April 2010 \ Reviews \ Digidesign Eleven Rack Review

Digidesign Eleven Rack Review

Digidesign's Eleven Rack lives up to its hype as an ultra-useful performing and recording tool for pros
Premier Guitar April 2010
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Plugging In
When I finally got my hands on the Eleven Rack, I decided to test out its capabilities initially as a stand-alone guitar processor. The first thing I noticed when plugging in my guitar was the True-Z input jack. This unique guitar input was created to replicate the impedance of guitar amps and stompboxes, which results in amazingly realistic sounds. Since each guitar reacts differently with every amp or effect, the True-Z input basically changes the input impedance automatically to whatever amp or effect is first in the signal chain. And the Eleven Rack isn’t using a DSP algorithm to do that—it uses actual analog switching with real capacitors and resistors.

Before hooking the unit to an amp, I wanted to hear the pure clean output, so I plugged in my headphones and began scrolling through the presets. I was instantly welcomed with lush amp sounds and effects, and each preset sounded great. One thing I noticed right away was that the Eleven Rack not only sounds like a real amp, it feels like a real amp as well— more than any other modeling unit I’ve played through before. The dynamics were terrific, and Eleven Rack really responded like an amp should. It actually sounds like a speaker pushing air, which is something you can’t always hear in other amp simulators.

Each preset had very usable tones with different combinations of amps and effects. Many presets sounded great as is, and I would only tweak them slightly to my taste. I’m a firm believer in presets. They can save you a lot of time, and they can also serve as a great foundation for customizing and tweaking your own custom sounds. There are 104 presets in the Eleven Rack, with an additional 104 user presets that you can customize and then save. With every preset, the indicator light on the knob is amber (or green for effects) but once you change a parameter, the knob changes to red. You can also swap out any amp or effect for any other— and place it anywhere in the signal chain. So if you want to move the wah effect between distortion and the amp, you can easily do so.

I only had one minor issue with the presets: once you scroll to the very end of the user presets, it doesn’t circle back to the very first factory preset. You have to scroll back through all banks to get to the first one again.

This One Goes to Eleven
I then connected the unit to an amp. The Eleven Rack offers two 1/4" amplifier output jacks. Output 1 is on the front panel, which can easily be connected to the input of an amplifier. Output 2 is on the back, and it can be used to connect either to one amp or to an additional amp for stereo output. I connected it to an amp and set it to a clean, neutral sound. With this setup, I can choose any emulated amp head from within Eleven Rack and my external amp is transformed instantly. I had a nice variety of tones from the 16 amp heads I had to choose from—from a ’59 Fender Bassman to a ’92 Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier. All of them sounded great, and none felt like emulations. The True-Z input is a big part of that, because those analog components make it feel like a real amp. Also, the developers painstakingly inspected every component of many amps and incorporated nuances that other amp-modeling developers overlook, like power-amp sag, cabinet resonance, and ghost notes.

Another nice feature about Eleven Rack is that you can send whatever you want out to the amp, whether it’s the entire sound of the rig with effects and amp simulator, effects only, or any point in between. So for example, if you want to include all of the effects and the amp from Eleven Rack without the speaker simulator, you would choose “Rig Out – No Cab.”

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Comments

 (27 comments) display by
UsernameComment
Jason
on 01/30/2012 		The only problem I have found with my eleven rack is a constant buzz in the background which sounds like a grounding issue. Has anyone else ran into anything like this?
Zombiejunk
on 12/20/2011 		Honestly, there is a switching delay. This fact makes the 11R unusable for live! ´Don´t get me wrong, the sounds are great! really great! but switching delays??? It is 2011 and regarding to this it´s defenitly a NO GO!
Roman
on 11/01/2011 		For anyone seriously considering the Eleven Rack check out the EP that my band just released. ALL GUITAR TRACKS were done with the Eleven Rack. www.reverbnation.com/severthesenses
TLTD
on 03/02/2011 		Eleven Rack is awesome, I've had it almost a year and still haven't done everything I have planned because I get sidetracked trying different preamps with and without the amps and cabs, etc. Reamping tracks and using a wah later on and adding divebombs with my Pitchfactor stomp box was nice to see. Seems like anything I can think up, I can do. I finally switched back to Cakewalk because I wanted to try Recabinet 3. I think at this stage in the game, people know how to tweak around with Line 6, Axe FX, and Eleven Rack but you owe it to yourself to think about the possibilities and there are a lot more with Eleven Rack overall and you don't get that weird "samey" digital sound even if the only two things you have are a guitar, OD, and the 11R. I only do direct recording, but I hear that this is a very good live box from people I see in person. Some cover bands use them for 80s stuff that I have heard. I have made a few presets I like, but going back through the presets I am learning to trust the ones they already have now that I see they are made for specific sound. I tried some riffing through "7 String King" and left it alone and my Mesa Boogie Quad on Mark IIC cruch ch into it is the biggest baddest sound I have ever had. You can get this sound a lil cheaper by just buying the recording preamp. I might sell it and just get that because that's all you need really. The only think I like about the MKIII ch is combining it with ch 1 for leads. But any preamp really would sound cool and I recommend it. I have 3 preamps now and am still under budget of the Axe FX price and sounding way better, and knobs are so much faster to turn than deep editing and all that crap.
Lance
on 02/11/2011 		Eleven Rack Mods Available..Checkout TheToneDoctor dot com.
Tom Hartman
on 08/27/2010 		The Eleven software version and rack version are identical in sound except for the rack's ability to add speaker cone distortion.
PeteScud
on 07/25/2010 		I've owned both and for the money, you can't beat a Eleven Rack. To me just to be put in the same sentence as a Axe FX is incredible, considering a new 11R now is $699 on ebay, and a Axe is at the least $1399ish with no recording interface or midi interface. I'll admit, i think the Axe FX is more my preference and better, but both are incredible units just the same...I say own both if you can
Ben
on 07/11/2010 		Axe is the way to go if you want to sound like every amp has a distortion pedal in front of it. Listen to way 11 handles the Lows notes in the clips. You hear the tube fattening sound, grit and fuzz. Axe fx has none of that..its like there is tube screamer in front. He got the distortion wrong so it sounds like solid state on the low strings. Yes, the quality of sound is great..but anyone who knows tubes hears that lame SS lowend on the Axe
Steve
on 07/02/2010 		Could someone please talk about the latency when switching between presets?
VaiSatchAtru cci
on 04/06/2010 		The only issue I have with the review is it makes it sound like you HAVE to use ProTools and this is not true at all. I was able to use it in Logic Pro and do everything that it can do in Pro Tools except the embedding of the rig settings in the track. Re-amping and all that is done easily within Logic (recording direct guitar signal and full rig signal simultaneously) so that is very misleading. You also don't get the on screen editor, but all you have to do is open ProTools to have access to that - you don't even have to open a session to view it so the "Skip if:" comment at the end of the review is not accurate in my opinion with the only drawback having nothing to do with actually using it to record with. Also to answer another posters question : no there is zero latency changing patches IF you are using a midi controller - but yes if you are manually changing via the front knob to scroll through presets. Lastly, if you need more effects then what the Eleven Rack offers and don't care about reamping or being able to recall rig settings on the fly of a previoulsy recorded track or don't need a pro-tools interface, or need pro-tools 8LE, or want to actually feel like and sound like you are playing through an actual amp then get an AxeFX - otherwise save your money and get an Eleven Rack and use SOME of the difference money wise you'd save and purchase a Ground Control Pro - then use the other $200 on a rack bag, cables, expression pedals, etc... or just buy an AxeFX and wonder how you are going to afford to control it, transport it, and hook it up... the comparisons to me aren't legitimate when you compare everything the Eleven Rack brings to the table that the AxeFX can't do at all. To me, the savings money wise justifies the Eleven Rack alone on top of what it can do. The AxeFX sounds great no doubt and I wouldn't say the sims are better or worse, but it doesn't FEEL like you are playing an amp to me through the AxeFX but you have to compare th



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