Just joking - This thing is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME!
I'll write a full review soon.
I'll just round up a few pointers...
1) The Compressors are actually really good. I Managed to get a Kick booming like a mad thing, and squashed up some busy channels. It's very transparent. It can also be triggered by any other channel.
2) Nice noise gates. Gates can also be triggered by side chain. Neat.
3) The file exchange thing is damn easy to use. I usually hate computers and their evil doings, but the software connected up to the DDX straight away. The DDX does need a PC Card to save all the dynamic, eq, etc. Presets, though.
4) I was initially confused with the layout after using a (cough) fostex VM200 for the last couple of Years, but after a couple of hours, I'd found my way round pretty much the whole board and was able to do things pretty much intuitively. This board does feel a lot like an analogue board. It has the same kind of intuitive 'feel' thing, without having to think about everything as you do it.
5) There is a Fan built into the board to cool it, but it's very quiet. Far Quieter than the average PC fan.
6) The sliders feel perfect. Super smooth. As do the Pots. They don't click like the usual Digi Pots.
7) The EQ is great. I've never found it this easy to quickly fix a sound. There is a high pass on every channel in addition to dedicated four band parametric. This is great, because the first thing I do is rip out the lower end on non Bass sounds.
8) The input meter bridge runs alongside each fader - This is a nice touch.
9) The sound is good too. I'm really hitting the inputs hard. It takes a lot to distort them. The 24 bit headroom is nice, also. I'm noticing the Verbs are especially good and clean.
10) There's some funky effects on board. I haven't played them all yet, but they are certainly good soundin'.
11) As well as four internal effect sends, each channel has it's own dedicated delay, for free. Each channel can be configured seperately, which is really neat. They do seem a bit 'short', though. Not really long Echos, more sort of Flangey stuff and short echoes. I'll have to play more.
I'm damn impressed with this board. After a few hours, I feel like I'm mixing with ESP or something. I can just fix and tweak things so quickly and easily - FX sends, EQ, Compression, Gates. Amazing.
Currently, I'm outputing 24bit SPDIF into my Dbx Quantum, which then dithers down to 16 bit and SPDIF's it into my PC. Super clean sound al the way.
I've always liked Behringer products, despite the evil Mackie fans getting all pissy about them.
It looks like Behringer are coming back as far as credibilty is concerned and this desk is an exellent start.
Looks like Steinburg are impressed too, according to their website...
Mongy.