Small Home Studio w/ Duo

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robi77

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Hi All,
I am building a small home studio and just ran across the M-Audio Duo.
I was thinking of building around it. Anyone here have any experience
with it. I was thinking of running the moniters straight out of the
duo (can I use the digital out for this?) to keep any latency down. I
will be recording only one track at a time 90% of the time. I like
that the duo will be of use as an A/D converter if I decide to get
bigger in the future. My big concearn is recording overdubs etc...Will
it play over the moniters and/or headphones while I record at a high
resolution.

Budget for card/input device and moniters is $600-800. Any suggestions are apreciated.

Thanks,

Robi
 
No I am not. I have and AMD 800mhz with 256MB ram 40 Gig drive running XP. Sorry should have put that in before. I am not against a pci option (mabe the Omni or something from ST audio) . But if I can do what I want with something cheaper like the Duo then all the better. Basically I want to be able to go into sonar and build a song one track at a time.
 
I have the DUO and like it, but have never really used it in USB mode. I have always ran it in as SPDIF. Because I have always monitored from a sound card such as the sblive. Also, believe it that you'll soon realize that you'll need more than 2 inputs.

I say do this.

Get an Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96. It has four inputs and outputs, phantom power, MIDI, and SPDIF. I can tell you from experience that the mics pres sound great too. It goes for $499 almost everywhere and is much more flexible than the DUO.

If you can spend $800 get a pair of M-audio SP5b's and you'll have a great setup.

Beezoboy
 
robi77 said:
No I am not. I have and AMD 800mhz with 256MB ram 40 Gig drive running XP. Sorry should have put that in before. I am not against a pci option (mabe the Omni or something from ST audio) . But if I can do what I want with something cheaper like the Duo then all the better. Basically I want to be able to go into sonar and build a song one track at a time.
Click to expand...

Buying a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 ($149) and an M-Audio Audiobuddy preamp ($99) will still be cheaper than the Duo ($349)

The rule is if you absolutely do not need to go with USB, don't. They are more expensive than their PCI counterparts and are inferior performance wise due to USB's tiny bandwidth.

USB - 1.25Mbytes/sec (12Mbits/sec)
PCI - 100Mbytes/sec and higher
 
Beezoboy said:

I say do this.

Get an Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96. It has four inputs and outputs, phantom power, MIDI, and SPDIF. I can tell you from experience that the mics pres sound great too. It goes for $499 almost everywhere and is much more flexible than the DUO.

If you can spend $800 get a pair of M-audio SP5b's and you'll have a great setup.

Beezoboy
Click to expand...

Thanks I will definately look into the Aardvark and the Sp5b's. A friend has the ST Audio C-Port that goes for arround $400

http://www.staudio.com/products/dsp2000/index.html

It has a ton of features but since I don't need most of them, if I can sacrifice features and in's and outs for quality of pre's etc then thats what I want to do. Anyone know about this ST stuff. My friend gets pretty good results but he is pretty new at this too. Neither of us really knows enough to say whats better.
 
You should really not buy a card with built in pre's. No 2 pre's sound the same and most outboard pre's will sound better than ones already built into a card.
 
brzilian said:
You should really not buy a card with built in pre's. No 2 pre's sound the same and most outboard pre's will sound better than ones already built into a card.
Click to expand...

How would a set up like this work. With moniters, headphones etc? The alure of the simple "all-in one" is that its all made to work as a unit.

And isn't using a preamp and card just like the card with breakout box like the aardvark? or the m-audio omni
 
Man the difference between brazillian's advice and mine is that I actually have a DUO and a Q10 (which uses the same pres as the 24/96) I have gotten good results with both.

Listen to this:


It was recorded with the DUO, 2 MXL603's and a MXLv67 at 16bit

Listen now to this:


It was recorded with the Q10 at 24 bit

To me both sound good and quite usable, so I don't see what the problem with built in pres is.

Use your ears and you make the call. It just seems cheaper and easier than to have to buy a mixer.

Beezoboy
 
Beezoboy said:
Man the difference between brazillian's advice and mine is that I actually have a DUO and a Q10 (which uses the same pres as the 24/96) I have gotten good results with both.

Listen to this:


It was recorded with the DUO, 2 MXL603's and a MXLv67 at 16bit

Listen now to this:


It was recorded with the Q10 at 24 bit

To me both sound good and quite usable, so I don't see what the problem with built in pres is.

Use your ears and you make the call. It just seems cheaper and easier than to have to buy a mixer.

Beezoboy
Click to expand...

Both sound great. I am very seriously considering the Aadvark. Also I like that song 6. Is that you? Sounds like someone at GSU likes the crows and radiohead.
 
No that is a friend that I was recording to try out some mic placements for acoustic guitar. It also supposed to be a test for my Sennhieser Md441U. Unfortunately we never mic'ed up to 441 because the other mics sounded too good. The V67 especially suited his voice I think.

Good luck on your purchase with whatever you decide to get.

Beezoboy
 
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