By-passing mic pre's....
- Thread starter Gorty
- Start date
Richard Monroe
Well-known member
Yo Gorty! Jedblue beat me to it. Yes- using the S/PDIF out on the Toft to the S/PDIF in on the BR1600 bypasses the BR1600's pres completely. It substitutes the Toft's A-D conversion for the Boss's, which probably isn't any worse. I have done the same thing for years using a Joemeek twinQ and a Roland VS1824CD, which are like the siblings of the 2 units you are using. It will vastly increase your sound quality. Then-don't let the BR1600 turn it back into analog, if you can help it. Export WAV files to a computer, and leave everything in the digital domain. Good luck-Richie
darrin_h2000
Banned
In reallity that too should add a couple of inputs to that unit.
If I designed one of these Id upgrade the preamps onboard and get rid of the LCD displays in favor of a VGA output to offset the costs...and of course 8 xlr inputs...no faders handling 2 tracks at once and a mixer like interface with motorized faders.
If I designed one of these Id upgrade the preamps onboard and get rid of the LCD displays in favor of a VGA output to offset the costs...and of course 8 xlr inputs...no faders handling 2 tracks at once and a mixer like interface with motorized faders.
Definitely +1 on using external preamps on a standalone!
At the moment, I do much of my tracking on a Yamaha AW1600. It is about as good as a standalone gets and is annoyingly adequate in most every respect... as someone who also records on tape, part of me would like to say it's rubbish, but really it isn't: it records very well and is super easy to use, it just has no mojo, as with all digital gear (let's not go there, folks!).
The one disappointment is that the inputs are fine as line inputs, but are pretty noisy when the gain is turned up and they are used as mike preamps. They are OK for loud sources, but for anything delicate and detailed, which is a lot of what I record, I use an external pre-amp, mainly the SoundDevices MixPre, which is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread.
Good luck with the Boss! You should be fine running through the inputs with the gain down, and it will probably be much better than the internal preamps for anything critical. There will be an small effect from that gain stage even at unity, but not one that matters.
Cheers,
Otto
darrin_h2000
Banned
Coincidentally I used an Akai DPS16 for a long time and didnt love the pre's...so I used a Yamaha MLA7 8 channel mic pre as a front end and it was uber quiet.
Ill bet that digital unit beats the hell out of tape when you have to do a live show...lol.
Ill bet that digital unit beats the hell out of tape when you have to do a live show...lol.
Gorty
New member
Thanx Rich. How would the BR1600 turn it back to analog?
The BOSS Unit has 8 xlr inputs.
I've had the BOSS for about 4 or 5 years now, I'm just adding external pre-amps into the chain now!
Thanx Otto.
Richard Monroe
Well-known member
Yo Gorty! If you were to send the main outs or an aux out to external FX, a send and return or anything that isn't a digital signal, the Boss would turn it back into an analog signal to do that. So- once the signal is in the BOSS, you can either mix it down and apply fx, EQ, compression, whatever, in the Boss, or send the tracks as WAV files to a big computer and process them there. Then you can either burn straight to CD, or dither the tracks down to 16bit/44.1kHz in the computer (assuming they weren't tracked in 16/44.1 to begin with) and burn from there. Or you can burn the raw tracks to CD as WAV files and hand them to the nice mixing engineer. All I'm saying is that you only want to turn the analog signal into a digital signal *once*.
And of course, using the digital in on the BOSS does *not* increase your inputs, because the software only permits 8 simultaneous recording tracks, and I'm guessing 16 out simultaneous. I recorded an entire album the way we are talking about, mostly one and two tracks at a time. The only time the SIAB's pres were ever used was for tracking drums. Unfortunately, my machine is more primitive than yours, and does not export WAV files. So we had to export the tracks by S/PDIF to Pro Tools, 2 at a time, in real time, and then synch them manually, which was a royal PIA. Then the mixing and mastering were done in Pro Tools. I could write a book about how I recorded an album on a Roland V-studio, and bypassed everything it does badly. What I find that it did well, was- it is a very good mixer, it is stable hard drive that never dropped or corrupted a file, and it actually has several very useful plugins. It is also very good for complex time-based editing. It's the devil I know. I can pull up wave forms and do most erases, cuts, cross-fades, etc., faster than I can do them in Pro Tools.
I still use the Joemeek and Roland combination for remote stereo recording, and it still does a very good job, but by and large, I haven't used any of its preamps in over 4 years. On the other hand, the machine has lasted 6 years, and never dropped a file.-Richie
And of course, using the digital in on the BOSS does *not* increase your inputs, because the software only permits 8 simultaneous recording tracks, and I'm guessing 16 out simultaneous. I recorded an entire album the way we are talking about, mostly one and two tracks at a time. The only time the SIAB's pres were ever used was for tracking drums. Unfortunately, my machine is more primitive than yours, and does not export WAV files. So we had to export the tracks by S/PDIF to Pro Tools, 2 at a time, in real time, and then synch them manually, which was a royal PIA. Then the mixing and mastering were done in Pro Tools. I could write a book about how I recorded an album on a Roland V-studio, and bypassed everything it does badly. What I find that it did well, was- it is a very good mixer, it is stable hard drive that never dropped or corrupted a file, and it actually has several very useful plugins. It is also very good for complex time-based editing. It's the devil I know. I can pull up wave forms and do most erases, cuts, cross-fades, etc., faster than I can do them in Pro Tools.
I still use the Joemeek and Roland combination for remote stereo recording, and it still does a very good job, but by and large, I haven't used any of its preamps in over 4 years. On the other hand, the machine has lasted 6 years, and never dropped a file.-Richie
Yeah, my Yamaha SIAB appealed to me because it is a complete unit I can easily take to other places and track stuff in sync with existing tracks and because it has a good mixer: full 4-band parametric EQ and dynamics (compression, gate, expander) on every channel (up to 16 recorder tracks plus 8 inputs) and the S/PDIF input can be routed to the stereo bus, too, with, say, a bunch of MIDI stuff from the Muse Receptor. And, the system never drops even a bit of a file or hangs up or does anything of note other than exactly what I ask it every time.
If I liked working in a DAW, the SIAB also makes a convenient front end, because you can just transport all the 32 bit internal WAV files of the tracks in one motion via USB 2.0 to the DAW audio file folder. I would worry about obsolescence of the unit itself since Yamaha has just discontinued the AW1600 and AW2400 and I don't know if there will be any successors, except that the tracks can be exported so easily to another hard drive, and eventually there will probably be some kind of DAW-device that is non-computer-like enough for me to work with and still be somewhat musical.
Cheers,
Otto
Gorty
New member
Thanx Richard,
Once I have the tracks into the BOSS unit, that's where I'll be mixing down etc to it's final product. I will soon be looking @ going computer based recording!
When I do that you guys will know all about it with my n00b questions!
Cheers
Gorty
Gorty
New member
Gorty is such a newbie......Hi gortitude. When is the Gorty Fanclub Gang gonna get their PROMISED video newsletter from aussie land? BTW, finish the Kitchen yet? Well what is taking you so long?
Love,
Timmmmmmmmmmmmmmma
Hey Tim, the G.F.C.G is now officially non existent. Sorry to dissappoint you, but you're gonna have to find something else to do with your life other than waiting around for me to send you a G.F.C.G Newsletter!
SRR
New member
Hey Tim, the G.F.C.G is now officially non existent. Sorry to dissappoint you, but you're gonna have to find something else to do with your life other than waiting around for me to send you a G.F.C.G Newsletter!
IF I am still alive, there will always be a G.F.C.G, that and the wife never stops talking about you, so I think she is a fan too.
Anyways sounds like you are upgrading to much better pres with out having to throw out the recording box you are used to, that is a nice thing. Hope you get a better tone with your riffs, and shredding, and whatever you do to those poor guitars, and when I say poor I mean pricey guitars, lol.