Yamaha Digital Mixers

I paid about $1600 for this unit at a local Guitar Center store. I needed to move my home studio to more tracks and get something I could also use for live gigs. I was very happy with the 01V until I outgrew it's track capacity and had to move up to an 02R. I still like some things about the 01V better. The effects are better sounding than my more recently acquired and much more expensive 02Rv2. The fader automation is handy for switching between projects. I had no trouble adapting to the control surface. There is about the right balance of individual channel controls vs. shared controls that act on the currently selected channel. The 01V T-DIF cards for connecting to Tascam digital tape units (DA-38's in my case) don't handle word clock sync and the separate word clock output doesn't help any. I ended up going ADAT connectors to my MOTU and TDIF from there to the DA-38's. Yamaha has timing down much better on the ADAT interfaces.Very solid. My initial concerns about taking it on the road to small gigs have been resolved as it is standing up very well. It was a bit hard to find a case for but I did find a semi-rigid well padded case (nightmarish ordering process - I don't recommend ordering custom cases or anything else that isn't in stock in store from Guitar Center). Well I'd been out of mainstream audio for about 15 years. Compared to what $1600 got you when I was last active to what I got for my money with this purchase I was amazed! And it hasn't stopped there. The new AW-4416 is what I think the Roland VS-880 family should've been.If you're sure that 16 channels is enough for a while buy this unit or look at the 4416. I liked the unit so much that I almost bought a second one and chained them together when I needed to expand. This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com