Pretty good article, thanks! It's rare that you find any real detail in direct comparisons between two systems like this.Attached is a page about Gately/Dynaco came across when searching EV encoder, it doesn't say on the page but the name of the EV encoder for $795 is the Electro-Voice Model 7445, which I assume is what Sonik had.
Yup, The E-V 7445 is what I had for a while:
When you are dealing with a matrix that is just simple mixing & polarity inversion, no fancy 90 deg phase shifts, the circuitry is pretty simple too. I think there were more components to support driving the meters than than for encoding. And it could be done so easy & clean on a PC today if that's what you wanted.
$798 ??!! Probably crazy inflated so E-V could offer it to a studio 1/4 that. What a deal.