Control surface/interface question?

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Ford Van said:
I agree though that the Mackies are WAY too expensive for what they do.

Behringer is on the right track price wise. Really, a simple 8 channel moving fader controller these days shouldn't cost more than maybe $300! It is insane that some cost what they do!
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I couldn't use a control surface that doesn't have a track name display. I'd end up just going back to the VM to not go through the mental gymnastics of figuring out which track is on which channel. Throw in bank switching and forget it! Also, does the Behri have touch sensing faders, or do you have to arm and unarm seperately? There's a lot of stuff they did on the MCU that is really well done, but no doubt drives up their COGS significantly.
I do agree Mackie would net more profit by decreasing their margin and increasing volume. It's hard to coin up that much for something that doesn't give you any sonic improvement. But it's a purchase I've never regretted.


-RD
 
Robert D said:
It's hard to coin up that much for something that doesn't give you any sonic improvement. But it's a purchase I've never regretted.


-RD
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I agree!!!!!......... ;)
 
I've got to plug the Tascam FW-1884 here. We've been using one for the past year and it has performed flawlessly. As a control surface, we use Sonar3, it's great. Switching banks is no big deal, just push the button. The surface is large and the buttons are well labelled and spaced apart quite a bit. The faders ARE touch sensitive and motorized. As an interface it works very well. The 8 audio channels ALL have XLR and line inputs. The phantom power is grouped into 2 sections (1-4 and 5-8) so you turn off the ppower to 5-8 for instruments and leave it on for 1-4 mics. I can't really speak to the quality of the preamps except to say the are not noticably dirty. There is amble headroom and very little noise. I'm sure they are not up to the qualit of an ONYX pre, but the do fine for what we do (mostly live recording).

The other nice thing about the 1884 is that it can also be used without a PC as a 10x4 mixer, or in conjunction with at the same time. I use it to mix the house mix as well as a recording interface at the same time and it works great.

Edit - I forgot to add that it's also a 4x4 MIDI router. We are just getting started with MIDI, picked up a Korg KARMA for $500, so I can't really speak to the MIDI part yet except to say that it does wrk. At least, when I play on the keyboard it records into Sonar.

I haven't found the lack of a LCD for track name a problem, but I've never use one that had them either. It comes with a little LCD program you can run on the computer and it will allow you to name tracks and such, but we don't use it.

The 1884 has native drivers for Sonar which allows you to do a lot more things on the board than when you use it with Cubase as a universal controller.
 
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I've always liked the idea of a control surface, particularly ones like the Tascam 1884 which function as an audio interface as well.

However having already got my audio interface/ preamps sorted, there always seems to be something better for me to spend money on, like a nice rack mount compressor or another mic or some more UAD plugs. If someone gave me one for Xmas, I'd sweep their driveway for a year, but I'm chasing sonic fidelity and they do nothing for that.

Mind you like Ford Van says, if they were half price, pretty hard to resist
 
Can anyone comment on the quality of Digi 002 control surface vs. the MCU's???

Pretty please.... Guy I'm working with will want my final answer today... Ugh...

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=196454

My newest idea is to use a MCU with a Digi 002 rack (instead of the Digi 002 with faders)... I know it costs more.. That's why I'm wondering if there is any quality or ease of use difference.... Plus.. Adding extensions to the MCU is a huge selling point, IMO.... Especially the Mackie C4 extension board...

Thanks!
 
peritus said:
Can anyone comment on the quality of Digi 002 control surface vs. the MCU's???

Pretty please.... Guy I'm working with will want my final answer today... Ugh...

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=196454

My newest idea is to use a MCU with a Digi 002 rack (instead of the Digi 002 with faders)... I know it costs more.. That's why I'm wondering if there is any quality or ease of use difference.... Plus.. Adding extensions to the MCU is a huge selling point, IMO.... Especially the Mackie C4 extension board...

Thanks!
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Hmmm..

http://www.berkleemusic.com/discuss/message?message_id=1917763&forum_id=13331
 
peritus said:
Can anyone comment on the quality of Digi 002 control surface vs. the MCU's???

Pretty please.... Guy I'm working with will want my final answer today... Ugh...

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=196454

My newest idea is to use a MCU with a Digi 002 rack (instead of the Digi 002 with faders)... I know it costs more.. That's why I'm wondering if there is any quality or ease of use difference.... Plus.. Adding extensions to the MCU is a huge selling point, IMO.... Especially the Mackie C4 extension board...

Thanks!
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well, both have their benefits. The Mackie is a very slick unit and one of the first control surfaces I had a chance to work with (but for a very limited time at that). Yes, the Mackie can be expanded if you find that banking the 8 channels is too troublesome. Some don't care. I also like that there is a time code window on the Mackie. And I the display window for the tracks is a little bigger I think.
The 002 however is an all in one unit and can also be used as a standalone mixer. Also, I don't believe the HUI protocol is able to utilize the master fader on the control surfaces that have them. In other words, if you move the mast fader on the surface...it doesn't do anything in Pro Tools. I believe this has something to do with how Pro Tools treats master fader tracks as normal tracks...and that you can use multiple master faders in a single pro tools session, so the HUI protocol is not able to differentiate what is an audio track and what is a master track. Not a huge deal though, it'll still show up on the normal faders.
Take a look at the Tascam US-2400 as well. Very very cheap price right now with 24 channels right in front of you. No LCD display for the track names though and a couple other things it doesn't have, but you have your basic control surface for touch sensitive automation, mute/solo, metering, transport control, surround mixing, etc. Plus it looks cool.
 
bennychico11 said:
well, both have their benefits. The Mackie is a very slick unit and one of the first control surfaces I had a chance to work with (but for a very limited time at that). Yes, the Mackie can be expanded if you find that banking the 8 channels is too troublesome. Some don't care. I also like that there is a time code window on the Mackie. And I the display window for the tracks is a little bigger I think.
The 002 however is an all in one unit and can also be used as a standalone mixer. Also, I don't believe the HUI protocol is able to utilize the master fader on the control surfaces that have them. In other words, if you move the mast fader on the surface...it doesn't do anything in Pro Tools. I believe this has something to do with how Pro Tools treats master fader tracks as normal tracks...and that you can use multiple master faders in a single pro tools session, so the HUI protocol is not able to differentiate what is an audio track and what is a master track. Not a huge deal though, it'll still show up on the normal faders.
Take a look at the Tascam US-2400 as well. Very very cheap price right now with 24 channels right in front of you. No LCD display for the track names though and a couple other things it doesn't have, but you have your basic control surface for touch sensitive automation, mute/solo, metering, transport control, surround mixing, etc. Plus it looks cool.
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GREAT INFO!..... I'm also intrigued by this MotorMate device....

http://www.cmlabs.net/motormate.html


Hmm... I'm hoping that when I get to the store, today, that they will still have some used surfaces, like last time...

Here's my ranking at the moment (good to bad):
1. MMC
2. US2400/Motormate/Digi002 (not rack)

3-way tie... hmmm

Thanks
 
peritus said:
GREAT INFO!..... I'm also intrigued by this MotorMate device....

http://www.cmlabs.net/motormate.html
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Any idea where to find one of these or what they cost? I can't find them on any of my regular product websites (zzounds, musiciansfriend, etc.).

Has anyone ever used one of these with Sonar?
 
JeffLancaster said:
Any idea where to find one of these or what they cost? I can't find them on any of my regular product websites (zzounds, musiciansfriend, etc.).

Has anyone ever used one of these with Sonar?
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Can't remember where I saw them for sale.. If I remember correctly the motormate was 2k +.... I'll try 'n double check that...
 
peritus said:
Can't remember where I saw them for sale.. If I remember correctly the motormate was 2k +.... I'll try 'n double check that...
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Thanks...hope it's not that much though. I found a Harmony Central press release from January of 2005 which said the MSRP was 1699. Usually the real store prices are lower than MSRP on most things. I think you can get the Mackie MCU for under a thousand bucks. The MotorMate looks pretty appealing, but it would be hard to justify spending too much more than the Mackie would cost on one of those. Now if you could get a MotorMate along with two MotorMixes in the $2000 range I think that would be very tempting...
 
JeffLancaster said:
Thanks...hope it's not that much though. I found a Harmony Central press release from January of 2005 which said the MSRP was 1699. Usually the real store prices are lower than MSRP on most things. I think you can get the Mackie MCU for under a thousand bucks. The MotorMate looks pretty appealing, but it would be hard to justify spending too much more than the Mackie would cost on one of those. Now if you could get a MotorMate along with two MotorMixes in the $2000 range I think that would be very tempting...
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here's an expired ebay auction.. might try there (i can't get to the main ebay site, from where I'm logged into)

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache...ols"+price&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&strip=1

Here's where my 2k logic came from...
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_c...6327332&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=mrd&hl=en
 
peritus said:
Here's where my 2k logic came from...
http://froogle.google.com/froogle_c...6327332&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=mrd&hl=en
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Wow - those guys are asking 2659 for the thing :confused: There's no way it's worth that when you can get a Mackie for 999. Perhaps they know they're the only outlet on the web and they're just trying to rip people off? I did send an email to CM Labs sales department, asking where you can get these things - I'll let you know if I get a response.

No Motormate's on ebay right now, but there is a MotorMix - it's currently at $200 but there are 6 days to go so who knows how high it'll get. Believe it or not, that same "Pro Audio" place is actually asking 1849 just for the MotorMix. Funny, I found a six year old press release on that one that stated an MSRP of 995.
 
JeffLancaster said:
Wow - those guys are asking 2659 for the thing :confused: There's no way it's worth that when you can get a Mackie for 999. Perhaps they know they're the only outlet on the web and they're just trying to rip people off? I did send an email to CM Labs sales department, asking where you can get these things - I'll let you know if I get a response.

No Motormate's on ebay right now, but there is a MotorMix - it's currently at $200 but there are 6 days to go so who knows how high it'll get. Believe it or not, that same "Pro Audio" place is actually asking 1849 just for the MotorMix. Funny, I found a six year old press release on that one that stated an MSRP of 995.
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It's sad, really.. but, if people don't do their research, like you did, they almost deserve it.. :)
 
I agree that the MCU is a bit spendy but;

Track names on the display
Jog/shuttle wheel
Programmable user switch inputs (I've got record and playback footswitches hooked up)
EQ control
Plug-In control
SONAR supported
Touch sensitive faders

These were all features I HAD to have. I picked it up for $750 new at GC about a year ago. Bye bye mouse :) No regrets.
 
Hey guys, I got a response back today from my email to CM Labs. Thought you might be interested in what they had to say:

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your Email.

Our products are in production and available.

We do not use the discount houses to sell our products.

We have no plans to discontinue our consoles or router.

Our consoles are supported by most DAW software titles.

If you cannot find a dealer, then we can sell direct to you.

Best regards,

Carl Malone
President
CM Labs Inc.
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He also attached the following price list:

http://www.filelodge.com/files/room11/282850/CM Labs Price Sheet.pdf

As you can see, someone would have to be pretty foolish to order these items at that "Pro Audio" outlet. Unfortunately, these units are still a bit on the pricey side, but they sure look nice...
 
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