FireWire interface vs. mixer/preamp

K

kevvwho

New member
Forgive me for being the suck at searching for I have not come across a thread that could provide me closure on a topic that has been on my mind for the past couple weeks.

I am a musician gone producer attempting to capture the essence of sound! (which I'm sure we all can relate to that!) .. I am a vocalist , guitarist , and pianist and have a minor studio setup that has been suiting to my needs. I currently running with a focus rite Safire 24 pro dsp with essential setup ( the goods including nt2 , nt5s, shock, pop, boom, monitors,headphones) .. Now my question to you knowledgable sound heads out there...

How serious would I benefit from purchasing a mixer , preamps and other rack gear? If I would, can you point me in the direction to mid level gear that would suit me for the long run? Ie building a studio for full drum kits....

Thanks
Kvv
 
Morning Kev,
Adding a mixer per se' to your system is not going to increase you track count other than turning the present lines 3&4 on the Saff 24 into "mic" inputs.

However, the Saffire has ADAT so you have the capability to add 8 more channels giving you a total of 12 tracks (plus S/PDIF, more of that later) The Behringer ADA 8000 unit is actually quite well thought of in even top professional circles and is surely good enough for drums/guitar cabs? There are of course better ADAT pres all the way up to RME nirvana!

S/PDIF (as promised!) You mentioned a mic pre amp? The pres in Focusrite kit have a very good rep so any addition needs to be considered in terms of desired reslults. MUCH cleaner with more gain or maybe something with a bit of attitude? First camp Grace, second Neve(?). The Audient Mico can do a bit of both and has the big feature of having a digital converter, a very good one by all accounts, built in so it can feed directly to the Saffs S/PDIF input.

But, a small mixer is a very useful device. You might find a 6 mic input jobbie from Soundcraft say, gave you a very acceptable stereo mixdown of a drumkit into the Saffs 3/4 line ins? Even a cheap Behringer/Phonic etc can be useful, as a spare monitor headphone feed or talkback device if nothing else.

Bottom line Kev. I think you either have to expand the system as outlined above, and you might think that a bit "messy"? Or sell up and go for a much more comprehensive multitrack setup.

Just my 2penn'oth!

Dave.
 
kevvwho said:
How serious would I benefit from purchasing a mixer , preamps and other rack gear?
Click to expand...

A lot of debate over outboard versus plugs regarding effects 'rack gear', but there is probably not much you will notice unless you have been an engineer for 40 years. Preamps are necessary either way, and can come outboard or in a decent mixer but use decent ones. I've heard fantastic results with 8-preamp rack devices into a computer and everything else (mixing and effects) done in there. I'm old school and need to twist knobs and move faders by hand on a modest Mackie 8 bus mixer, but it does nothing to improve the sound, it's just a way to EQ and mix on the fly and that is what I'm comfortable with. I have some pretty decent outboard gear for effects/compression, but I'm sure you could get close with good plugs. Go mixer/outboard if you're comfortable (or want to become comfortable) with that setup, not to make significant improvements in your final recorded sound. There is a lot more stuff involved in the 'analog chain' method, meaning a lot more quality cables you'll need to interconnect it all and a lot more stuff that can go wrong in the chain. If you dig that kind of thing, though, it is pretty cool once you have it all hooked up and get comfortable using it. If not, there are itb solutions that will give you professional results just as easily.
 
The phrase "mid level gear" is very much open to interpretation. What's mid level for some would be downright cheap in some studios--and vice versa.

There's no automatic gain from having a mixer or pre-amp. It all depends on the relative quality of what's in your existing firewire interface vs. what you propose to buy. However, generally you need to spend a significant amount of money to get a big improvement. This particularly applies to mixers--consider how much additional electronics you're trying to get. You either have to pay a goodly amount of money or accept that components will be "to a price".

As an example of this, somebody above mentioned a Behringer ADA8000. These are good units for the money--I have four of them I use for live work. However, I rarely use them in my studio because, as pre amps, they aren't as good as what comes in most interfaces (or any mixer worth having). In particular, they can get pretty noisy if you half to turn the gain up above about the 3 o'clock position. However, to get better you have to spend about 4 times the money.

My advice would be to stick to what you have until you have a decent budget...and know what changes you wish to make to your sound (rather than just a nebulous hope for improvement).
 
Thanks guys for the useful information. I just become confused albeit when I read all these threads on preamps making huge sonic differences so I was just curious!! So much awesome help on this thread sometimes I don't know how you guys have all this patience with some of the people on here!! :)
 
"sometimes I don't know how you guys have all this patience with some of the people on here!! "
Heh! ^ I was a tv/video/hi fi service tech' for more than 40 years. The last ten of which was spent, 50% of the time, installing and training customers of the use of the equipment...If you can cope with explaining the SAME THINGS day after day to Joe Public then Noobs on audio forums are a doddle!

Many is the time I have wanted to shout "RTFM!" but could not, mortgage to pay. I COULD shout it here and other places, but never do.

Dave.
 
OT, but, even with 40+ years using high tech equipment, I frequently despair at the poor quality of "TFM" even from respected manufacturers. I can only imagine what they must be like for somebody without a good level of background knowledge to start with.

Things are even worse with things linked to a computer because they frequently ignore differences that can exist when one piece of gear has to co-exist (in software terms) with something from a different manufacturer.
 
Hi Kev

Was reading what the other guys are saying and it all makes good sense, always nice to get the voice of experience to answer your questions. I was just reading your post and wondered if you just wanted more inputs which of course a mixer would give you. The Focusrite PRO 24 DSP has 4 mic/inst inputs but only two of them take XLR plugs. I have a Focusrite Saffire PRO 24 DSP and I love it but I love the Saffire PRO 40 better because it has 8 XLR inputs with the same high quality pres of the PRO 24. The mixer control for both of these is right in the computer and gives you a lot of flexibility. The PRO 40 lets you record all those inputs directly and you still only have the one interface to worry about. The Saffire 56 is also an option but costs a bit more. I do have both the 24 and the 40 but the 24 is used on a lappy for lesser applications, not because it is of lesser quality, just fewer inputs. Just my 2c worth...
 
Hi Bob (you're a BOG, I am a BOF!).

Not OT at all in my view, support manuals are often very poor, impressively chunky when you first open them only to find they are in 11 languages* and there are only 10 pages of English, badly translated English at that! Then they are often sub A5. My new ***** 201 phone book is but 85x105mm (smaller than the phone in one dimension!) and I need a visual aid in addition to normal glasses to read it. (BOF you see!).

Much information is only available as a .pdf download. Fine if like me you have a spare PC to read it on whilst struggling with the new DAW, but not everyone is so lucky. Print it out? Yeah, even my bog S Cubase Ess'4 helpfile runs to 339 pages, even with a laser printer that is some cost.

But then, WRITNG manuals has to be THE most thankless task? Peeps rarely read them and many that do complain bitterly about them....I charge you all that can drive a car: Write a manual that would teach an otherwise intelligent being how to start and drive a stickshift across a deserted town if they had no knowledge of motorized vehicles!

*Props however to Allen & Heath (ZED 10) and NI (Komplete Audio 6). And, of course, Blackstar!

Dave. Why can't I say ***** a well known mobile phone company that rhymes with "sockier" (best I could think up on sotmo!)
 
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After the dinner I'm cooking tonight (involving Thai spicy noodles) I may have to change my G to an F!

Yeah, I've tried writing operational manuals a few times and it was a salutary lesson in how difficult it is! (And I was writing for people with a decent background knowledge, not rank beginners!)

Still, it doesn't make the bad manuals any easier to understand!
 
I did a college course on writing user manuals and the company gave me all the documentation jobs. Getting the course insight was helpful but only if the end-user reads the manual.
 
The more complex the device (or software) the more difficult it must be to write a meaningful manual. A couple of days ago I downloaded the .pdf manual for Adobe Audition CS6. It's okay if you go into it with a good knowledge of audio and recording but I'd hate to try and make sense of things if I was starting completely from scratch.

And that's before we get into Audition (or any other DAW) having to interface with your audio interface and operating system. Deciding what to do on the control screen from an interface and making it match up with the "Preferences/Audio Hardware" screen on Audition would be daunting in the extreme for a newbie. (And, from the number of set up questions on the Adobe user to user forums, many don't get there without help.)

Finally, a hobby horse of mine: despite all the complications, many people go into things like recording expecting it to be not much more than "plug and play" to get studio grade results at home. Folks who are willing to put years of training and practice into learning an instrument assume that, because it involves computers, recording and mixing should be easy to the point of automatic.
 
I was "tasked" with writing "working instructions" for the people that did the bech assembly at a firm* where I was a sort of electronics "toolmaker".
That was difficult enough but not helped by the fact that I was being paid only £1.01 over minimum wage!
*HellermanTyton Northampton.

Dave.
 
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