comparing with software.. adat...and all in one workstation... Lookin for commentary

eMDe · Jul 11, 2002

well in my years of recording i have worked up from setting up my studio based around a
tascam 4 track cassette
to
tascam 564 Digital 4 track with 12 channel mixer
to
Akai dps12 Digital 12 track recorder with digital mixer
and now i have worked up to
Akai dps16 digital 16 track recorder w/ digital mixer and all kinds of other shit. I have a nice little set up based around it.

Now i have been to many studios and the other day i was at a computer based set up. I belive it was running on cubase.
It looked cool as fuck! i hate mixing down on my dps16 because it takes forever to find and fix your flaws. With the software it had plugins that basically did the mix down for you. I know very little about the programs but we pumped out 3 songs and he took only a few minutes on mixing down. I asked him if it was the final mix and he said yeah its all done. I was suprized i took a listen to it and it was sounding damn good! It made me question my routes in my studio..

So i have been thinking about switching over to a computer based set up and keeping the 16 track as my mixer.. OR trading it in for an adat set up and find a pro to do the mixdowns and mastering for me.. or just keeping what i have and upgrading the software with the new plugins its got for normalizing to make mixdowns less time consuming.

Another plus on comouter set up is sequencing threw cubase or cakewalk (i am very inexperienced but i will take classes in fall) I do all my sequencing on the board (XP 80) and it looks to me that with a computer set up you can actually see the bars as you record vocals which makes editing and copy paste REALLY easy. Now anyone with experince or opinions jump on this thread.. help me figgerout what i wanna do..

HERESY · Jul 11, 2002

hardware vs software. stand alone units are dedicated. computers are not (unless you had one specifiaccly made by a company that makes computers for music).

i found something VERY disturbing in your post

now im a fan of automation and all of that..........but taking "a few minutes" to mix down a song? i NORMALLY do 3-4 DIFFERENT "ROUGH MIXES" and i take the BEST one from the pile. after that i do 3 or more MIXES and after that i pick. how did your a-b tests go?????? when i ab test i find the crapiest/cheapest speakers i can get my hands on. play it back and listen......i check for bass distortion and too much bass with my homeboys camero. he has a tight sound system in his car so i play back the mixes through his fosgate speakers. bass all the way up blasting.

personally i think your missing out on alot by mixing it that quick but hey if it sounds good to *YOU* go for it. i think mixing is the BEST part of the creation of the song. to me its more fun than laying down the vox or making the beat.

did yu have any input on the mix process?

i wouldnt do that. i wouldnt trade that setup for an adat setup. adat costs, sync issues etc etc etc. what will you be using as a mixer with the adats?

are you NORMALIZING? if so why?

this is why i had my pc made. to interface with my equipment and to use as a sequencer. i didnt see a *NEED* for an mpc and i didnt want to use the 60 sequencer. i only deal with midi on cubase. i dont process any audio in it. only midi.

how does your akai sound compared to an adat? thats what you should be concerned about. the QUALITY of one sound compared to the other. i dont see how it would be hard to mixdown with something that has actual faders. im not mixing down my music on cubase or pro tools. im mixing from the board.

i would use what i have or upgrade to a pc with a better sound card. your ultimate goal is a nice sounding,clean cd which will be 44k 16 bit. keep in mind that ad-da converters and clocks play a BIG roll in how your sound will come out. whatever you get make sure the ad-da converters are EXTREMELY good/well built.

maybe you should learn your equipment a little bit more b4 u upgrade.

:h:

ps what is the cost difference between the adat setup abd keeping what you have and upgrading the applications or software on your akai??????

BIG J · Jul 11, 2002

Just consoder the Editing Differences between The Computer and The ADAT's.
With a computer based program you can bust raps in Loop Record, then cut up all the takes and pice them together inot one take. what you're really gonna be gettin' out of ADAT's is the tape saturation. JUst think about what works the best for you.

eMDe · Jul 11, 2002

HERESY said:

Well i was recording for someone else's project. THis guy was putting a comp togeither and had me and a couple folks slide threw and lay a couple verses. ow i had litle input because it wasn't my project, but i still felt i had to hear what this couple minute mixdown sounded like. I put on some cheap headphones because i had heard it in the studio ones and threw the monitors and it sounded great! I just am not very good at doing mixdowns. I get impatient after listening to the final mix and hearing tiny flaws everywhere. So i was hoping to get something where i could take less time with mixdowns.

HERESY said:

Upgrades are free i belive and i would spend probubly 500 on an 8 track adat and use my akai as the mixer (it has 16 channel digital mixer built in) but I doubt i will do this.
As far as normalizing im not sure if that is the correct term for what i am trying to do. I want to get all the vocals at the same level and am hoping that normalizing (which i dont have the plugin on the dps16) will do. Is there any better route to go like external hardware that would bring vocals in at the same level?
Also are the any other mediums that "professional" engineers would mixdown for me. I.e. if i would record 16 tracks on adat i could send them out to the same place that does the mastering for me..
Thanks for your responses.

eMDe · Jul 11, 2002

Also is there any reason not to use my PC as a sequencer for beats? Are pcs reallt that unreliable?

HERESY · Jul 11, 2002

NO I USE IT FOR SEQUENCING. I JUST DONT USE IT FOR PROCESSING THAT MUCH AUDIO.

I WILL SEQUENCE ON A PC ALL DAY.

WHAT "FLAWS" DO YOU HEAR?

take 1-4 hours minimum for your own mixes. cd's are cheap and it doesnt hurt to burn a couple of different mixes.

why dont you burn the tracks or export them as wav files (if the akai has wav exporting).
after that import them to the computer at another studio.

how many outs do you have on your akai? you can multitrack everything to the akai (synced with midi) take it to a bigger studio and synce the akai to whatever the studio uses as a master.

or you can record directly through your akai and record to the pc. save the files as wav and import them at the bigger studio.

i wouldnt do that either.

tracking with compression should do the trick. get an external compressor or compressor plug in and use it.

reel to reel,wav,aiff,zip disc and cdr.

:h:

eMDe · Jul 11, 2002

^ thanks alot bro. I might go the Wav export route.. When i upgrade the software the've got a shitload of new stuff like exporting to computer interfaces and what not.
Doubt i will go the adat route.

eMDe · Jul 11, 2002

Any compressers you suggest heresy?
And what about routing the 16 tracks to a program like cubase just to mixdown? Use the plugins as i mixdown into on final mix?

eMDe · Jul 11, 2002

about to but a behringer MDX1400 Autocom® Pro Compressor
(yes i know everyone hates behringers but ive heard alotta good stuff about their rack stuff)

HERESY · Jul 12, 2002

man if you ask me a question like that i will tell you something that costs like a grand or more. im figuring for a home studio the most you would want to spend is $125-$300 on a compressor. dbx 266 , dbx 166, presonus blue max, presonus acp22 and the A.R.T:tube pac. i have used 2 of those on MY recordings (both db x compressors) and i have heard the blue max and tube pac on someone elses recprdings. the acp22 is something i havent heart yet.

SAMSON makes compressors also but i havent heard anything good OR bad about them

stay AWAY from alesis 3630 or whatever model it is. you can cop one right now for $99 but i wouldnt waste my dough.

you should probably look into some software compressors also. i believe that EVERY home studio that has a pc should have WAVES GOLD BUNDLE plug ins.

well in order to route 16 tracks *at the same time* you are going to need a gang of outputs on your recorder.

now what you can do is SYNC cubase and your recorder with cubase as the MASTER and recorder as SLAVE. dump the tracks to cubase 1 or two at a time (if you only have two outs or if you have a digital i/o). you would need to sync the equipment to do that.

i was at a studio today (where i am tracking my vocals) and i was shocked to find that they had adats. in fact they have A LOT of adats. 16 and 20 bit adats. 7 16 bit adats and 4 20 bit adats. i didnt even know they had them. i asked my engineer why the adats were never around and he said they keep em in storage and only use em every once in a while.

after he told me that he started to slam adats and proceeded to tell me everything that can *and* will go wrong with them. he told me a couple of things about them that i didnt even know.

me myself i would never use adats again (my brother used them).

a digital format like a hard disc recorder or pro tools, dumped to a reel is good enough for me. thats it.............thast what you should look into.

look into the digi 001 hook up.

:H:

DeviantJR · Jul 12, 2002

Yall heard of that REfuse shit? It let's you lace reason into pro tools without having to render each track of reason and load it into pro tools. Basically what rewire does for reason and cubase.

Like Heresy cares though

HERESY · Jul 12, 2002

^^^^ damn right.

but on the real if i could use my keyboard with reason i would. i cant so i wont. i dont like having to rewire or hotwire things. im NOT against reason because reason is tight. i recommend REASON to anyone who has a pc for music,but i HATE the sequencer on it. emde you use reason?

:H:

eMDe · Jul 12, 2002

I had a copy of reason awhile back. I never really got the hang of it. I liked playing around with fruity loops, but i doubt i would really get into computer software "seriously" maybe when i take more time to learn it.

I belive there is a way to route my my four aux send as "bus's
" but im not sure. Gotta break ou the manuel *sigh*.

I went ahead and bought the behringer MDX1400 last night. Homrec folks said it was a good choice.

Now Heresy im sure you have gotten into this before.. BUT, you record in digital.. then mix down to anologue and master to digital?? Wont you loose quality in that switch (not to question your tactics I'm just curious)

HERESY · Jul 12, 2002

DEPENDS ON YUOR DEFINITION OF QUALITY. WITH DIGITAL YOU CANT GO OVER 0DB. WITH TAPE WE CAN HIT IT AT +6 OR +9 (I PREFER 6). YOU GET A BETTER LOW END AND YOU GET THE "TAPE SATURATION". IT GIVES YOU AN OVER ALL "IN YOUR FACE" SOUND.

NOT TO MENTION THAT IF YOU USE NOISE REDUCTION ETC ETC ETC YOU WONT GET HISS.

THE "HIT FACTORY" IN NEW YORK HAS A GANG LOAD OF ANALOG TAPE MACHINES.

HERE HIT THIS LINK:

http://www.johnvestman.com/analog.htm

heres something i picked up from the net

tape isnt cheap. 2 inch reel costs $150-175. you will need 4-5 for like an hours worth of music (running at 15ips) and you will need MORE tape if you record at a higher speed (30 ips).

:h:

eMDe · Jan 26, 2004

just thought i'd bring this thread back to life...

Now i only use my 16 track as a mixer and monitor. I am (trying) to run a cubase set up...

comparing with software.. adat...and all in one workstation... Lookin for commentary

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