Most un-intuitive piece of gear I have ever come across

esumsea

:evil:
I have studied Hegel, Kant, Heidegger and other philosophers that will make your head spin. I have completed Calculus II and physics with calculus. I have learned how to use midas, ssl and other consoles. I know how to use pro tools, cakewalk and cubase. I have worked with numerous pieces of digital gear......

But the 260 has to be the hardest and most moronically unituitive piece of gear I have ever used. I have 2 DEQ2496 and it took me 30 minutes to learn how to use every feature set. It took me 3 hours to program the 260 and when I go to store the changes, they get deleted. Why? Because these geniuses decided to put the delete and store functions on the same button. I am giving this thing another shot but the techs are going to impart some info that is only implied in the manual. One day a company will hire a writer to create a good manual.

I just had to impart this to the next unlucky soul who thinks that he can use this after spending 3 hours with it.
Good Luck! :shock:

Gadget

Interesting assesment.

I ALWAYS, no wait NEVER, like to use superlatives... when I speak... words like \"always\", and \"never\", \"impossible\" (thats my favorite)are the last words I would use). My father always told me, \"The difficult we do immediatley... the impossible just takes a little longer\".

I was a total analog fanatic. Right down to my class \"A\" tube amps... My 1\" 16 track analog Reel To Reel. That said, I would have to say the single most significant improvement in my system, came from the DR260.

I sat down with the unit, set it on the kitchen table, and in 1/2 hour was able to operate, and tune my 3 way (Yorkville Elite 2204's (dual 15 inch RCF woofer's and a B&C 750, 2\" exit 60X40 horn...over LABsubs) system. I had more improvement in my sound in 10 minutes, than in the last 10 years! The crowning touches were, aux fed subs, feeding LAB sub woofers (amazing!!)

The manual has a \"BLOCK\" diagam, that I believe is the key to understanding the Driverack. Once you understand the signal flow, then the only things left are the modules themselves and their navagation, and tho it is not written so as to be intuitive, most complaints come from the fact that the manual is hard to read... a lot of the info we need is in there, its just not where you can easily find it... Being a technician I looked at it from a \"signal path\" aspect. I looked at the block diagram, ran the wizard functions, set up several systems noting what each button press and knob twist did. a pattern emerges. You need to understand the function of each module, and be able to edit its parameters. The thing is, the PRO audio community likes the 260... those that know, prefer it to the 480 series...it has more flexibility. This is a serious piece. If you don't understand the technology, and aren't able to access its functions, it can do more harm than good for your sound.

I have been here for years, and never heard anyone, no wait ...there was one other guy, that gave up... cursed the 260, and sold it... he couldn't understand it. But the point is, tons of DRPA and 260 owners... just regular people who doon't know anything about sound, are finding that if you can follow simple directions you can get the DR to improve your sound.

I noted you spoke of analog consoles, and \"Pro tools\" and \"other digital\" gear... Oh and the BEH piece... each of those items requires a certain level of knowledge, and skill to operate...do you think anyone who run a mackie mixer can run a midas XL? It would take a knowledgable and motivated tech to be able to master its functions in a day! The 260 is just another system to understand... If you ever looked @ the auto repair business, you would see the same parallels... different aproaches to the same questions/solutions. I challenge you to give the block diagram a good going over, then access each module, and learn your way around it...you will soon see, that even though it can do a thing, doesn't mean we want it to. The beauty of this piece is, its a whole group of tools, with all the interface problems eliminated. It kinda sux that we can't select the route we want, but the path does work... and is a piece of cake to use with the GUI... If you haven't tried that, you are workin way too hard.

Even though there is newer and more flexible solutions, I still find the 260 a hell-of-a bargain.

Be well
Gadget

Mikey

Maybe you should go back and study Heidegger again. Those \"Personal Knowlege\" things might serve you well with dbx products!

Mikey

Jeff Weed

Got my 260 last Wednesday. Installed it, got frustrated, put it back in the box and put it in my closet.

Did some more reading, had a lot of questions. Woke up today and installed it again. Most of it makes perfect sense to me now. I guess it wasn't so hard after all.

I do wish that the manual would be more explicit and describe the how and why of some of it. But, in the end, the tool does some pretty complex things in very simple ways.

I don't even understand crossover slopes or any of that rocket science stuff. But, with the 260, all I had to do was get the settings from the speaker company and type them into driveware.

I guess it would have been nice to have a manual on driveware. It took my ten minutes to discover that I didn't have to try to move the slider with my mouse and that I could just type over the text.

The other thing that made all the difference to me was when I learned to always start with the wizard. That is what builds the editable programs.

I guess the bottom line is that the manual is close to worthless to those of us that don't know the science. But, the tool is pretty intuitive. By that I mean, I didn't use the manual and was still able to figure out what to do.

By the way, I have no experience with pro audio. I woke up one day and decided that I wanted a nice sounding stereo because I was tired of MP3's and PC speakers. So I bought some Bose 901's to go with what I had. Needless to say they didn't work out for me in terms of accuracy and volume. I put those in their boxes and stuck them in a closet. I did some research and decided to buy a 10k watt pro audio system. Now I have nice amps, high end speakers, console, and the dsp. It's everything that I was looking for. The 260 makes it exceed my expectations.

All in all, the 260 is the BOMB!!! If I can do it, you can do it.

So, good luck and stay with it. There are many people who are willing to help you. I've even seen people offer their phone number for support! Outstanding forum and community members. Special thanks to Gadget.

No longer frustrated,

Jeff

rickk

Geez... dude, you may be too smart. It didn't take me long at all to figure it out. Within 15 mins, I had my first program created and stored. That was several years ago. I'm still using that program in one of my venues to this very day--granted, it's been tweaked a bit since then...