Audient plaudits [ AudioMasters Forums - The Home of the Original Cool Edit and Adobe Audition Community ]

Lemme tell you a story... I actually feel obliged to share this with you.

Having read a generally favourable review of the Audient ASP008 8x mic pre in SOS (it's not on line yet, so you either need to be a subscriber, or have the mag), I was quite surprised to see a single one offered for sale last week 'as new', and fully loaded with the AES and ADAT options, by a reputable company for slightly under half price. (No they haven't got any more - this was a one-off.)

I'm a sucker for a bargain, and I'd seriously thought about one of these anyway - so this offer seemed almost too good to be true. I parted with the funds, and it turned up the next day, complete with original packing and, somewhat surprisingly, a new front panel. And it's pretty much as described - as new.

There was one thing I noticed, though... and that is the power consumption. Preamps don't provide useful energy as an output, so whatever goes in gets dissipated as heat. In this case, 40 Watts of it. Yes, it's a 40 Watt heater. Audient warn you to leave 1U of space above it (why not just put it in a 2U case?) for ventilation purposes, but I have to say that even if you leave it uncased, you could almost fry an egg on top of it after it's been on for a while.

Then I recalled something it said in the review, and went back and had a look at it. Sure enough, by the power socket, the review model had a small instrument fan fitted. Guess what mine doesn't have? Time for a phone call to Audient, I think. I got put through to the Marketing Director (bear in mind that this is a publically quoted company, not a small firm) and asked him about it. He said "Yes, this sounds like an early one." He also said yes, you could retro-fit a fan in the same place as the later ones, and it would improve things significantly from a heat dissipation perspective. I asked where would be a suitable point to connect the fan (I have no idea which supplies are heavily loaded in it, and this is useful information if you are going to load one even more), and he said "send me an email - I'll get the service dept. to advise you". So I did.

The following day, having sourced a suitable fan, I got an email back from him. He'd had a chat with the service dept, and they'd come to the conclusion that since I was useful with a screwdriver, they'd got a better idea, if I was up for it. This was that they'd send me a new outer chassis, complete with fan and wiring diagram, and I could transplant all the innards into that - free, gratis and for nothing.

Er, yes, I'm up for it all right... to make a suitable hole in the one I've got is going to require removing everything from it anyway, so what the heck.

It arrived yesterday, complete with neat, hand-drawn connection instructions, and it took about an hour to transplant everything. Now, only the mains tranny gets warm, and there's a pleasant warm breeze exiting from the left-hand side of the preamp. RESULT!

It makes a very pleasant change to be able to deal with a firm who clearly support their products, even when they have no direct obligation to the customer at all. They even warned me of the precise time they were dispatching the parcel - I am impressed. If you compare this behaviour to that of a firm like Creative, where you'll never get through to anybody sensible on the phone, and maybe get an email answered unsatisfactorily in 6 months if you're lucky, it's like chalk and cheese.

So, regardless of any other considerations, I can recommend Audient's after-sales service unreservedly. This sort of service can make a world of difference - why can't more firms do it?