Thats the problem here. Each camp is firmly entrenched.
Rick,
You're right in that both camps are entrenched. The analog guys like their reels and faders, and the digital guys like their computers and/or LCD screens. I am guilty of this mentality myself. I like analog for warmth, and I like digital for quick, high speed editing. I could talk for hours and hours on the subject, of how I combine the two technologies together. But thats for another thread
Anyway, my advice to you is to back up and start over from the very beginning. Like any major purchase, start by listing out your needs, then go from there. What do you need?
I bet if you were to decide to buy a new car today, you'd have a list of things that are important. Leather? Manual? Sunroof? Good mileage? Cheap insurance? Lumbar support? Maybe you like simple manual everything cars that get 50 MPG. Whatever your needs are, list them out on a piece of paper.
How many input channels do you need? How many busses? Direct outs necessary? Inserts on all channels? or some? Can you survive with a digital work surface that represents 16 channels, then "flip" it for 17-32 and/or 33-48? Or do you need a knob for everything? Are you comfortable with patch bays, or do you prefer digital routing?
Once you define your requirements, you can compare what your budget it is and narrow it down to a few choices. Maybe you have to wait a little to increase your budget, but at least you'd know. And don't laugh, most people (including myself) just buy what seems right at the time, thinking only a little ahead.
find, that within my humble budget, I've been able to buy a complete analog system with (2) 16 trks, and a quality 2 trk, mixer and all the other goodies to complete my little home studio.
And how is the above bad? What about it doesn't fit your needs at this time?
Yea, maybe if I were like you frederic, I would be on the cutting edge of computers and digital audio. But I'm not. I'm a humble musician who would rather spend the time fooling around with the 60 chord system than try to convince tascam that I could
Oh my friend... trust me, I am far from cutting edge. I am technology tolerant more so than a lot of folks, but I am by far nowhere near the bleeding edge. Remember, I have a pair of 24-ch Otari's in my studio with all the other digital stuff. They stay for good reason - the work all day, all night, give me no grief, and don't require any wordclock syncronization troubleshooting
Though, one of them squeeks on occasion. Yeah, big deal.
write code for the DM 4000 cause it don't work right. I do not have the resourses to buy 4 Big digital mixers, and take a shit of a loss, because thier automation don't work.
Well, hold on a second. I bought one TM
D4000, got it into my studio, and had it working just fine. The automation for non-surround was just fine, everything worked well. Then, I realized that 8 analog ins and 24 digital ins were not enough for my large midi studio. So, I asked if I can cascade them, and Tascam said yes. I then bought a second, then a third, and a fourth. Then I started monkeying with the animation software, to find that I needed a PC for each mixer. Four PC's! Had I known that detail up front, I would not have gone that route in the first place and simply have bought something like the o2R and cascaded two or three of those to do the same job. Hindsight is 20/20.
My reason for offering to write the software was simply to make a trade with Tascam. Having the software written by one of my programmers would have been easy, and nearly free. The guy who was going to do it wasn't at a client billing, and because he's "staff" he's paid whether he is billable or not. So I was going to take advantage of his downtime for something else. The deal with Tascam was for them to give me the RS422-based Moxa protocol documentation that is the connection between the PC/software and the mixer, and I'd allow them to publically distribute my software, for free, to anyone else who wanted it. I wasn't offering this because I'm kind, I offered it to Tascam because I wanted them to step up to the plate and give me the friggen Moxa specifications. My asking for it politely seemingly fell on deaf ears. So, I attempted to sweeten the pot for them by giving them something for free that I had to have written anyway, in exchange for the magical information I wanted.
They agreed, then apparently forgot about it, and keep blowing me off. So after a long time, I got frustrated, and decided I'm not wasting my time on that effort anymore and going with another solution for my commercial studio. You know what? My original idea of o2R's is very much alive and I'm probably going that route. Its cheaper than large-frame consoles that I should be buying, but can't afford.
I see people in the DM-24 forum all the time ready to chuck thier mixer on the garbage. The ONLY ones who are having any fun are people who are "digitally oriented" and can write code. The list of people who are there saying "woe is me" in these forums is a mile long. How many digital equipment manufacturers, can you count on both hands, including Tascam,
The DM24 is an excellent mixer sonically, but its a pain in the ass to use, manipulate, and tweak. Because of my experience with
the TMD4000 series, I will not be buying a Dm24. No chance in hell. I am not going to repeat what I went through the last time.
While my offer to write code was probably stupid, its all hindsight. What my needs were at the time were grossly excessive compared to what the TMD-4000 was capable of in final form, but because i was uninformed when I was making my purchase decision, I ended up with technology that didn't fit my needs. And this is no one's fault but my own.
And BTW frederic, thanks for the offer on personal help over the phone or emai. That was extremely generous of you. I will take you up on that someday.
You're more than welcome to call if you like. I'm happy to reply here but often a verbal conversation offers more clarity than ascii can do. While I type very fast (over 100wpm most of the time) I often do not get my message through clearly.
And as for the "getting analog sound into digital" that seems redundant to me. Thats 4 conversions. From what I've read on the mastering house explainations, thats 3 too many. But I'm NO expert. And don't want to be. I just want to record easily. My tapes will NEVER be thrust upon the public in any way shape or form. So it doesn't matter anyway.
Yes, its four conversions, but it does allow the combination of the two technologies for the better. Analog for warm tape saturation, and digital for random access edit. I'm assuming you've cut and spliced 2" tape before. If not, try it sometime and you'll worship the convience of hard drives
Whether the hard drive is in a PC, an akai/alesis recorder or whatever, removable hard drives are awesome.
So to each his own, and thankyou for your expert digital opinions. Besides, I love reels turning. And mechanics, not numbers. Have fun.
And you're right... to each their own. This is why I haven't bought -any- recording gear for my new studio - I'm still designing the space and that gives me more time to figure out exactly what I need equipment wise. I'm going to make one huge-ass purchase, set it all up, and thats it. No more trips to the music store.
