software vs. outboard gear

[Eddie N]

friends ,

when running your s/w editing program ( cakewalk , cubase , pick your poison ) .. is it really necessary to have an outboard mixer ? or any out board equipment for that matter ? dont all the high quality s/w editing programs have mixers and effects processors incorporated into the program ( reverb , chorus , eq , etc. ) ? and if they arent.. cant you purchase plug ins ? i have even seen de-essing programs and de-hissers and s/w to that effect... are there disadvantages to the s/w's effects processors ? is it not as good as outboard gear ? besides that , there are the obvious price considerations... software and plug ins are prolly far less cheaper than having to purchase outboard gear and cables... and also the threat of picking up outside noise...

the only outboard gear that i could prolly justify owning would be a good mic pre amp , and a compressor... because s/w cant compress in real time.. and you would avoid harmful spikes in the music and eliminate distortion before the track was recorded....

i dont have too much previous analog recording expierience , so another thought im entertaining is the fact that you folks still have this analog gear left over from analog world that you wanna put to use... and that you wanna stick to what you know .. and not have to deal with the learning curve of living strictly in the digital world... or simply that you do live gigs , and have the gear lying around anyway.. i guess thats 3 thoughts... but anyway...

to put it simply...im really asking.. whats the difference between outboard effects and s/w effects , if any and if so , why ? and which is better .. or is it just a matter of preference.. ?

ps... im 21... and i was just wondering if im one of the younger if not the youngest regular visitor to this site...

thanks again...

- eddie -

 

[Emeric]

Hi Eddie,

Yes, certainly mic preamps or a mixer are essential. As far as outboard gear goes. I agree with your compression point, although some of the software compressors work quite well, even in real time. If you already have the gear, then it's usually already integrated into the studio setup.

As far as plugins go... I find them as good as any of the outboard gear I have used in the past- Lexicon LXP15, SPX90's etc. The only drawback is that they are very resource consuming as far as CPU goes, and can be unstable. Even dangerous. They can crash your machine unexpectantly, some reverbs plugins don't like working with other plugins at the same time etc.

I do find mixing within a software enviroment difficult. The fader response is to slow and glitches in the audio can be expected. This is the advantage of an outboard mixer. You can send the outputs of your card into the mixer and mix the song realtime with real faders and output this back to digital.

Emeric


[This message has been edited by Emeric (edited 08-09-1999).]

 

[CLM]

a mixer is still VERY useful even with a full featured DAW ...mainly for moniyoring inputs ...signal routing during tracking and for mixing in your mdi sound sources with the digital audio.If you record your midi stuff to audio traxs then it is good to use the software mixer exclusivly in mixdown as you will avoid another A/D conversion.Waves makes a couple of great compressors that work in real time ..as well as excellent EQ's n reverbs. the plug ins that i have used sound as good or better then any of my outboard gear...but they DO require a good amount of DSP power..either from a fast CPU or sound cards that have built in DSP processors on board

 

[Doug]

As for your last point, I'm 15 and I regularly visit this site. (Admittedly, only recently (since I found it)).