16 Channels analog I/O??????

nate_dennis

nate_dennis

Well-known member
How would you go about getting 16 channels of A/D D/A conversion?

2x Presonus FP10

An Echo Firewire system?

I'm hoping to keep it between $400 and $800. Used is fine. I want to have the option to record all 16 at once, but this wont, probably, happen very often. Thanks for any thoughts.
 
That's a nice piece, but it's out of his price range. You can get a couple FP's off craigslist for $400-450, that's what I did. Theyre good units, and they have preamps too so that's another plus. A lotta ppl around here use FP's.
 
I've been leaning toward presonus for a while. Then I found some things from Echo that seemed promising. Are there any other products I should be aware of? I saw that MOTU 24 and would really dig it. However, it would be a bit out of reach and not portable.

Noob sub-question. (This is my first foray into digital...)
I'll be using an analog desk front end into the interface(s).......so......
Latency is really only going to be an issue when doing overdubs and trying to monitor with VST effects right? So if I track a rythm section live, then do overdubs, but don't use, say, reverb from the computer, will I still have latency issues? (sorry, I know it's dumb)

Thanks everyone!
 
Overdubs are no prob, the DAW makes up for it and everything stays in perfect sync. Monitoring the live inputs with vst fx, yeah you CAN hear the lag sometimes. I dont really notice it on reverbs, but delays are just a hair slow, you can tell on other fx something's weird about it. I always use hardware fx in the monitoring chain while I'm tracking, and record the dry signal so I can add it to the mix later. Unfortunately, the FP's dont have any fx.

Where it's really bad is when youre using a midi controller and a vsti. For example, monitoring an electronic drum kit thru ezdrummer, or a keyboard thru a vsti synth, that's almost impossible. When I track that stuff, I make the musician monitor the audio right off the drum module or keyboard, then explain that I'll use a different sample set later, ie the exact cymbals they're hearing while playing arent gonna be the same ones in the final mix. I tried that once with my Roland vdrums kit, never again. You can get that latency down to single digit milliseconds but it still doesn't feel right.
 
This is something i looked into cos i want coversion, not preamps.

Echo audiofire 12 appealed to me but was too expensive.

I bought a motu 828mk2 which has 2 mic pres and 8 line ins. I wonder how much two of those are?
 
Yeah, I looked into the 828. Is it FW or USB 2.0? How do you like it?

@suprstar Thank you for the response. So when is latency an issue in recording? Thanks.
 
828mk2 comes in usb or firewire i believe.
I don't know about the mk1. They are cheap but i think it might only have 6 line ins and be usb only. (google check here?)

I love my mk2 but i hate that there's no software control for main output.
It more or less just sits there as a converter in my setup.
 
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