Motorized Faders???

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EveningSky

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I am shopping for a recording studio, and am seriously looking at the Yamaha models and the Korg D1600. The Yamahas have motorized faders and more internal buses.

What are motorized faders good for?
What are internal buses good for?
 
the motorized faders are a part of the "automation" function of the Yamaha recorders. If that doesn't mean anything to you, there's lots on the board, so try a search. An other recorder you might want to consider would be the Akai DPS16. The DPS16 doesn't have motorized faders, but it has MIDI so you can use Cakewalk or any other sequencer to setup "automation" on the Akai.

I am not the best person to answer your busses question though, so I'll leave that one.

-Shaz
 
Motorized faders:

You can record the movements of the faders and the machine will play them back- the faders will move almost exactly like you moved them with your fingers.

:) Very fancy to watch. Guaranteed to impress your date. Makes your machine look expensive. Very handy when you are mixing more tracks than you have fingers. Also lets you move one track at a time and build your mix without having to concentrate on moving all those tracks around at once.
 
tim, it's not for pro tools


motorized faders are great because you can record the track and mix it all, save your mix with all your automation (fader movements, eq changes, etc), and then in a weeks time, you can come back to it, and it will be the same mix, with the same fader movements at the right times. now, if you use outboard, you may have to alter some compressors or whatever if you want to go back to a mix from a week ago, but if not , then it's a great tool.

it's really handy when you've got a lot of stuff going on in a mix becuase you dont have to have your hands on so many faders.

check and see if any of the units offer automation for eq's and on board compressors aswell. this may be handy to you.

-Romesh
 
Most of the things that Romesh mention can be done without motorized faders if you have fader automation. Keep in mind that he is also 100% correct in his assesment. However, the real beauty of motorized faders (that he hints at) is that the faders will track the automation.

For example, you can automate your mixes on some workstations. Thus, the levels will track your fader movements. You can also use scenes for each song that will return the fader levels to specific settings, thus allowing you to switch songs without having to readjust the levels when switching.

The biggest problem with automation is that the physical faders will not match the automation or scenes. Therefore, you may have to look at a screen to determine where the physical faders should be to match the levels. It is easier to have the physical faders track the actual levels in a scene or automation. Motorized faders provide for this tracking. Thus, you can just reach out and grab the fader and know that the fader is set at the appropriate level without having to cross-reference a screen.


Internal busses are good for making submixes and bouncing tracks.


Matt
 
Hey matt,

I was talking about as opposed to an analog desk

Romesh
 
Yeah. I tried to give ya deference at the beginning.

I just needed to point out my current fetish with motorized faders. Especially because I have a VS880 with scenes and automation but no motorized faders.

Oooh. They make me hot! :eek:


:D
 
Thank you for the information. Now I better understand what motorized faders are good for. But why do they make "hot"!!!
 
I can't add anything to the discussion about motorized faders, but I recently got myself the Akai DPS16 and I'm thrilled with it. The sound quality is superb. I don't see how you can beat it for the price (around $1,400 or $1,500. I got mine for $1,500 with a "free" (haha) AKG C1000s microphone).

What does the Yamaha with the motorized faders go for?
 
YOOOOOOBOB OOOOOOOO:]

The Yamaha 2816 goes for 1800-2000 pezzutos depending where you buy it.

I got mine from Full Compass and their price was the lowest of all the 800 calls I made.

The motorized faders???????/

I love to see them go up and down. Why they do that, I don't know yet but the sound on the Yam 2816 is absolutely superb.

Once I get to know this box, I expect to do great stuff. It is, really, a PC recording unit that is in a small box with a small screen. It does so many things. I wish I could take a class in the use of this box but none available around my area.

Green Hornet




:D :D :p :p
 
I have the korg d1600 and it uses mixing scenes...everytime you do anything in a mix you store it as a scene....when you play it back the actual faders don't move, but you can watch the faders mover on the screen. Im real happy with it. The onboard effects sound real good and editing is a snap. I love the touch screen too. i paid 1599 for mine and the cd attachment was 300 bucks or so. I noticed that musicians friend has it for 1599 now with the cd writer for free....thats a good deal. I wonder how the motors will hold up on the yamaha "flying fader" recorders. It seems like everything i've ever owned that had an electric motor..screwed up...cause the motor went out
 
Jimi, et. al.,

The Akai DPS16 also has "scene" memory -- you can store up to 10 scenes per "project", and this includes ALL the mixer settings, not just fader position but pan, aux send, effects, etc...

Of course you can also hook it up via MIDI to an external-control device (software or hardware sequencer) for full-blown automation. The only thing you are missing is the ghost-faders.

-Shaz
 
the d1600 has the same thing "all mixer settings" including eq and effects are locked in a scene. You can go midi for full blown automation on it too. I looked at the akai and the korg and was torn between the 2. I went with the korg because i really liked the touch screen and the price was better at the time. Another reason i went with the korg is that i heard that akai was going thruogh financial problems and i didn't want something that in the future would be difficult to get serviced. I didn't realize that you could only store 10 scenes per song on the akai. Man, that is really limiting. All my songs have over 20 scenes stored in them.....i don't know if i could do a song with only 10 scenes.
 
ooops, I lied...

I took a closer look, and the DPS16 has 16 scene memories per project. This works for me so far, as I have only ever needed one per project on what I'm doing. If I want more than that I plan to just use my PC as a sequencer anyway. :p

-Shaz
 
EveningSky said:
Thank you for the information. Now I better understand what motorized faders are good for. But why do they make "hot"!!!
Click to expand...

Ok. Let me elaborate:

My VS880 will do automation and scenes. As probably noted, this allows you to save your mixer settings and even record fader movements so the levels will move and jump to certain positions within a song. For example, if you want to boost the guitar for the solo, you record a scene with the fader boosted at the solo and record a scene with the fader back down. That way you don't have to ride the fader with your finger when mixing down.

The scenes also allow you to store different mixer settings for different songs. Thus, when you load a different song, you don't have to readjust all of the faders because the fader locations are stored in a scene.

Unfortunately, the physical faders do not match the stored scene. Thus, you need to cross reference the screen to try to determine where the faders actually should be located. This becomes a pain when making minor fader adjustments.

This problem is solved by using motorized faders. The faders will physically jump to their actual locations when a new song or scene is loaded. Having the faders in their actual locations makes subtle tweaks much easier.
 
Scene memory on the DPS16

Hey Shazukura!

Am I missing something or what! As far as i can tell, the scenes on the DPS can't be called up in "real time" so they can't be used for "semi-automation" of the mixes (unless you have strategically placed rests and cuts in your arrangement!)

What I do sometimes is just write myself a chart of the mix as I practice it so I don't have to memorize everything and just "play" the mix like music.

This is definitely one of the FEW things I would like to see different on my axe. I haven't messed around with the MIDI automation yet but I'm sure I will soon. Has anybody done that and was it relatively easy to set up?

D out ITNOJ
 
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