Audio interface for professional studio?

MADI is usually found on higher end gear so I would not be searching for MADI stuff unless your ready to drop 100K$
 
ARGH! So confusing :(

So, what can I get that costs around £1,000 (budget has went down because of other purchases), has at least 16 TRS ins and outs (well, only need about 6/8 outs), 24 preferred, midi in/out and SPDIF in/out?
 
altitude909 said:
MADI is usually found on higher end gear so I would not be searching for MADI stuff unless your ready to drop 100K$
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RME MADI cards are our #1 interface of choice for live work. They are mostly used with live consoles that also support MADI (DigiCo, Yamaha, Studer, Euphonix) but there are also MADI convertors from people like SSL and RME. You can actually do a MADI setup for about $20k... still not cheap. But its mostly a live use format, because its easier to run 1 coax cable with 64 channels both ways than multiple cables.

3 options for anyone setting up a digital studio needing 24 analog ins to look at on a serious note.

MOTU 24i/o. This will be the easiest and cheapest professional quality solution. One PCI card with a breakout rackmount that has 24 1/4" balanced ins and outs. No digital conversion or knowledge of digital connections necessary. Expandable to 3 units on the same PCI card for 72 analog i/o. You can easily get a $125 MIDI-USB unit that will fill that need.

RME HDSP96/52 with 3 Presonus DigimaxFS A/D/A converters. One of the best cards on the market in the RME and the best value A/D/A converter on the market in the Presonus. Only drawback is the Preamps on the Digimax (fairly decent) you may never use. But there are more inputs and lots of routing options with this solution. Mid priced in these examples.

Lynx AES16/Lynx Aurora. Highest price, mastering quality sound. One of the highest quality A/D/A units on the market, and a great value whenyou realize it gives you AD and DA while other products in its pricerange will be only one way. Drawbacks are price and 16 channels opposed to 24 in the other 2 solutions above. You can always add a second AES and Aurora to get 32 channels.

The MOTU will fall into your price category you just mentioned.
 
Indeed it does, but it doesn't come with MIDI or SPDIF, which is a no go for me...

Are there any expansions available for the MOTU system that will give me those two types of I/O as well? I need to use MIDI, SPDIF and the analogue I/O at the same time without having to swap interfaces / drivers in Nuendo / Reason?

Or is there a way I can do that with different interfaces that I'm not aware of? I'll keep a single Delta 1010 for the midi / SPDIF if required!

It sounds like I may need to stick with the Delta 1010s until I save up enough money to buy a couple of Lynx AES16/Lynx Aurora units and all the extra D-Sub to TRS cables I'm going to need to buy on top of it...
 
one of our live rigs is an RME FF800 with 2 digimax fs's, that will give you 20 mic pres, 24 analog ins, spdif I/O and midi
 
Are you using MIDI for something other than just keyboards/Reason? 'Cause you could just hook it up via USB. :confused: Unless your keyboard doesn't have a USB output...
 
Yeah, it's an old keyboard - Yamaha PSR 2700, so no USB :(

I'll be getting a better control surface when I get in to reason a bit more.
 
Just been looking in more detail at that RME Fireface 800... 10 TRS inputs, plus midi, SPDIF and ADAT (if / when I need it).

I could probably deal with 10 analogue TRS + the midi + the SPDIF at the moment... I could always route one of the channels through my Focusrite Twintrack Pro, which would be enough for now...

The most tracks I use at once at the moment are for recording drums:

* 2 x overheads
* 4 x toms
* 2 x kick
* 2 x snare
* 1 x hi-hat (not really needed, but nice to have)

Always nice to have the extra (to record bass / guitar at the same time for guide tracks etc), but I can work around that till I can afford a second one of these... what do you think?
 
i was the one who recommended the appogee's... but gotta tell ya the RME stuff get's great reviews and are real popular with alotta the cubase/nuendo crowd... absolutely nothing wrong with their stuff as far as i can tell...
 
The RME stuff is a good solid starting point. If you are opening a professional studio, I would give serious consideration to saving up a little longer and looking at the higher end converters. Its important to remember that everything you do runs through them:)
 
Well, the new PC I bought (spec above) is now BSODing when I put the Delta 1010s in... might be the new drivers, though I've tried the older ones too and it still does it, so I'm defo changing... and I need to do it quick!

Hard2Hear said:
RME HDSP96/52 with 3 Presonus DigimaxFS A/D/A converters. One of the best cards on the market in the RME and the best value A/D/A converter on the market in the Presonus. Only drawback is the Preamps on the Digimax (fairly decent) you may never use. But there are more inputs and lots of routing options with this solution. Mid priced in these examples.
Click to expand...

Been looking at this option... it's within my budget, well... at least getting 2 PreSonus Digimax FS's for now and expanding to another one in the future anyway. Gonna research it a little more... but from what I can tell, this would be my new signal chain:

Mic -> Behringer Desk Channel Input -> Desk Channel Direct Out -> Presonus DigiMax FS Input -> DigiMax ADAT output? -> RME HDSP9652 ADAT input? -> Neundo

I'm a little bit sketchy on the ADAT part, as I've never used it before...

If this is right, I'd even considering getting rid of the Behringer desk section and going Mic -> PreSonus DigiMax FS and using the RME's mixer + Nuendo to mix / EQ etc... though for some things I will still be adding my Focusrite Penta & Twintrack Pro in the chain.

If this will work, I've pretty much made my mind up on it now... Comments? I'm sat here ready to order it :)
 
I was just thinking too... won't I be limited by the fact the RME card is PCI? I mean, I can't see me wanting more than 24 analgue channels at once right now... but I couldn't see me needing more than 2 channels at one point in my experience, heh ;P
 
Oh yeah, and will I need to worry about WordClocking the RME and PreSonus boxes together? If so... what cable do I use? I tried WordClock with a BNC cable I had lying around with my Delta 1010s but it just made a horrible squeeking noise :(

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just anxious to get this studio up and running so I can produce some damn music! :P
 
The RME units come with comprehensive clocking facilities. Also, you can use two of them if you'd like, in one system I have two of them linked. They don't both show on the same page of the HDSPmixer, but due to recent advances in computer speed I dont use that anyhow, but back when i had to, I fed one card to the other thru spdif and was able to access all the channels thru the same stream.
 
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