Page 2: Audient ASP8024-HE

Get With The Times

OK, so all of that has been available for the last 18 years — but what does the new Heritage Edition bring to the party? The most immediately obvious changes are cosmetic: a new colour scheme, which Audient call ‘Midnight Raven’, has been applied, and vintage-styled knobs and large fader caps are used. These small changes deliver a nice, classic British-vintage character and style, which is enhanced further by a glorious Walnut armrest as standard. (An option adds a wider armrest centre section to accommodate a keyboard/mouse).

The colours of some buttons and LEDs have also been changed to make their functions a little more obvious, such as the channel Mic/Tape flip status LEDs. For example, special-feature buttons are now white, while standard routing functions are in light grey, with dark grey for the ancillary switches. And some of the panel legends and markings have also been revisited, again to improve intelligibility and easier recall. These are small changes, but they improve upon the ease of operation significantly.

The John Hardy 990C op-amps were previously only used in the summing amps of the high-channel-count ASP8024 models, due to their impressive low-noise performance: now they come as standard on all HE models.Another small but practical update is a deeper meter bridge. The original design was 89mm deep, which is clearly not enough to support nearfield monitors, so the Heritage Edition features a much deeper black-ash top panel, available in two depths: 180mm, which is sufficient for Auratones or NS10s; and 300mm, to accommodate much larger nearfield monitors. Eyelet hanging bolts are also fitted to the console’s rear panel to improve cable management — another small but very practical upgrade.

Moving on to the changes that can’t be seen so easily, one that becomes immediately obvious when using the console is a modification to the control room monitoring section. In the original design, the main and three alternate speaker outputs each had their own fully independent level controls. The Heritage Edition keeps the same knobs in the same places, but now the three alternate speaker controls act as ±10dB level trims, and all monitoring outputs follow the setting of the ‘Main’ level control — this is a far more sensible and practical arrangement.

On top of that, the Main level control is now an ALPS Blue Velvet RK271 series potentiometer, fitted with a large custom-made aluminium knob, which gives a better feel and improved linearity between stereo channels. The Alt 3 speaker output has also been repurposed to drive a high-performance headphone amplifier, with a headphone socket located on the meter upstand above the master section. This new facility is built around high-end LM4562 op-amps and BUF634 high-current output drivers, and is claimed to provide very low-distortion but powerful headphone monitoring.

A couple of useful tweaks have appeared in the talkback section, with remote-controlled relay-switched talkback to the studio loudspeakers (SLS) and Artist Foldback (typically feeding a live-room headphone distribution system). These can be operated by latching footswitches plugged into the back of the console. Also, the stereo mix-bus VCA compressor has been revamped to make it a little sweeter-sounding. The make-up gain function is performed by the VCA itself and has also been improved, with a sensibly reduced range (a more practical 20dB instead of the original 40dB). A classic white-on-black analogue gain-reduction meter has been added too, along with a switchable high-pass filter (350Hz, 6dB/octave) in the side-chain. This is engaged with a button marked ‘Bass Expand’, the intention being to help tighten and control bass-heavy mixes without killing the low end and lower mid-range in the process.

Of course, many of the updates aren’t visible to the user at all, such as a new, quieter, external linear power supply, and surface-mount transistors in the Class-A mic preamp (since the original devices have become obsolete as through-hole components). Another invisible but important upgrade is the use of John Hardy 990C discrete op-amps (DOAs) for the stereo mix-bus summing amps. Audient started using these in the special 10th Anniversary edition of the console as well as in all very large-frame consoles — their lower noise performance enabled a 72-channel console to match the performance of a standard 36-channel desk. All of the Heritage Edition consoles feature these 990 DOA mix amps as standard.

In consoles fitted with the Dual Layer Control (DLC) module, which provides eight channels of patchable VCA automation and DAW control using the HUI format, an improved version of the ‘FaderLink’ control plug-in is now 64-bit and supports AAX, AU and VST formats.

The Retro Iron card enables the user to dial in transformer distortion to taste, from clean to a subtle retro ‘punch’.

Any Old Iron!

Leaving the best to last, probably the single biggest sonic upgrade is a new mix-bus processing technology called Retro Iron. This was inspired by the development of the Iron processing introduced in the recent ASP800 mic preamp (reviewed in November 2015: https://sosm.ag/audientasp800). This all-new circuit card is installed in the centre-section of the console and is wired in series with the stereo mix-bus inserts. It comprises a pair of discrete transistor amplifiers driving Carnhill output transformers, the aim being to add a ‘retro punch’ and some subtle musical colour to the mix bus. (A lot of the circuitry is derived from a couple of custom solid-state consoles which David Dearden helped to build and commission at Advision Studios in London in the early 1970s.)

The beauty of this Retro Iron feature is that it is fully user-configurable. When switched out the console performs and sounds exactly like every other ASP8024, with the ultra-clean and transparent sound quality for which it is so well known. However, when switched into circuit the transistor amps and transformers introduce a deliciously subtle second-harmonic distortion, bringing a sense of more warmth and body to the mix. Further tonal variations are available with ‘Low Bump’ and/or a ‘High Lift’ equalisation (with configurable gain options on the circuit cards for the ‘tweakers’), which interact creatively with the transformers to further mould the sound. The end result is a sound character that’s strongly reminiscent of the classic ’70s British consoles, and it bestows the ASP8024 HE with enormous tonal flexibility.

Signing Off

In recognition of the console’s outstanding original design, designer David Dearden’s signature is proudly emblazoned across the fader tray under the new Retro Iron controls — and rightly so. But we should also recognise that much of this Heritage Edition upgrade is the work of Audient’s Technical Director Tom Waterman, and it’s good to know that a new generation of skilled and talented audio designers is following in the footsteps of the established industry legends such as David Dearden, Rupert Neve, Robin Porter, Graham Langley, Clive Green, Ken Farrer, and many more.

Finally, I mentioned earlier that the original ASP8024 cost around £15,000 in 2000 for a 24-channel console. Sixteen years of inflation takes that figure to around £23,500 today — which I think makes the £17,100 asking price for a brand-new 24-channel ASP8024 HE astonishingly good value.

The Heritage Edition is part face-lift, part re-invention but, unlike so many ‘make-overs’, nothing has been lost or thrown away here. All the changes are well thought-out, positive, and directly beneficial to the user, and they all enhance the facilities of an already great console — one which genuinely deserves the title, ‘Modern Classic’.