Phonic Helix Board 18 FireWire MKII

Since the other review already covers all the bases as far as inputs, outputs... I am simply going to keep mine very very short.

See Other reviews
great connectivity, if /when it is working. however that is a big "if and when!"

See other reviews for these details.

As in previous review

As already reviewed.

See previous review...

Ok this is the reason I am in this review site. I am going to have a gripe about the severe lack of back-up provided by Phonic on new items! Terrible!
Up until now I have never ever put a nasty review of any product on line, and I have reviewed dozens of items over the years. Even some of the less impressive items I have at least found something nice to say about them. However this item to put it bluntly gave me the *****, as does Phonics blatant disregard!
From the first day it arrived and I unpacked it I had some minor issues.
The Owners manual in the box is absolutely ******* useless. Half of the things you'd expect to have covered clearly in the manual were omitted entirely. So I took a fair while to nut out what the hell was happening, since I had no clues at all in the manual, or online.
Things simply were not getting routed to where I expected them to go. After several re-starts the thing started playing nice. Obviously some electronic glitch inside of the unit.
I contacted Nova Musik whom I ordered the desk through, and they were no help whatsoever. In fact they never even replied, and this is within days of the item being delivered. Fan-*******-tastic!
But as I said I eventually got it working, at least for a short time.
This unit is still under a year old, and different faults appear to be rearing their ugly little heads each time I use it. Things like tracks distorting, even though they are not being over-driven, tracks entirely dropping out, signals just not going anywhere, I mean I am playing into an armed channel, and the desk is lighting up, the correct channel on screen is selected but there is no sound getting through... Stupid little things which cause unnecessary delays to recording sessions!
The biggest fault, which occurs most often, is that for no apparent reason in the middle of a take during a recording session, the channel which is armed to record through suddenly starts to break up, or drops out, or both. there is absolutely no reason for this to occur.
Sometimes the signal drops out entirely from that armed channel even though the previously recorded parts I am playing along with continue to come through the monitors perfectly clearly.
You can kill that channel, and re-set it but as soon as it is re-set it all turns to **** again. The track has all Leds fully illuminated on the recording program (Logic) even though nothing is being input through that channel. There is this Awful noise obviously originating from within the desk, that simply will not go away, without turning the desk off for a decent spell. Maybe heat related, I have no idea!
The problem with shutting it down, is that first you have to exit the program, otherwise you start getting issues with interface missing, and it just leads to more headaches.
I have contacted both Nova Musik and Phonic directly about these faults and neither were of any help at all.
Nova, wash their hands of anything they sell 30 days after it is shipped. They told me to pay to have it repaired over here. Hang on this ******* thing is still under warranty.
Phonic, won't cover the item as it was imported from outside of Australia where I live, through a US based Dealer. This is in spite of the fact that their local dealership network over here is completely freaking useless, so I had to import the item if I wanted one.
Even though this desk is still officially under warranty Phonic are not interested in knowing about the faults, or attempting to rectify them. Again I was told to pay to have it repaired myself.
Stuff Phonic for a bad joke, I'll simply warn anyone in the market for a Mixing interface to think twice before buying this product.
Whether or not Phonic are any more helpful to US based musicians I have no idea, but there is no way in hell I'd recommend buying anything from them if this is how they treat customers who buy their gear outside of the US!

This is a desktop mixer, but can be rack mounted.

There are 16 audio channels sent to the computer, 14 from the main input channels and 2 others from a subgroup or Aux or something like that (the user can choose. I route a couple of channels through the Efx processor and record those by sending them to the groups). No noticeable latency or noise in the connection.

What I find interesting is that there is a little switch on every channel for me to select whether the input channels will be prefader sends or postfader sends when I connect to the computer. So I can use the faders and the EQ to affect the recorded signal.

There are two IEEE1394 connectors on board. I daisy chained it with another Helix Board and it worked well, but the second Firewire port doesn't work to connect with external FireWire hard drives or anything like that.

I use it with a 4-pin FireWire connector on my laptop and it works just as well as it does with the 6-pin connector on the desktop.

The first time I installed the driver it did take me two attempts, but I haven't had any problems installing it onto new computers since.

There are 10 input channels onboard, 6 with microphone and mono line inputs, 2 with microphone and stereo line inputs and two with just stereo line inputs. The first 8 channels have 3 band EQs (including a frequency control on mono channels) and the last two include a 4 band. There are three Aux sends (Aux 3 is the Efx send) and there's a stereo subgroup. There are two stereo Aux returns.

The preamps seem quiet (I was honestly surprised). There is also a S/PDIF output onboard, but nothing else in the way of digital inputs and outputs.

Control room bus is easy to set up - there is a small section with source selections. There's also a solo button (with LEDs, which makes them easy to notice) on every channel and on the groups and auxes. Also has a headphone output.

The unit has an internal AC power supply. There's also universal phantom power on board (+48V) with a switch at the back. There's no bus power option, but it seems like it'd be impossible on a board this big.

Samping rate is selectable up to 96 kHz, in 24-bit. There is software direct monitoring, and there are ASIO and WDM drivers for the Helix Board. I've used it with a few programs on the PC and I'd say 90% of them have been compatible. I read that it's plug and play with the Mac, but I've honestly never tried.

It comes with Cubase LE 4, which I guess is nice for people getting started (although I'd recommend upgrading to Cubase 4 or Nuendo). The driver also includes a control panel where buffer and sampling rate settings can be adjusted. The Helix Board works nicely as a stand alone analog mixer.

The Helix Boards have definitely been a worthwhile investment for me. I'd probably get a new one if I lost my current ones, particularly since I've heard they've come down in price a bit. There are a couple of things I could nitpick at (individual phantom power would have been nice, perhaps MIDI in and out onboard. Also the ability to directly record the Efx signal would have been helpful), but considering the price I'm confident I've gotten more than my money's worth.