I’m currently edging my way back into recording after a (very) long hiatus, so have been looking around at gear. I remember seeing a couple of the 900 series units back in the day; however I’ve just come across a 902 which is unlike one I’ve ever seen.
The other units I’ve seen all had the usual buttons & display on the front. This one is marked 902 just like the others, but it has no controls on the front panel whatsoever; just an arrangement of LED’s to show the sample rate & overload.
I spent a good hour or so googling last night & couldn’t find any mention of a 902 without controls on the front panel. Was it a particular model designed to run exclusively from the software?
One of the members on this forum @ruudvde once had a website with lots of information on the old pro units, maybe he will chime in. But it could have been a special variant for any major studio.
It is a variant called the 902D. Configuration was via switches on the back. There’s one for sale on ebay in Australia at the moment with some good front and rear panel pics:
That’s great; thanks for that.
Yeah that’s actually the one I saw (I’m in Australia). Like I said, I’d only ever seen the ones with the display & buttons; this one threw me a curve ball.
A quick search pulls up pictures of a similarly buttonless 900:
Including one on dCS’s own site:
The rear panel shot of the 902D is interesting. It seems that rear access was required to configure the unit (surely not very practical in a studio rack?), unless it was connected to a computer via the RS-232 port. However since there is only one of the latter the unit couldn’t be daisy-chained.
That’s good to know; I’ve never actually seen one for sale before, so I have no idea if the price is in the ballpark or not.
Having said that, ‘working condition’ is the variable that I’m concerned about; I’d be getting it posted to me, so I’m not able to try it out first.
I came across this one a few days ago while doing a search for two channel converters; I’m going to be doing some mixdowns from an analog console into a DAW, so I was looking for something with slightly better converters than my ageing RME interface. I was actually looking for something fairly recent; however the 902 stood out largely because I remembered a studio I worked at in the ‘90s getting a dCS 900 series of some sort in (might have been a 904 from memory), & the difference it made was really noticeable.
Any electronics of this age represents a bit of a gamble, but AUD 500/GBP 257 seems very fair. dCS has always had excellent build quality but electronic components age and depending on the amount of use the unit has had some could well be at or past the end of their expected service life.
You could always ask for an internal photo to check that no electrolytics are venting, they are usually the first to go (although with this unit you are about a decade ahead of the capacitor plague) so at least that isn’t a concern!
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