What's the final word on the Masterlink?

[Apple]

Seems like a pretty spirited debate about the Masterlink. My studio is not computer based and I'm thinking it would be nice if the Masterlink was the piece of equipment it was advertsised as. I'm more musician than engineer and when it comes to making copies of my recordings, that is when I start getting frustrated with being the engineer. I listen to my mixes on all types of systems and I can only get it to sound like I want in the control room. (I'm a terrible engineer). But then, I've heard my recordings played on major radio stations and they sounded good. They moved air. There was depth and no transient distortion. They weren't mud and sounded like they did in the control room. One of these recordings was done on a cassette porta studio. Of course, radio stations have some nice compressors. Is any of the competition coming out with their version of a Masterlink?

[Blue Bear Sound]

I love the Masterlink as a 2-track mixdown unit. It works very well and sounds pretty good.

I love it even more pairing it up with Lucid A/D and D/a converters though!!!

[Apple]

what do you love about it? How are your recording different from before you had a masterlink? Do you love it because of the ease of use or does it smooth out the transient spikes? Or does it make your mixes sound more consistent from one system to the next?

[Blue Bear Sound]

I use it primarily as a hi-res 2-track recorder - it replaced my DAT as a mixdown machine.

The on-board DSP functions can be useful, but that's not why you'd buy the unit....

It's best use is as a convenient high-resolution, stand-alone (read no computer boot-up or integration to worry about), 2-track recorder.

[Apple]

I dont' want to be a smart-ass but here was my question.

what do you love about it? How are your recording different from before you had a masterlink? Do you love it because of the ease of use or does it smooth out the transient spikes? Or does it make your mixes sound more consistent from one system to the next?

I can read a technical magazine about recording and gleem about as much information as you gave me. Remember, I'm a musician trying to be a better engineer.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally posted by Apple
what do you love about it?

I answered that - it's a very effective and convenient hi-resolution 2-track recorder.

How are your recording different from before you had a masterlink?

I answered that too -- before it I was using the comparatively lo-res DAT as a 2-track mixdown unit.

Do you love it because of the ease of use or does it smooth out the transient spikes?

It IS easy to use, so that's a plus -- the 2nd part of this comment makes no sense.... what transient spikes are you referring to?

Or does it make your mixes sound more consistent from one system to the next?

This has more to do with the engineer than the 2-track mixdown unit that's being used, so again, this comment makes no sense.

I can read a technical magazine about recording and gleem about as much information as you gave me.

I don't think you can... some of your statements showed a general lack of understanding of the basic process involved and how the Masterlink would fit into it.

[MISTERQCUE]

I guess that just about explains it!

[Apple]

I generally don't ask questions about things I know about. And if I misuse a term or a phrase, or express it in a way that a real engineer such as yourself wouldn't use, then continue to express yourself in the way you have or try to share some knowledge. Isn't that the point of this site? I've come across some nice people on this site, but there's too many "know it all's" like this Blue Bear responding to my questions. If it aint cool to ask a question without knowing the answer, then I won't. This site is a waste of time.

[MISTERQCUE]

Originally posted by Apple
I generally don't ask questions about things I know about. And if I misuse a term or a phrase, or express it in a way that a real engineer such as yourself wouldn't use, then continue to express yourself in the way you have or try to share some knowledge. Isn't that the point of this site? I've come across some nice people on this site, but there's too many "know it all's" like this Blue Bear responding to my questions. If it aint cool to ask a question without knowing the answer, then I won't. This site is a waste of time.

Then see ya'!

Have a nice life!

[jake-owa]

Apple, sounds like you are confusing the masterlink to a mastering job.

Compression can smooth things out and the Masterlink I'm sure some dynamic processing.....

What you are hearing that you love so much is the radio station's hard limiter sucking and pumping your 4 track recording. I guess that could be kind of impressive.

Check out a good limiter.

The bear is alright.....just grumpy.

[AEL]

Dear Apple,
If you hang around here for a while, you will come to realize that Mr. Blue Bear is one of the most helpful and friendly experts around here. Please do not take offense if you are told your question makes no sense. It may be true. Try asking it a different way. You no doubt need some information, because you took the time to post. Maybe if you clarify your query, you will get the help you need. Good luck, Al

[monty]

Originally posted by jake-owa
Apple, sounds like you are confusing the masterlink to a mastering job.

Compression can smooth things out and the Masterlink I'm sure some dynamic processing.....

What you are hearing that you love so much is the radio station's hard limiter sucking and pumping your 4 track recording. I guess that could be kind of impressive.

Check out a good limiter.

The bear is alright.....just grumpy.

Jake, thanks a lot for your intelligent observation, you pathetic moron.

[test12test]

Hey Guys..
just bought my masterlink a couple weeks ago.. and I LOVE it.. (really hard for me to say I like an Alesis piece...usually I dont!.. the blackface ADATS did that to me!)
1. The ease of use is top notch. My first test is usually "can I run this with out reading the manual..? (comon you guys.. you know that we men always do this anyway!) The anwser to that question is YES!! The only thing I needed to check the manual out about was how to get rid of somthing I recorded and normalized.
2. The mixes were EXACTLY as I mastered them in my control room. (personally I feel that this is less of a function of the recorder and more of a function of the room and the monitoring) but what the Masterlink DID do is find all my peaks and valleys, and smooth them all out.. WITHOUT taking away all my dynamic range ( like some mastering places do!)
3. Love the 96k recording option.. (do I need to splain why?)
4. Masterlink saves me a ton of time.. man if I had to do all that stuff manually... ( and I used to.. and it sucked!)
well.. so much for my two cents worth.. hope it helps ya!
Michael

[David B]

I have one, and for the few things I know how to do, I like it.

But I'm sure not getting the most out of it.

You can dial in a lot of stuff -- if you know WHAT to dial in.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about what I'm doing with the DSP to get the most out of it.

What it needs (IMO) are some "do no harm" type presets (at least as starting points) for the novice -- like the kind you get with certain plug-ins on PC based systems.

The assumption (based on the doc and their useless web site) is that you're a mastering engineer already and you know what you want to dial in.

[maskedman72]

i just bought a 20gb masterlink w/2.15 for $740 new and i love it!!

it holds a ton of audio and i can do a ton of cool stuff. sell your dat recoder!
i wish it had more than 16 playlists though. for me 16 playlists arent enough for 30 hours of drive space.
i think you can even put in a larger drive too. although im not shure how large of a drive it will accept.

to me the biggest downfall of this product is that you cannot do crossfades but you cant have it all i guess.

[sjjohnston]

Okay, I don't even have a Masterlink, but this is somewhat apropos of the Apple-Blue Bear kafuffle above:

Think of the Masterlink as two things in one box:

1 - A convenient, high resolution storage system.

2 - A DSP mastering tool.

Generally, just from what I hear people say, people of all walks of life appreciate Thing 1. As to Thing 2, there seems to be a school of users who say, "I like the unit, but forget the mastering tools; don't use them; they're no good."

Apple seems to be primarily interested in buying Thing 2. Blue Bear bought Thing 1 and has no interest in Thing 2.

[skippy]

I have two: one in the studio and one in the road rack. They are very heavily used, and I just flat couldn't live without them.

I've upgraded both to 32Gb, which was as far as you could go with the earlier firmware/hardware combinations. This may have been fixed in later revisions, but I haven't been interested in fixing them since they aren't broken!

The only DSP I really ever use is fadein/fadeout manipulation, and occasionally normalization. I generally don't look to the machine to be the be-all, end-all box for magical signal processing, although I have mastered a few projects for duplication on it. I just want it to behave like my much-lamented old analog 2-track, and let me edit without razor blades (or a mouse, which I'd simply prefer not to do). If I'm really serious about a project, I'll send it out for mastering, rather than try and mash it all up myself...

The Masterlink is a great asset for a non-computer-centric digital studio. Yes, you can do everything it can do with Wavelab, a computer, and a mouse: but _I_ can't do it that way very efficiently or quickly. I've recorded live shows to 2-track, assembled and burned a CD of the show to present to the talent *before they came back out of the dressing room* at the end of the night. I'm sure that there are some folks who could do that with a laptop. But not me.

The machine basically fits my old-school working style to a T. Your mileage may vary.

[TexRoadkill]

Originally posted by skippy
The Masterlink is a great asset for a non-computer-centric digital studio. Yes, you can do everything it can do with Wavelab, a computer, and a mouse: but _I_ can't do it that way very efficiently or quickly. I've recorded live shows to 2-track, assembled and burned a CD of the show to present to the talent *before they came back out of the dressing room* at the end of the night. I'm sure that there are some folks who could do that with a laptop. But not me.

The machine basically fits my old-school working style to a T. Your mileage may vary.

Yep.

I now have a completely computer free analog/digital recording system and I use the Masterlink as the mixdown deck. The limiter on it isn't bad for doing some slight limiting. I've been doing about 3-6db of reduction and it handles it pretty well.

[Velvet Elvis]

I love my Masterlink... I need to upgrade the drive to something slightly bigger though.

I don't use the DSP much... had a horrendous time trying to add any compression with it etc without it actually distorting signals... seems like no matter what combination I tried it still wound up adding a slight bit of distortion...

BUT for burning 24bit CD's to send off to mastering houses and such... it rules... also for quick duplication.

Another great feature is the play list backup... being able to 'store' your playlist and info on CD... although I really wish they'd make it so that the playlist backup would span discs.... its a pain to have to split playlists.

Velvet Elvis

[skippy]

I still can't get used to the idea of limiting in the digital domain. I do all of my limiting (and very little at that!) in the analog domain, pre-converters. But then, you have to remember that I look at limiting primarily as a safety mechanism, and not as a creative effect. If I was doing more rock I'd try more of the DSP in the box sometimes, just for grins. But my working style is based around the non-negotiable idea that all the munging that needs to get done happens *before the converters* (with the exception of editing, fades, and so on). Just like printing a mix to an analog deck...

For the live-to-2 stuff I do, I set up a Drawmer DL241 in the rack as a limiter to protect me from crunching the converters. Usually, that's all the processing that is needed if the mics, placement, room, and talent are right. And if any of those things are wrong, it's doubtful that DSP is gonna save the day... (;-)

But you have to remember that I'm a dinosaur, and I'm focused almost entirely on acoustic music these days, so your mileage may vary. I got off the bus before the louder-is-better revolution started, seems like!

[Bass Jas]

Skippy I dig where you are coming from, I am an in-betweener,
I was still on the bus, but had played so loud, I couldn't hear
what they were talkin about! Modern rock mix must be as saturated as possible to please the client, with analog gear it was much easier, digital makes less pleasing results. Apple wants to know where the "make it all better button" is, unfortunately Apple: it is in the engineering. You have enough exp. to know what sounds wrong, so keep at it, trial and error are the best teachers, and they don't whack the back of your hand with a ruler.

[edge59]

Hi, I'm looking at a ML9600 thats used but in good shape. It has the 5 hour recording harddrive (3.2Gig?) and probably the old OS. Its about 4-5 years old. The guy is selling it for about $400. Is this a fair price if it needs updating/grading? It will probably be enough for me for a while till I get a hold on how it works and save up for the upgrade. Or is it better to just hold out and spring for a new one?
thanks

[edge59]

Well I went ahead and bid on it and to my surprise won it for $392. I hope the hard drive and or CD drive is not shot.

[AEL]

Dear Edge,
I hope you enjoy your unit. I would suggest you update to the most recent operating system, available free on the Alesis web site. Then play with it for a while. If you like it, then suggest getting a big hard drive for it. The new OS recognizes big drives but limits them to, I think, about 32 gig. No longer any need to set limiting jumpers on the drive itself.
Al

[edge59]

Hi AEL, I will have to get more info on what you said about the Alesis site download, I have not done anything like that yet. I could probably change the hard drive. Does it not need a OS disc for the new HDD? Or can all that be done over the net? There is a place in Hollywood that will do all updates and install a 40 Gig Hdd and put it through all the mojo tests that are over my head for $215! I am not sure about this, but will investigate it more before deciding. Maybe if I hang out here enough, I will learn something
I was looking for one updated,and in fairly decent shape. The one I will be getting is supposed to be very mint other than needs updates and a bigger Hdd. We'll see I have read that some have changed the CD drive, is that for different recording times like 4x's 8 x's etc? Sorry, I am new to this too... It should be fun! I picked up a slightly used RNC 1773 that was distoring like crazy or would not work at all on some settings. Sent it in to Mark at FMR and he found one of the summing amps were bad. He changed it out and it is on its way! Mark is an awsome guy! Very nice and helpful! Also quick turnaround.