Wow guys, the price tag of £920.00 for the AB168 is well out there. The AR2412 can be picked up for around £1100.00 which is still quite high when you consider the Desk prices. No one is going to stock it as they don’t the AR2412.
Your QU-16 & 24 users which I am one will struggle to justify that, especially when you add the Cat5 cable to the bill. Safe to say I am a little disappointed as the concept is great. My QU-16 cost me £1600.00 and it must have been much harder and costly to develop and build, same goes for the 24.
A £600.00 price would have been bareable
The AR (and now AB) AudioRacks are probably essential items when considering a GLD system as the mixers have only a handful of I/O connections on the rear panel. The QU mixers all have the full complement of XLR mic preamps on the back, many people will plug direct into these or use existing copper snakes and sub-boxes. Of course it’s sometimes advantageous to be able to hook up via cat5 for remote I/O too! in which case being able to use the A&H AudioRack inventory is a cool feature of the QU range but I wouldn’t directly compare prices against the QU mixers alone. Being able to plug in ME-1 personal monitors to the dSnake port on a QU is also worth considering in terms of your investment in A&H technology as it can handle all the inputs and mixes of the QU in a single cable.
I agree it’s not that worthy to invest AB168 with the QU. The reasons are as follows:
1: AB168 is much more expensive than the traditional analog snake. It’s half of the QU-16 mixer.
2: With the digital stage box, you don’t gain too much. You still have to carry a big metal box with cat5 cable, that may be even more stuff to carry than the analog snake.
3: It’s a waste of the on-board I/O, with AB168 stage box, it’s a double investment on preamps.
That’s why I’d rather buy a good analog snake in this case.