Quick Qusestion

  • Thread starter Thread starter VomitDog
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VomitDog

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i have two questions. first... i'm wanting to get someinfo on patchbays... their exact purpose, and how to use them properly.

also, i have a fostex mr-8 track recorder, and i'm wanting to use a small mixer/sound board with at least 4 mic inputs. any suggestions... is this even possible?

i'm also wondering if anyone could suggest any books for home digital recording....
 
Patchbays

Patchbays are designed essentially to bring inputs and items that may be changed out / into the front of your rack or system within close reach for easy access...

I have a few compressors - And one I have hooked up with ins and outs going into the patchbay so that I may route Mic signals, busses, effects and other items to any recording input I have available...

It's a good place to hook in items that you use in multiple situations where you're constantly swapping out plugs... A good patchbay will introduce minimal noise and keep your back from snapping bending around your rack... :cool:

Not sure about the small mixer - My system doesn't use smaller mixers...
Good Luck...
 
I used a Fostex FD-8 for years with an Alesis 32 in front of it. I'm assuming you want to be able to do a submix of say 4 mics or so, so you can mic live drums or several amps at once or something.

Though Mackie is not a favorite around here, you can probably pick up a used 1202 for cheap (look for $100-$150), and it'll do fine for a little project thing. Or you can look at the Soudcraft Spirits for a bit more. There's lots of cheap boards to be found. The only thing is the MR8 needs to have two inputs you can pan left and right (assuming you want a stereo 2-channel submix), so you can take your stereo mix out of whatever board you end up with. (You could also do this mono to just one track on the MR8.)

I know it has two XLR inputs, but it'd be better not to go into those, since your mics will already be using the pres on the board, and using the XLR mic inputs on the MR8 would run them through a second set of pres. From what I see on the MR8 literature, it has 2 "guitar" inputs. These will probably work. Just go your stereo mix out from the board and then into those and pan the two tracks hard left and right.

I'm not an expert and maybe someone here can give further advice, but I know that using an external board like this with a Fostex unit served me well. You get better EQs, and auxilliarys if you want to use effects. You can even take it a step further like I did and buy the Fostex digital to analog converter ($250 new), which lets you take the lightpipe out of your MR8 and covert to 8 analog tracks to feed to the board. So when you mixdown, you can do it on the board with better EQ and more auxillarys. You'd also be able to record up to 8 tracks at once that way.

the D/A converter is called the Fostex VC-8. In this case the MR8 becomes simply a recorder and everything's being done through the board.
 
how about the multimix series of alesis, specially firewire?? they seem pretty good... vwcsonic please giveme your experience with the alesisi 32 you had cause im looking foward to buy alesis mixer.

what if i want to record with a mixer to a computer... do i need a m box to run proo tools? and what if i dont have a m box? what are the pros ans cons of having this instead of a multitrack recorder?? thanx
 
Satellite,

I can tell you from my experience with the Alesis 32, it's a very reliable board. It's also very compact compared to other 16-channel boards. However, if you have big hands, it might irritate you because they've managed to squish all the controls pretty close together.

The bad side of the board might be that it's EQ probably sounds so-so compared to what you might get on a Soundcraft or something else. Also, I've heard others in these forums say their mic pres aren't as warm as some boards. But for price and functionality, they're pretty nice, though Soundcraft I believe has a low-price line you might check into.

As for the version you're talking about with Firewire, I'm not familiar with it, though I can see how that would come in handy for someone recording to computer. I myself have stayed away from that because I don't like tweaking "virtual" knobs on a computer screen. So I buy rack gear instad of plug-ins and keep it all outside my PC until I master. The plus is you get to twiddle knobs and work like engineers did in "the old days." The downside might be all the rack gear takes up space; you need to hook it all up with cables/patchbays; and the quality you can get with plug-ins might sometimes be greater for less price.

All that said, I'll stick with my "old fashioned" studio over a PC setup anyday. My suggestion if you want to go the multi-track route is look for a used Fostex D-160. It's 16 tracks and very dependable. Should be able to get one for around $500 or less. Hook that up to your Alesis or whatever board and start recording. With the Firewire on the Alesis you might get the best of both worlds, because you could mix on the board but also probably send individual tracks to the PC for processing through plug-ins if you wanted.
 
on the mr-8 i have 2 stereo outputs, L and R and two seperate but equal headphone inputs. i'm assuming i can run the mixer into one of my recording inputs on the recorder, but still have 4 mics through the mixer and the sound would be ok, correct?
 
your 4 sources will be mixed down to two, so you will have to make sure everything is how you will want it in the final mix... it'll be hard to tweak anything after the fact.
 
VomitDog said:
on the mr-8 i have 2 stereo outputs, L and R and two seperate but equal headphone inputs. i'm assuming i can run the mixer into one of my recording inputs on the recorder, but still have 4 mics through the mixer and the sound would be ok, correct?

Look at the post to your similiar question on the fostex forum. Dependig on the mixer and how you use it, you can either have 4 inputs on a mixer sent via a stereo out to the MR8 inputs, or if you can send sub-mixes, you can send two seperate mono mixes to each input respectively, giving you a bit more flexibility to tweak after recording.

Think of it this way:
Option 1: Bass, drums, guitar and vocal, mixed into two tracks. You can add effect and eq either or both tracks, but you can't affect jsut the drums for instance. You can't affect the mix any longer either, as they are already belnded during tracking from the mixer.

Option 2: You have track1 with drums and bass as a mono signal, and track 2 with guitars and vocals as a mono signal. Even though you still have a "blended" effect on each track, you can group things that you want to fit together in the final mix, and add effects and eq/compression etc to them seperated after tracking. This is still a compromise , but can give you a bit of flexibility to add a certian amount of compression/eq to the rythm tracks, and something different to the others.

I'm not advocating for either, but both are options, and some mixers might not have the flexibilty to send the sub mix that others do- it could affect your choice.

Daav
 
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