some of you higher end cats help me out please

D

doulos24

New member
I have come to realize for what I want to do I have to upgrade, but I'm tired of getting burned I spent 2,400 dollars on my dm24 which has done me well, but the resale sucks on it. I might get 600 for it at most so since I've been burned I want to be on the other end this time and buy used.

I'm using a digi001
a tascam dm24
an olds waves pack of plug ins
and a handful of mics

I wanted to mix off the dm24 and found out quickly with just 18 tracks in/ out that it is not going to work ,so my question is on digital desks and my budget is 3,500 max

posible options

maudio lightbridge and reaper $300 or moutu mk2 500-600? etc.

with mackie d8b for 1,200 used roughly
or a SONY DMX-R100 about 3,000ish
or any other recomendations for a desk are welcome

the goal is a very stable system where I can just leave it alone. No heavy taxed cpu loads maybe a few old uad pci cards for processing something where it will run without a hitch for at least 5 years and where I can concentrate on mics and outboard. This is the last time I want to play the digital game for awhile and the most I will need is 96k. I want at least 24 tracks I can rout to a digital mixer and apply eq compression off the board and mix down to 2 tracks.

I thought about the lightbridge and just adding 2 adat cards to my board, but that will run me about 400 and if i sell my board for 600 and add the +400 to it I tink I ll have a start at getting alot more desk for my money am I wrong?

thanks
 
Have you thought of just going with a control surface and mixing in the box? I can't imagine that cheap digital boards are going to give you any better sound quality than just mixing ITB. A control surface will give you the feel of a mixer while it is controling the DAW.
 
or you can do like farview says plus get an analog summing box like a roll music folcrom, a decent analog mixer, or ask mshilarious here to make some special order summing cables, then group similar tracks together into busses (e.g. a background vocals buss, a rhythm guitar buss to save tracks while keeping crucial tracks (lead vocals, etc.) on separate tracks, acquire a couple of good preamps/a good stereo preamp (which will also help you in the way in) for makeup gain and get the replicability, automation, ease of use and other advantages of itb mixing along with the benefit of otb summing.
 
Farview said:
Have you thought of just going with a control surface and mixing in the box? I can't imagine that cheap digital boards are going to give you any better sound quality than just mixing ITB. A control surface will give you the feel of a mixer while it is controling the DAW.
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a cheap digital board? Let's see the d8b was a 10,000 dollar mixer when it came out the sony was a 20,000 dollar board that's not to cheap to me. I've done some blind tests and I can't hear any real diffrence in 192k and 96 so I don't ever see going over 96k in my studio so not looking for anything crazy.

so you don't think having 24 dedicated eqs, compressors and gates with zero latency or taxing the processer from the daw would make a diffrence in the mix? Not to mention no need for any hardwear routing latency compensation plugins to lag the system. Plus having latency free tracking of 16 to 24 tracks with the ability to track with reverb and eq and still record a dry signal to the daw? try that in the box :)
 
or you can do like farview says plus get an analog summing box like a roll music folcrom, a decent analog mixer
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an analog summing box is pointless unless you have good quality outboard to use. You won't hear a diffrence in a 16 track mix summed to stereo vs a itb mix summed to stereo if just the summing is tested. I'm not talking about using an analog board cause you will hear te character of the boards internal noise floor of the summing bus not to mention the make up gain amplifiers which with a budget board i doub't would improve your sound. When it works is when you have a couple good tube preamps you can match the gain with or good transformer balanced or discrete preamp designs with a quality 2 bus compressor then you get a lot out of summing otherwise not really.
 
doulos24 said:
a cheap digital board? Let's see the d8b was a 10,000 dollar mixer when it came out the sony was a 20,000 dollar board that's not to cheap to me. I've done some blind tests and I can't hear any real diffrence in 192k and 96 so I don't ever see going over 96k in my studio so not looking for anything crazy.

so you don't think having 24 dedicated eqs, compressors and gates with zero latency or taxing the processer from the daw would make a diffrence in the mix? Not to mention no need for any hardwear routing latency compensation plugins to lag the system. Plus having latency free tracking of 16 to 24 tracks with the ability to track with reverb and eq and still record a dry signal to the daw? try that in the box :)
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Sounds like you've got your answer there... why even ask the question?
 
doulos24 said:
a cheap digital board? Let's see the d8b was a 10,000 dollar mixer when it came out the sony was a 20,000 dollar board that's not to cheap to me. I've done some blind tests and I can't hear any real diffrence in 192k and 96 so I don't ever see going over 96k in my studio so not looking for anything crazy.
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The sony is a decent board, but really expensive for what it is. You could get a UAD-2 card with the nevana 32 pack that will give you 32 channels of Neve channel strips (plus other really cool plugins) without using any of your CPU power for $899 list. For $2500, you will get the horsepower to use 128 channel strips at once. It also comes with an 1176, Pultec EQ, realverb, etc...

doulos24 said:
so you don't think having 24 dedicated eqs, compressors and gates with zero latency or taxing the processer from the daw would make a diffrence in the mix? Not to mention no need for any hardwear routing latency compensation plugins to lag the system. Plus having latency free tracking of 16 to 24 tracks with the ability to track with reverb and eq and still record a dry signal to the daw? try that in the box :)
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Unless you are using protools LE, I don't know of any other DAW that doesn't automatically compensate for plugins.

Cubase and Nuendo automatically compensate for hardware routing latency. They allow you to set up a send and return from hardware as a plugin that you can insert anywhere you want.

I can't really understand why you would bother tracking with EQ that you don't want to record, but the reverb thing is pretty easy if you have a hardware reverb unit and an interface like a Motu 24IO.

the other problem with digital mixers is resale value. 'Vintage" digital is nowhere near as cool as vintage analog. Once time has passed your digital mixer by, it will be a glorified boat anchor with a lot of pretty lights. I have five Tascam DA-88's to prove it. These things were $5k each when they were new, all the TV stations and Skywalker Sound were using them... 10 years later, they are on ebay for $150.
 
The sony is a decent board, but really expensive for what it is. You could get a UAD-2 card with the nevana 32 pack that will give you 32 channels of Neve channel strips (plus other really cool plugins) without using any of your CPU power for $899 list. For $2500, you will get the horsepower to use 128 channel strips at once. It also comes with an 1176, Pultec EQ, realverb, etc...

I had no idea hardwear processing cards have goten that decent 32 tracks of procesing is plenty for me I just wanted a stable system

and yes i am using ptle with my 001 so now ill need a nwer interface instead of a newer board but thanks for the replies
 
doulos24 said:
and yes i am using ptle with my 001 so now ill need a nwer interface instead of a newer board but thanks for the replies
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Unfortunately, that's where you are getting most of the latency issues. All other DAWs that I know of have automatic delay compensation for plugins. Getting a better interface will not fix that, ptle is a little half-assed in certain areas. If you upgraded to ProTools HD, most of your problems would go away. That might be in your price range. If not, Cubase, Motu 24 IO, and a UAD card will run you less than $3000.

Cubase also mixes down on computer time instead of real time, think about how much of your life you can get back just because of that!!!
 
doulos24 said:
so you don't think having 24 dedicated eqs, compressors and gates with zero latency or taxing the processer from the daw would make a diffrence in the mix? Not to mention no need for any hardwear routing latency compensation plugins to lag the system. Plus having latency free tracking of 16 to 24 tracks with the ability to track with reverb and eq and still record a dry signal to the daw? try that in the box :)
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Buy a couple of old Yamaha DS2416 cards, they could do that with 32 tracks. Essentially equivalent to 2x 01v, minus the analog interface. Not too many people bother with that anymore though.

Also, analog summing gives you lots that ITB doesn't - the combined noise and distortion of your D/A/D, plus some amount of induced interference ;) Strangely, I see on GS that people are starting to add noise and distortion to every track in order to emulate analog mixers :confused:
 
doulos24 said:
an analog summing box is pointless unless you have good quality outboard to use.
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so you're saying that using something like a folcrom for summing to stereo and running it through a couple of nice pres doesn't offer any sonic benefits at all? i did note the part about pres for makeup gain in my post (after where you clipped it off). something like a couple of api's, a pacifica, neve-ish pres or similar...
 
kojdogg said:
so you're saying that using something like a folcrom for summing to stereo and running it through a couple of nice pres doesn't offer any sonic benefits at all?
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The Folcrom offers no benefits at all; no summing network can. All it can try to do is harm the signal as little as possible, and it probably does a remarkably good job at that, other than the thermal noise from its resistors (which should be trivial against a line level signal).

As I said, the sonic benefits would have to come from the D/A/D or makeup gain amplifier. Those will color the sound far, far more than a resistive summing network.

The relevant test would be ITB mix out through attenuator into outboard pre back into DAW vs. ITB stems to summing network to outboard pre back into DAW, with levels matched at all stages. If that difference is detectable, then I would suspect something was amiss with the summing network. Of course, both systems should be tested for noise and distortion first, if there is a measurable difference there (there should not be), that would invalidate a listening test.
 
Unfortunately, that's where you are getting most of the latency issues. All other DAWs that I know of have automatic delay compensation for plugins. Getting a better interface will not fix that, ptle is a little half-assed in certain areas. If you upgraded to ProTools HD, most of your problems would go away. That might be in your price range. If not, Cubase, Motu 24 IO, and a UAD card will run you less than $3000.
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uh ptle with a 001 is propritary so I have to get a new interface not just a new daw since the 001 will not work with any other daw software

also my version of ptle won't support uad processing cards so I've got a lil bit of growing pains ahead of me but what else is new I'm use to this :)
 
so you're saying that using something like a folcrom for summing to stereo and running it through a couple of nice pres doesn't offer any sonic benefits at all?
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thats exactly what I'm saying your going through extra conversion now what you put in you have to ask yourself if it's worth geting it back out. I don't buy into analog summing unless it helps your creative workflow. If you have 6 eqs and a few compressors you want to use in the mix it makes workflow sense. If you just want your mix to have more charecter I'd just sent the 2track out into the preamps and back in that's where the diffrence lies not in the summing. and if I wanted the most diffrence I'd use a good tube preamp. If you have a console you get a lot of noise as a benifit yes I said benifit old analog is noisy and we like the noise to fill out the digital voids if you don't believe me get a good preamp with some burr brown opamps or a discrete opamp like an api and crank it with nothing connected and listen to the noise floor its soothing like something you would use to help you fall asleep I feel that has alot to do with it and summing bus compressors rock they just do. Something like an ssl bus compressor or quad eight is pretty darn cool on a mix if done lightly!

Now I'm going to sound like I"m contradicting myself for a second. I think the benifit of summing is in plugin latency on mix down I feel it effects the mix alot buffer settings and such, but with analog summing you have the added benifit from not having the plugin latency on mix down at least in pro tools le
 
I see on GS that people are starting to add noise and distortion to every track in order to emulate analog mixers
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I've been doing that for years with every daw I've had. to this day if I want to use soft synth pianos or virtual guitar rigs I blend in amp noise or mic myself playing the controller to try to add to the realism of the "preformance" I have room samples of dead rooms with cranked near flat mics to add in mixes room acoustic space impulse files cranked preamp and line output samples it all adds to the sounds of the music the key is to know the sounds your trying to recreate. If I know what a mix sounds like on a small format recording console how much noise is added and where I can recreate it pretty close anyway same with guitar amps you have to know what they sound like first then you can mimic it better. We work with what we have :)
 
doulos24 said:
...and we like the noise to fill out the digital voids
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As an example... To save bandwith, Voice over IP (Voip) telephony does not encode and send the quiet moments between spoken words... but what it does do is replace those segments with noise... people couldn't tolerate dead quiet beween words, it sounded foriegn and unatural to their ears... to a distressing level. This is a learned response... from years of listening on a traditional analog phone network... just as analog noise and distortion are desirable, even expected in todays digital recordings
 
doulos24 said:
uh ptle with a 001 is propritary so I have to get a new interface not just a new daw since the 001 will not work with any other daw software

also my version of ptle won't support uad processing cards so I've got a lil bit of growing pains ahead of me but what else is new I'm use to this :)
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That is my main problem with Protools. Reaper costs $50 (if you feel like paying for it, it's free otherwise) and will work with UAD and just about any other interface you would want to use.

It's just insane that digidesign is able to rope people into buying half-ass, hobbled software just because they call it ProTools. Then, once you are hooked on the workflow, you have to pony up tens of thousands of dollars to get the real version (and the proprietary interfaces that you need to use it) that has delay compensation and all the other things that you can get for free with other DAW programs.
 
Personally I would agree, get rid of your 001. For one your stuck under 6.4 I believe.
But popular belief or not, I would stick with Digi, because of the markets, and because it's proprietary. Software designed strickly on 1 hardware guarantees more stable, realiable solution. 98% of softwares all do the same thing as the next consumer product in it's range. M-Audio would be good if their hardware was great, but haven't tested new devices yet, that would allow all softwares including PT.
 
doulos24,

It sounds like you are not really dissatisfied with your digital mixer and on the fence about selling it; if so, I recommend you keep it and do something you suggested early on in the thread - get a digital interface with 24 ADAT I/O (MOTU or M-Audio) to go between your PC and Digital mixer. You can then stem extra tracks together in your PC and send the stem to one or two channels of your mixer. This would allow you to go beyond the 24 channels of your mixer. You can then also take advantage of any plug-ins in your DAW for the individual tracks in the Stem. I would then concentrate some of your funds to purchasing several VERY good mic pres… then some more mics after that.

(Don’t forget your room treatment and good musicians. :D )
 
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