scarkord's Reviews
5 reviews Back to scarkord's Equipboard
941
Beware the black gunk of death!
Have owned these for coming up to 9 years now, and for 8 years, they've been solid workhorses. They do offer a fairly flat response, so pretty good for doing mixing, if a little lacking in clear bass response (quite muddy). The suffer from a bit of background hiss, but you hardly notice when they are in use.
That said, the last year they have been an absolute pain. Randomly dropping out, intermittently buzzing from tweeters and then the left one stopping working altogether. It would work for about 5 minutes then go completely silent. If you left it a few hours it would work again, but only for about 5 minutes. My assumption was this was linked to a problem with the capacitors discharging when they heated up, but upon opening up the case, it was a bit more serious than that.
A bit of googling revealed that they suffer from something called the 'Black Gunk of Death' - Sadly, mine had this same fate and the circuitboards were smothered in it.
The gunk in question, is a glue that was used during manufacture to stop components from rattling, but it unfortunately turns corrosive over time.
So I spent many hours, chiselling the gunk off the circuit board, followed by replacing corroded resistors and all of the capacitors! This brought it back to life, but is surely going beyond what is expected of a consumer? Dreading the day when the right one stops and I have to repeat the procedure.
27243
sorry to hear these have been such a pain, but 8 years of service from powered monitors that were well under $1000/pair is pretty good. For 20 years I've been using self-powered monitors from this "home studio" price tier from various manufacturers (Event, M-Audio, etc), and have yet to have a pair last more than 10 years... in some cases far far less. I think it's best to view self-powered studio monitors as consumables that will eventually wear out and need to be replaced.
27243
but I'm sure I speak for many here when I say I'm impressed you were able to bring one back from the dead!
941
Good portability, but not the best sound quality
There is lot's to like about the Pocketrack c24, such as the innovative built in USB connector (no wires needed), backlit LCD and long battery life using only a single AAA battery. Unfortunately, the sound quality isn't one of it's strong points with lots of background noise which is a shame as it's more or less the ideal size for a stereo recorder.
I've since moved to an Olympus LS-12 recorder which on the one hand lacks some of the features of the c24 (It's larger and heavier for a start, requires two AA batteries and needs a separate USB lead), but it sounds far, far better.
941
Not just for the Maschine software
I originally purchased this to supplement my Maschine controller, but it actually makes a brilliant control surface for Cubase too. The included Controller Editor allows you to map the buttons to a MIDI CC or MIDI note, and you can also emulate Mackie Control (MCU) too. So for example, I can set the rotary encoder up as a jog wheel and use the sliders to control MIDI CC's for my Kontakt instruments.
Probably the only two downsides are that the lights aren't particularly bright in daylight; my Novation Launchpad Pro is much brighter. And the pads don't have any touch sensitivity. But otherwise, it's a flexible little unit that still serves a purpose even though I've long since abandoned the Maschine software.
