Crest Audio Review: HP 8 / 40

History: Church rock / blues / classic rock / Modern rock

Purchase: Don't know. It was already setup in my church.

What I Like About This Crest Audio HP 8 / 40: The good is it has plenty of Aux sends (10), and other features which is useful for live performance such as group mute (4).

What I Do NOT Like About The Crest Audio HP 8 / 40: Taking into account that this is a large board (40ch + 5 stereo ch), and for that it's reasonably priced ($6000), the sound could be little cleaner. When you monitor PFL the instrument coming into the board sound's pristine, but when you monitor AFL at monitor send, you can hear some grit, and grain. Very clean acoustic guitar or keyboard will not go out the board the way it came into it. I would not recommend this board for recording (which this board isn't designed for anyways) for this reason.

Crest Audio HP 8 / 40 Quality Rating: Construction seems good on the outside, but there seems to be some weakness between the channel strips and monitor section. Our board is relatively new (about 2 years), but already one of the monitor send is broken. It's not due to physical abuse because the board never gets moved.

Review Summary: The board has plenty of features and you will probably not run out of features to do live sound work with board. It's heavy (150 lbs.) and big so you'll definitely need a truck and good flight case to move this board around.

Rating of this Crest Audio product: 4

This Crest Audio HP 8 / 40 PA Gear Review Submitted By: Hiuke

Review Date: 2006-04-27