need help with patchbay for my set up

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wilkins978

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hey im getting a new set up in my home studio with a presonus studio live 24 for Daw pro tools 8 and i was wondering if i needed a patch bay to run my art vla2 compressor, helicon vocal prosseor ,and my audient black eq.
and wat would be the best way to pacth that. id apretiate the help if anyone can help and also explaine how the patch bay will work with my set up and how to set it up because im new to this thanks

wilks
 
No, you won't be needing any patchbay with that mixer. Each channel will have its own send/return insert jack for this. As long as you have insert cables, you can plug any hardware directly into any channel you wish. In fact, that mixer already has a compressor, gate, EQ, and effects built into every channel, so you may not need to use your stuff.

You can either send computer DAW channels to the mixer through analog cables or through the FireWire connection. All 24 channels will stay separate through the FireWire cable and automatically be assigned to the correct channels in the mixer.

A soundman friend who had just purchased one, brought it over to my studio last week to test it out. I fed him 8 analog channels to fiddle with and the little mixer performed quite well. We were both impressed by the band selectable sidechained gate. We used it to filter the ride cymbal out of the floor tom mic.

The compressor sounded pretty good. It was basic but "tweakable."

We felt that the eight 31 band EQ's were somewhat limiting by the way every-other one was linked together as a stereo pair. (I guess this is intended for in-ear monitor users.) However, the EQ's within each channel were adequate for mixing. Other than that minor bugger, it was a usable mixer.

It comes with recording software but we did not play with that at all.

He got it for around $2700 US.
 
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I may have missed something, but last time i checked Pro Tools only worked with select hardware mfgs and PreSonus wasn't one of them. Just sayin...
 
Jeff_D said:
I may have missed something, but last time i checked Pro Tools only worked with select hardware mfgs and PreSonus wasn't one of them. Just sayin...
Click to expand...

You mean that ProTools software cannot even route individual tracks to a FireWire output? Damn! I'm glad I don't own any of their crap.

Oh well, as a workaround, he could still use analog outs to feed the mixer.
 
Only workaround as far as I know would be to have the Presonus hooked up with some Digidesign hardware via ADAT... either an 003 rack which would limit you to 8 channels (1 bank of ADAT i/o), or a PT HD rig with one of the ADAT bridge units which you would probably have to sell your house to fund. Both are not a pretty solution.

EDIT: The Studiolive doesn't have ADAT i/o (or any potential addition of this with expansion cards), so you would be limited to hooking it up with some Digidesign gear through the analog i/o.
 
wilkins978 said:
and wat would be the best way to pacth that. id apretiate the help if anyone can help and also explaine how the patch bay will work with my set up and how to set it up because im new to this thanks

wilks
Click to expand...

You don't "need" a patch bay, but doing so gives you several things:

You can extend the patch bay to a more convenient place - often mixer and outboard jacks are on the backs of the units, making repatching more work, and a patch bay allows you to have the jacks on the front of your console table, rack, or whatever.

Patch bays are also cheaper than mixers, so when you wear the jacks out from constant insert and removal of patch cords, it's cheaper to "fix" than if the jack on your console goes bad. They do go bad eventually, and a lot of devices these days use lower quality jacks than they used to back in the day.

A patch bay if wired correctly, can eliminate custom made cabling and insert cables, two things I find really irritating. While your mixer may use a TRS jack for "insert" which means you basically need a fancy "Y" cord to attach the input and the output of the outboard to the mixer, the patch bay can be wired so one jack is out, one jack is in. Makes it more intuitive and almost eliminates the accident in to in, out to out wiring that sometimes happens if you're patching insert cords in a rush.

Another advantage is you can put your patch bays next to your mixer, and your outboard and other devices "over there" out of the way, in a rack. That's what I do - most of my outboard and synth modules are midi controlled, so I have them all installed in a piece of furniture I made that's behind me. I patch things in, then I can adjust most settings by midi.
 
well thanks for all you help guys but i heard if you use presonus with pro tools it acts as an interface but wat im also curious about is if pro tools will open up without a special interface. so if it doesnt open rite up with the presonus i have a fast track pro and i coudl use the presonus as the mixing interface couldnt i?
 
mattr said:
Only workaround as far as I know would be to have the Presonus hooked up with some Digidesign hardware via ADAT... either an 003 rack which would limit you to 8 channels (1 bank of ADAT i/o), or a PT HD rig with one of the ADAT bridge units which you would probably have to sell your house to fund. Both are not a pretty solution.

EDIT: The Studiolive doesn't have ADAT i/o (or any potential addition of this with expansion cards), so you would be limited to hooking it up with some Digidesign gear through the analog i/o.
Click to expand...
EDIT: The Studiolive doesn't have ADAT i/o (or any potential addition of this with expansion cards), so you would be limited to hooking it up with some Digidesign gear through the analog i/o.

im kinda new at this stuff soo i was curious wat is adat and i/o qat do these things dooo?
 
wilkins978 said:
well thanks for all you help guys but i heard if you use presonus with pro tools it acts as an interface but wat im also curious about is if pro tools will open up without a special interface. so if it doesnt open rite up with the presonus i have a fast track pro and i coudl use the presonus as the mixing interface couldnt i?
Click to expand...

You're gonna need to do some research on this. I'm 99% sure that ProTools only works with ProTools-approved hardware... i.e. Digidesign and certain MAudio products. So, even if you wanted to use that Presonus as a mixer, you couldn't connect direct with ProTools, so you'd be limited by the functionality / number of ins and outs of the Fast Track... which would pretty much defeat the purpose of an external mixer if you didn't have enough ins and outs to feed it. Id rethink your software choice. There are MANY other equally capable (and some would say superior) choices out there that will work with the hardware you want. Why pick the one that limits your hardware options.

By the way, I'd start a new thread on this in the newbies or digital section. This forum is really for studio construction. :)
 
wilkins978 said:
well thanks for all you help guys but i heard if you use presonus with pro tools it acts as an interface but wat im also curious about is if pro tools will open up without a special interface. so if it doesnt open rite up with the presonus i have a fast track pro and i coudl use the presonus as the mixing interface couldnt i?
Click to expand...
Look into Reaper. A lot of people prefer it to ProTools, and it's only $60 for personal/small business license (earning less than $20k from the use of reaper).
 
Jeff_D said:
You're gonna need to do some research on this. I'm 99% sure that ProTools only works with ProTools-approved hardware... i.e. Digidesign and certain MAudio products. So, even if you wanted to use that Presonus as a mixer, you couldn't connect direct with ProTools, so you'd be limited by the functionality / number of ins and outs of the Fast Track... which would pretty much defeat the purpose of an external mixer if you didn't have enough ins and outs to feed it. Id rethink your software choice. There are MANY other equally capable (and some would say superior) choices out there that will work with the hardware you want. Why pick the one that limits your hardware options.

By the way, I'd start a new thread on this in the newbies or digital section. This forum is really for studio construction. :)
Click to expand...

+1, i looked all over the website but i remember seeing somewhere on there that protools and presonus dont work together. but let me know how u like the 24 channel mixer, i really really really want one but no money:D
 
Yep, protools LE ONLY works with digidesign interfaces and protools M-powered works with M-audio interfaces. Now if you want to spend an incredible sum of money on protools HD, then I am pretty sure you will be able to use the studio live. But other than that, your out of luck.
 
Dude...you seriously, SERIOUSLY need to look into stuff before just buying gear and trying to make it work. In this case, PT won't work at all. Yes, it's stupid, but there it is.

Frank
 
i use the software that came with my fp10, sudio one, and it works fine for me. i do believe the mixer comes with sudio live and maybe studio one? :confused: dont quote me but the software works great once you get used to it
 
thanks guys this is all great idea but ima go with dm 3200 from tascam with problly cubase
 
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