Need help understanding tracking workflow

[BeniRose]

Hey all,

I've recently started using a UA Apollo interface with the Console software at a friend's studio and it's brought up some questions about tracking/playback that I realized I had about recording to tape that I never answered. I was hoping someone could help me work this out.

If you're not familiar with the Console app that comes with UA Apollo interfaces, it's a virtual mixer like many other interfaces offer these days, except it includes ability to host UA plugins on channels like it's outboard gear and print their effects to the DAW (along with a bunch of other features including 2 aux sends and 4 cue mixes).

When using Console, they recommend turning of software monitoring in your DAW and instead using Console to monitor with low-latency. This is where things start to get hairy for me. So I do this, and now I'm monitoring via the Console software. I've got my guitar, bass, and drums coming into my interface and ready for tracking. I've set my levels good for monitoring, let's say I've turned down the faders on all the drum mics quite a bit, but left the guitar and bass ones at 0. I hit record and record a performance.

Then I go to play back what was just recorded. Because the DAW receives signal from the Console app pre-fader and mute (I assume the same is true when tracking from a console mixer to tape), the drums went in at full volume. I haven't touched my faders in my DAW, because I've been monitoring in Console. All of my tracks in my DAW are going to my stereo output. When I go to play back what was just recorded, my drums will be blasting loud! If I want to hear it the way I monitored it, I have to duplicate my fader settings from the Console app into my DAW's mixer. This sounds quite silly.

How do I remedy this situation? Is there one? How would this get adjusted for Tape (assuming your stereo output of the tape is routed back to a stereo bus on your mixer and everything hit the tape pre-fader when tracking)?

 

[ashcat_lt]

With tape, I was always monitoring the return from the deck, so it just worked, and I do the same in my DAW and it just works. My suggestion is to dump the Console software - either get it out of the way or set it up so that at it passes the physical holes in the interface as discrete ins and outs in your DAW.

The benefits you've described don't sound like benefits to me. If your machine is fast enough, the latency shouldn't bother you, and you can monitor through the plugs and print them any time you want. Reaper has InputFX slots so they'd just get recorded same as this. If you can't get low enough latency for software monitoring, maybe you should upgrade the computer before you buy any more UA plugs.

 

[Chili]

Hey all,

I've recently started using a UA Apollo interface with the Console software at a friend's studio and it's brought up some questions about tracking/playback that I realized I had about recording to tape that I never answered. I was hoping someone could help me work this out.

If you're not familiar with the Console app that comes with UA Apollo interfaces, it's a virtual mixer like many other interfaces offer these days, except it includes ability to host UA plugins on channels like it's outboard gear and print their effects to the DAW (along with a bunch of other features including 2 aux sends and 4 cue mixes).

When using Console, they recommend turning of software monitoring in your DAW and instead using Console to monitor with low-latency. This is where things start to get hairy for me. So I do this, and now I'm monitoring via the Console software. I've got my guitar, bass, and drums coming into my interface and ready for tracking. I've set my levels good for monitoring, let's say I've turned down the faders on all the drum mics quite a bit, but left the guitar and bass ones at 0. I hit record and record a performance.

Then I go to play back what was just recorded. Because the DAW receives signal from the Console app pre-fader and mute (I assume the same is true when tracking from a console mixer to tape), the drums went in at full volume. I haven't touched my faders in my DAW, because I've been monitoring in Console. All of my tracks in my DAW are going to my stereo output. When I go to play back what was just recorded, my drums will be blasting loud! If I want to hear it the way I monitored it, I have to duplicate my fader settings from the Console app into my DAW's mixer. This sounds quite silly.

How do I remedy this situation? Is there one? How would this get adjusted for Tape (assuming your stereo output of the tape is routed back to a stereo bus on your mixer and everything hit the tape pre-fader when tracking)?

This is the only beef I have with the UAD Console software. The one work-around I figured out is to output from the DAW into a virtual track on the console. Then you can balance playback (through the virtual channel) with the live monitoring.

 

[BeniRose]

This is the only beef I have with the UAD Console software. The one work-around I figured out is to output from the DAW into a virtual track on the console. Then you can balance playback (through the virtual channel) with the live monitoring.

Right, but the output from the DAW into the Virtual track won't be balanced the way it was during tracking, because those faders were set in UAD Console, but were tracked to your DAW pre-fader, so they're full volume at playback.

I assume the way this works with tape is that you have the same number of channels on your console as you do on the deck, and each channel of input maps to a channel of playback, and the console has some sort of switch to go between monitoring and playback. No reason you can't technically do it that way, but I'm not sure everyone in the studio will want to go for that, and you loose some of the benefits of DAW.