Firewire interfaces, mic pre's, basically how to set up a recording rig...

A

aman74

New member
Hi all. I have just a smidgeon of recording experience from the Tascam 4-Track days. I'm looking to set up a DAW and I'm probably going to go Mac. I need some help with my equipment approach.

I'm a guitar player and so are my friend's. I don't think I will need to record more than 2 tracks at once. Drums are probably gonna be from my Roland R-70 or some software that I'll need to learn about. I'd like to get one of the slick little midi keyboard's with pads on them. Any one that seems to get the most bang for the buck? I know M-Audio is popular, but I ran across a review for a more obscure brand that looked really nice, CE something maybe? I really forget.

Even though I'm only going to need 2 tracks, I think I may have a need for a mixer, but I'm not sure. I say that because I may do a wet/dry setup with my guitar. I'm not sure if I should just get some real cheapo Berrie for that and not even consider as part of my recording deal or if I should be thinking of getting a nice mixer with nice pre's and that's my interface for the Mac?

I need clarity on the preamp lingo. I understand that if I get something like the Echo, or M-Audio firewire box it has it's own pre and maybe DI and I can go right into the computer.

However, what if I get something like the M-Audio Tampa that has an AD on it already? Do I just need a dongle that goes from it's out and terminates to a FW connector? I never see mention of this because people are always talking about going into their PCI card. Well, with a Mac I doubt I just want to go into the included sound card so I'd want to go firewire right? Is it just an adapter or do I have to have express34 so I can put some kind of card in there?

The third mic pre/interface option would be to just get a standard analog pre, but then how do I get into the computer then? Would that mean I need an A/D converter?

My main concern is, that like most of us, we want quality and we want it cheap, but with a lot of these items there is product overlap. A lot of this stuff does some of what the other does ya know? I just want to approach it so I'm not buying things I don't have to in order to keep cost's down, but also to keep things simple.

In this article:Recording Studio Systems for Making Music at Home, towards the bottom of the first section he talks about a 2+2 bus mixer and says for digital into a sound card you don't want the standard stereo. I'm wondering about this because I was looking at the Rane DMS22, it would give me eq as well.

Here's some items I'm looking at:

-Standard Firewire interface: Echo, M-Audio, etc... are any of the pre's in these as good as something like the DMP3?

-Various mixers like the Mackie VL series or Onyx, not even sure if these have A/D's or not. I'd get eq here as well.

-Yamaha i88x, seems like a nice unit since the pre's and converters are well like. However, I'm concerned about how hard it is to use. This has wordclock so it's Midi ready? Any of these other devices have that as well? I think I might be misunderstand that though.

-Other's: Rane VP12, SM-Pro something, Sytek and Symetrix, etc...

I only want to spend about 300 bucks, but I'm willing to go used obviously.

What's the best route? Firewire Interface, Mixer, Channel Strip style, Rack mixer style?

Thanks much in advance!


Almost forgot monitor's:

From a web article:

To round out the under-$500 package, the Tascam VL-S21s are a pair of cool flat-panel monitors with an 8-inch subwoofer. These are perfect for the desktop and cost around $100. Once again, M-Audio comes to the budget rescue with its Studio Pro 3 Monitors, offering up a 3.25-inch woofer and 1-inch tweeter for just under $100. If you’ve run out of money at this point, just settle for those internal computer speakers and hope for the best - at least until you can save up a hundred more bucks to buy yourself some decent monitors.

Are those worthwhile? Can you use a consumer grade sub to mix with? I have an Athena. I also have polk tower's, a broken Klipsch Media Pro 2.1, and an old Altec Lansing 2.1 computer set that I can reference to. My friend has some nice Sony can's, but I forget the model.

Also, I have an SM57 and an MXL SDC, I guess I need a large as well, but hoping to hold off.
 
MadAudio said:
We're mostly PC here. Be patient, someone will answer your specific concerns soon enough.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but actually, the vast majority of my post was not platform related :)

I will wait patiently. I've just seen some deals on item's and I can't jump on them until I get an idea of the route I should take.
 
TMQ - Too many questions. I would take me two hours to do the research and answer all of those questions. Honestly... I'd rather spend the two hours recording a nice guitar lick.
 
Nick98338 said:
TMQ - Too many questions. I would take me two hours to do the research and answer all of those questions. Honestly... I'd rather spend the two hours recording a nice guitar lick.
Click to expand...

Then why bother to post?

I don't expect anyone to research anything for me. If you read it, you'll see there really isn't that many questions. I'm just fuzzy on how some of these units interface with the computer.

If I got something like the Tampa, how do I get it into the computer? It has an AD, but no Firewire, so do I just need some kind of adapter?

That and whether a mixer or older unit like the Rane can be used directly with some kind of adapter. And how do units that are just pre's like the DMP3 actually interface with the pc?

Basically looking for options besides the all-in-one firewire interface. Also, wondering about the quality of pre's in the all-in-ones compared to low level seperate pre's.

Those are basically all my question's with less babbling.

This is a forum, I don't expect anyone to answer, noone owes me a thing. On the other hand, that's pretty much what forums are for, so why bother to reply and say you aren't going to reply?
 
dgatwood said:
First question: what kind of Mac are you using/planning to buy?
Click to expand...

Not quite sure, but here's how I see the differences, not including raw horsepower.

Mini/Macbook-Firewire 400

iMac-Firewire 800

MBP-Firewire 800 and Express34 (I don't know much about Express34, last time I built a PC Sata and USB 2.0 were new)

MacPro-I'm not gonna spend that much
 
aman74 said:
Not quite sure, but here's how I see the differences, not including raw horsepower.

Mini/Macbook-Firewire 400

iMac-Firewire 800

MBP-Firewire 800 and Express34 (I don't know much about Express34, last time I built a PC Sata and USB 2.0 were new)

MacPro-I'm not gonna spend that much
Click to expand...

The MacBook Pro would be my recommendation. First, the ExpressCard can be used for things like an eSATA card, which is nice. Second, the new ones have reportedly gone back to using a TI chipset for FireWire, if memory serves. The rest of the Mac line except the Mac Pro all use a chip from Agere/Lucent. While that chip usually works with most audio devices, there are a couple of devices that flat out refuse to work at all, and a few others that don't work reliably.

I'm fairly confident that in the end, most (if not all) of the Agere problems will be shown to be A. overblown, and B. the result of either buggy firmware or silicon in the audio devices themselves. That said, regardless of where the actual blame lies, knowing whether the audio interface is at fault doesn't make it magically start working, so if I were buying a machine for audio, I'd lean towards the MBP just to minimize the risk of FireWire-related problems. :)

On interfaces, I'm a big fan of MOTU, though I've generally heard good things about Apogee from folks I trust as well. Mixers... I'm pretty happy with my Peavey PV8. Reasonably clean pres, and excellent for the price.

I'm not much on FireWire mixers in general. Many of them have dodgy chipsets like DICE II. If you can find something with BeBoB (Phonic, for example), that should work reasonably well, assuming the analog electronics are good---I have no idea....

The two things I've had bad experiences with are Presonus and M-Audio gear. You can probably find my rants on either if you do a search of the forums, so I won't bother repeating them. :)
 
Thanks.

So was the previous gen of the MacPro affected with the Agere/Lucent chipset?

How about the white iMac's?

I had heard about the issue, but it's unclear exactly which model's were affected.

I just missed a deal on a 2.4 MBP for under 1600, the price went back up so I'm bummed, but that may have had the poor chipset anyway.

I just checked prices again and I don't think I can swing a new MBP, so I may jump on a white iMac since they have nice screens for photshop as well. Hopefully you can confirm the chipset if I can't find the info with google.

That sure was a poor move by Apple, especially since they cater to music and video production. People look to Mac because they "just work", so I don't know why they would jeopardize that image.
 
pipelineaudio said:
You have to check on a case by case basis, the Apple store wont usually tell you. JUst fire it up and check. dgatwood had a trick for checking on osx, but if you boot windows just look in device manager.
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In Mac OS X, reboot, then look in /Library/Logs/system.log. You can view this log in the Console application (in /Applications/Utilities) if you want. Look at the last few hundred lines to see the logs during the boot process. If you have the Agere chipset, about 20 lines into the boot messages, it should say something ilke:

May 15 09:46:24 localhost kernel[0]: FireWire (OHCI) Lucent ID 5811 PCI now active, GUID 001cb3fffe7e0b4a; max speed s400.
 
Thanks for the tip.

However, that doesn't help in the before purchase decision, so I was wondering which model's are affected. I thought it was only a certain timeframe and only certain model's.

Since I'm also looking at white iMac's I thought I may be safe with them, but I'm not sure when the problem started.
 
Anyone have any thought's on the OP?

I'm still not sure how to get into the computer with something like the Tampa. If it already has an A/D do I just need an adapter to get it into the computer's firewire or is an interface still needed?
 
If you're going to do much recording, definitely go with MBP over the white mac book. Once you get a few tracks going it takes lots of memory and CPU to keep it all going glitch free. We have both and the MBP works much better.
 
guitar zero said:
If you're going to do much recording, definitely go with MBP over the white mac book. Once you get a few tracks going it takes lots of memory and CPU to keep it all going glitch free. We have both and the MBP works much better.
Click to expand...

Interesting, people mention doing well even with older machines so I didn't think I'd need the horsepower.
 
This may help you and it may not. I have been looking for a nice way to get all my tracks and record them all simultaneously to a pc. I had been using an M-Audio Delta 1010 but wanted more inputs. One of my friends turned me on to the following product.

Phonic Helix 24 It has 16 Mic Pres and many of the features you would expect to see on a typical analog board but it comes with a built in Firewire port that will individually rout all 16 tracks directly to your laptop and record tham as seperate chanels.

I bought one 2 weeks ago and replaced my MX8000 board and havent looked back. The board gives the feel of an analog interface but seamlesly interfaces with my PC and Cubase.

I was able to search around and pick it up for around $675.00 online and for the money I dont believe there is anything close.And it is also small enough to easily travel and run live sound while recording the show as well.

I highly reccomend this board.

Chris
 
probestyle said:
Phonic Helix 24 It has 16 Mic Pres and many of the features you would expect to see on a typical analog board but it comes with a built in Firewire port that will individually rout all 16 tracks directly to your laptop and record tham as seperate chanels.
I bought one 2 weeks ago and replaced my MX8000 board and havent looked back. The board gives the feel of an analog interface but seamlesly interfaces with my PC and Cubase.
Click to expand...

And being BeBoB-based, it should work well on the Mac, too (with the stock Apple driver) even with Agere chips, AFAIK.
 
I've been trying to get straight answers about why, with bebob out there (allegedly that is what the excellently running edirol systems are using) manufacturers are chosing dice II

I havent got many yet.

I have seen the CHEAPEST crap soundcards use the bebob system and do better than the not cheap at all TC Konnekt
 
pipelineaudio said:
I've been trying to get straight answers about why, with bebob out there (allegedly that is what the excellently running edirol systems are using) manufacturers are chosing dice II

I havent got many yet.
Click to expand...

I think I remember reading that DICE II's built-in clock hardware has lower jitter when recovering a clock from low quality sources (e.g. ADAT, S/PDIF). Don't quote me on that. I think I'd rather have working than low-jitter, though.

AFAIK, the problem with DICE II is that I think all the device vendors ship pretty much the stock TC Konnekt driver with their own device IDs instead of actually hiring driver engineers to maintain and enhance the drivers and send their changes back to TC Konnekt.

BeBoB, by contrast, has been so broadly deployed for so many years that the driver kinks have been worked out. Some manufacturers (M-Audio) also use the same chipset with different (non-AVC) firmware, too. The chipset is pretty well understood.

If/when the TC Electronics folks get the Linux driver team the info they need to write open source drivers, I suspect a lot of those problems will straighten themselves out in short order.
 
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