A dual-colour LED indicates signal present and clipping, but there is no other metering. Both inputs have a pad that is activated by pulling the Gain control outwards, and a Soft Limit button that is supposed to protect hot inputs from digital clipping. The two analogue inputs are each furnished with a combination jack/XLR socket on the rear panel, for line and microphone inputs respectively, and an additional jack on the front panel for direct connection of electric guitars and basses. It will also be much more difficult to send it flying with an accidental yank on a headphone cable. Of course, if you were actually to drop it from height, Sod's Law would no doubt ensure that it landed on its front, from which plastic pots protrude in a slightly less tank‑like fashion, but the overall impression is of a big step up in build quality from earlier Mboxes. In physical terms, the Pro Tools Mbox is an impressive beast, its construction dominated by a very substantial metal shell that extends all the way around it. The Pro Tools Mbox is USB‑powered, with no facility to attach an external PSU. Avid supplied the 'mummy bear' of the range for review: for details on the Mini and Pro, see the 'The Other New Mboxes' box. As before, there are three variants: the Mbox Mini, Mbox and Mbox Pro.
Officially, the successor to the Mbox and Mbox 2 is known not as the Mbox 3, but as the Pro Tools Mbox, which brings altogether too much potential for sentences such as "Unlike the original Mbox, the Mbox supports high sample rates.” I hope Avid won't mind me occasionally sticking the number three on the end to avoid confusion. Perhaps with this in mind, they have revamped their long‑running Mbox series of desktop audio interfaces.
Now that their interfaces are no longer acting as elaborate Pro Tools copy-protection dongles, they have to compete on level terms with the vast array of similar interfaces from rival manufacturers. Then, most dramatically of all, came Pro Tools 9, the first really powerful, hardware‑independent native version of Avid's market‑leading DAW (see our last issue for a review).īy removing the ties between native Pro Tools and their own hardware, Avid created an obvious challenge for themselves. First we had a new range of audio interfaces for the HD range. Now that Pro Tools fans can choose any interface they like, do Avid's latest Mboxes offer enough to keep their users in the fold?Īfter several years during which the Avid product line remained largely unaltered, it was all change in 2010.
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