My PEt Peeve: Swiss Army Knife thinking

Tim Brown

Tim Brown

New member
I wasn't sure where this should go, but I figured this is as good as any.

Why do companies feel the need to try to make "Swiss Army Knife" products?
What am I talking about?

Specifically, Analog to Digital Firewire Interfaces.

The only one on the market that really seems to make much sense to me, is the MOTU 24 I/O.

It's 24-channels in and out on 1/4" Line level Jacks.

THAT'S IT. No AES/EBU, no S/PDIF, No Lightpipe, no TDIF.

My question is - why can't more companies follow this lead? I don't want to use their shitty built in Mic Pre's. I have no use for these other types of "inputs". The worst is Digi/ProTools. the 192io has everything under the sun on it - except 16 channels of 1/4" line input. The 96io does have the 16 channels in and out from analog - but it won't do the full 192 - not that I'm going to go ProTools - I'm most likely going to go with Nuendo. I've thought about Logic - but I know to people using Nuendo and they have both utterly raved about it - plus it does have some comps to PT, so I could record here, and mix in a pro studio if need be.

Or another pet peeve of mine - Presonus makes an 8 channel unit that is CLOSE to what I'm looking for in the Firepod, and what do they do?
They put the Inputs on the FRONT of the unit.

For God's Sakes, this is a studio unit - nobody wants to actually see mic cables routed all over the place in the control room!



Tim
 
well, some of those facts you mentioned are wrong.
First the 192 I/O does have 16 analog inputs. They are in the form of DB25 connectors...but it's still analog. Like you said, people don't want mic cables running everywhere, but they also don't want 1/4" cables running everywhere either. So you use one wrapped cable with DB25 connectors on them. VERY popular in bigger recording studios with patchbays, helps cut down on clutter.

Second, the 192 I/O offers 50 inputs...companies make units to be very flexible for anything you need. Just because all you need is 1/4" inputs, doesn't mean other people don't need digital inputs. I use AES/EBU and S/PDIF all the time. Other people prefer to purchase their own A/D converters and use those instead...so they have to have digital inputs. Remember, the Digi HD units are geared towards professional studios who use tons of different kinds of gear and have the money to buy dedicated converters for everything they need. Not homerecordists.

Like you said, Digi makes the 96i I/O for people only wanting analog inputs. No, it doesn't offer 192, but neither does your MOTU 24 i/o that you mentioned.
Interfaces are "swiss army knifes" of the industry because of all the different kinds of hardware units out there. No one made a single standard for how to record audio, analog or digital. Every company puts different things on their units...you just have to adapt.
 
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Mr. Brown, I agree 100%. When I see some of the interfaces with phantom power, vu meters, mic pres, eq, etc.... I just look away. Too much crap that I'll never use. So why should I pay for it?

That's why I run a MOTU24i. :D
The MOTU does have it's little swiss army things, like the 24 level meters. But that's real nice if you don't have a meter bridge on your console.
 
I wouldn't consider a recording device that only has 1/4" inputs. I use S/PDIF, Optcal, XLR, 1/4", and even RCA ins and outs. Variety is the spice of life and having the ability to use different connections/interfaces makes recording less of a headache (it is still a headache sometimes). When someone only uses one type of connection (a la 1/4") it shows me their setup is very simple. That isn't a bad thing! I couldn't do that for the life of me. I just have too much gear and want to be able to use it.
 
I have the MOTU 2408 and love it. I bought initially for my PC interface, using ADATs as my AD/DA converters to my analogue board. I now use an Alesis HD24 as my main recorder and a digital board, so I have sandwiched the Motu between the recorded and mixer.

The gear ledgend:
HD24 ADAT I/O: ch1-8
ch9-16
ch17-27

MOTU 2408: TDIF or ADAT A (1-8)
TDIF or ADAT B (9-16)
TDIF or ADAT C (17-24)

DDX3216 Mixer:
ADAT(1) (1-8)
ADAT(2) (9-16)
TDIF(3) (17-24)
TDIF(4) (25-32)

This is how I have it set up:

HD24 ch1-8 I/O go straight to the digital mixer's ADAT(1)

HD24 ch9-16 Out goes to the MOTU ADAT(A) In
MOTU ADAT(A) goes to the Mixer's ADAT(2) In
Mixer's ADAT(2) out goes to the HD24 ch9-16 In

HD24 ch17-24 I/O goes to the MOTU ADAT(B)
MOTU TDIF(B) I/O goes to the Mixer's TDIF(3)

MOTU TDIF(C) I/O goes to the Mixer's TDIF(4)

:confused:

The set up above allows me to use the HD24 or PC for recording without having to repatch any cables and the cables I have are very minimal for the amount of channels I have patched together.
 
Track Rat said:
Hey, didn't you have an MCI console?
Click to expand...

I did. When I first got the MCI, the guy (so-called friend) who sold it to me said he would help me get the board up and all working. Well, he never did, and I had barely enough channels to work with when I used the PC, but when I switched to the HD24 I wanted the ability to use all my tracks. The MCI sounded great, but it was too high maintenance and expensive to keep up. I took a loss getting rid of it, but I am happy with what I have now for mixing, but not for tracking. The MCI had a John Hardy mic-pre on ch 23 and I miss it very much, so I would like to get the JH M-2 some day to replace the crappy ones in the Behringer.
 
I came VERY close to buying one off of Ebay that was out of Mussel Shoals but I was afraid of the maintenance.
 
If you want an MCI, you really should talk to they guys at Blevins. If you don't buy it from them, then I would worry about maintenance..

On topic now, the other companies could easily follow suit and make more dedicated simplistic boxes. Of course they would probably go out of business since 98% of the people buying their equipment want flexibility.
 
xstatic said:
If you want an MCI, you really should talk to they guys at Blevins. If you don't buy it from them, then I would worry about maintenance..

On topic now, the other companies could easily follow suit and make more dedicated simplistic boxes. Of course they would probably go out of business since 98% of the people buying their equipment want flexibility.
Click to expand...

Funny you should mention Blevins, that is who I sold my board to.
Randy is a nice guy and a great person to do business with.
I have bought other gear from him in the past.
 
bennychico11 said:
well, some of those facts you mentioned are wrong.
First the 192 I/O does have 16 analog inputs. They are in the form of DB25 connectors...but it's still analog. Like you said, people don't want mic cables running everywhere, but they also don't want 1/4" cables running everywhere either. So you use one wrapped cable with DB25 connectors on them. VERY popular in bigger recording studios with patchbays, helps cut down on clutter.

Second, the 192 I/O offers 50 inputs...companies make units to be very flexible for anything you need. Just because all you need is 1/4" inputs, doesn't mean other people don't need digital inputs. I use AES/EBU and S/PDIF all the time. Other people prefer to purchase their own A/D converters and use those instead...so they have to have digital inputs. Remember, the Digi HD units are geared towards professional studios who use tons of different kinds of gear and have the money to buy dedicated converters for everything they need. Not homerecordists.

Like you said, Digi makes the 96i I/O for people only wanting analog inputs. No, it doesn't offer 192, but neither does your MOTU 24 i/o that you mentioned.
Interfaces are "swiss army knifes" of the industry because of all the different kinds of hardware units out there. No one made a single standard for how to record audio, analog or digital. Every company puts different things on their units...you just have to adapt.
Click to expand...


Okay thanks!

I was told that those were TDIF inputs - so that's what threw me off.

What sucks is I have Tascam DA38's - but if I use them to go into anything - it's 16-bit, and I want to go 24-bit. They aren't bad machines, but the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit is night and day from where I stand - I didn't realize it until I recorded on a Mac G5 using Logic 7.0, but it made my recordings at home sound really.. for lack of a better term, they were kind of "grainy" sounding, like pieces of the sound were missing....not really distorted... sort of like looking through a screen mesh where the pieces of screen were really thick, so that you weren't seeing the picture clearly - that's the best analogy I can come up with.

I had no idea what I was missing until I heard it first hand on some of my own material and could compare the two.

I decided that if I'm going to go to 24-bit, I might as well go to 192 ASAP, although I am going to go ahead and get converters that do 24/96 just to get started on the PC recording....so I'll probably go with a pair of Firepods... although I have recently looked at the MOTU unit that has 12-channels in and does 24/192.....but that's $1800.....and I'm not sure which is more productive for me in the long run. I need at least 12 inputs at once... actually for my own material, I don't need any more than that in one pass.

So that's $150 per channel, which in the grand scheme of things isn't crap.

So I may actually end up going that route.

I just don't feel that I'll ever need any of that other stuff since I intend to do all of my mixing and everything "in the box".
Now, it's not as fun as having a mixer, but what the heck - I'm more worried about sound quality and being able to create a noise free, pro sounding recording than I am having the mixer. I could always add a Mackie controller at a later date.



Tim
 
Tim Brown said:
Okay thanks!

I was told that those were TDIF inputs - so that's what threw me off.
Click to expand...


nah, there are TDIF inputs on the 192 I/O, but those are in the digital section. Both the TDIF and analog I/Os use the same DB25 connectors, just a different signal.
 
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