Yamaha Review: AW4416 Studio Workstation

History:

Purchase: For inspiration, I typically like to go places and record or write my songs. For instance, it's always nice in New England to get a cabin in the woods in the fall and check out the foliage as you write some great tunes. To accomplish this, I could no longer use my PC at home for recording. I needed something powerful, yet portable. I paid roughly $3200 for this unit at Musician's Friend.

What I Like About This Yamaha AW4416 Studio Workstation: First off, it's incredibly flexible. There are sampling pads, built in effects, a track display, several levels of undo and more. In addition, it's a digital hard disk based mixer / recorder with a built in SCSI CD burner. The sound quality is incredible.

What I Do NOT Like About The Yamaha AW4416 Studio Workstation: It was a chore to learn how to use properly. It doesn't take too long to get in and start recording tracks, but there's so much functionality built into this unit it will take you a while to learn how to use it all. Not that this is a bad thing. This tabletop unit is probably as powerful and flexible as a whole analog studio.

Yamaha AW4416 Studio Workstation Quality Rating: The construction of the unit seems relatively solid. It's a combined aluminum and plastic chassis, so it's not going to take a fall off of a table very well, but occasional bumps and bruises probably won't hurt too bad. The quality of the recordings as mentioned earlier is excellent. All of the knobs, switches and buttons are solid as well, nothing cheap about this unit.

Review Summary: It's not cheap, of course. But I think you get what you pay for. The AW4416 is a fine workstation. The included functionality may be more than some expect or are able to get used to, but I think the price point is fair considering everything you can do with this unit.

Rating of this Yamaha product: 4

This Yamaha AW4416 Studio Workstation Recording Gear Review Submitted By: Teedo Traxman

Review Date: 2001-10-22