are the main windows into the AW4416’s inner workings. The LCD houses the most information by far, including tracks, routings, multi- level menus, automation, channel settings, etc. The fluorescent display is primarily used for hard disk metering, counters and other simple indicators.

The unit’s motorized faders operate in several different modes, quickly jumping to their new positions as you switch. The faders control either mixer inputs 1-16, inputs 17-24 and effects returns, effects send levels or the 16 hard disk playback tracks. As with every other aspect of the AW4416, the recorder’s faders have a professional, high- quality feel to them.

Like faders switching modes, the AW4416 must re-configure itself briefly as you move through various stages of the recording process. These include disk utility functions, song loading, automation editing, playback and track editing, among others. Those last two are the clincher — the AW4416 forces you to edit your audio in a mode where you can’t actually hear your audio.

This means finding your bearings and setting markers in one mode, then switching to the edit mode to perform any editing function (such as moving a region of audio). This two- step process gets old pretty fast, making editing on the AW4416 more of a chore than it needs to be. Other aspects of the AW4416’s software are much more intuitive and efficient.

How does the AW4416 sound?
Excellent. Thanks to 24-bit accuracy, uncompressed digital audio and impeccable internal processing, the AW4416 can capture professional-quality sound and maintain it from microphone to final mix. With a talented engineer behind the controls, the AW4416 can turn out music that’s indistinguishable from a big-buck production. It’s simply that good.

Power With a Price
Short of rigging a laptop computer with lots of extra hardware and audio interfaces, there’s no other single product in the world of music that offers as much production power as Yamaha’s AW4416. It’s redefining what a one-box studio can do, and Yamaha’s no-compromise attitude towards quality is apparent throughout.

So how might the Yamaha AW4416 fit in at your church? In short, there are probably a dozen different areas where the AW4416 could impact your various music ministries. See “Putting it to Work” sidebar for some ideas.

As with most products, this technological wonder does have an Achilles heel — complexity. The inevitable flip side to such a powerful, flexible system is the complexity needed to control it. Though the AW4416’s interface is well-conceived, it’s still deep, deep, deep.

You can’t expect the layperson who recently learned your analog house mixer to get up-to-speed on the AW4416 without considerable effort. Even folks with a great deal of experience in digital audio production will need a week or two to really make friends with the mighty AW4416. Experience with any other Yamaha digital mixer — 02R, 01V, 03D, etc. — will ease the learning curve.

But if you have someone who can tap even just 25% of the AW4416’s potential, it might be a great investment for your church. Find a person capable of really putting it through its paces, and this little Yamaha could revolutionize the way you record, edit and produce music.

It may just be the recording studio you’ve been waiting for.