[RWP] chuseing and audio interface for reaper

Thu Nov 1 23:28:05 EDT 2012

I went with the A&H as its the only one  that has control surface functionality built in, and also it doesn't have soft knobs and buttons outside of the ones  there for assigning as part of the control surface. ALso i don't trust myself to compress on the way in so i figured i could always  add a decent compressor later if i got comfortable and couldn't find any i liked in software. it seems to be the most bang for your buck providing you don't need a  whole lot of aux sends .

On Nov 1, 2012, at 12:43 PM, Patrick Perdue <patrick at pdaudio.net> wrote:

> Um, yeah. The Presonus software is completely useless on any platform. I've tried Mac, Windows and iPad. You can at least say that it is equally accessible on all platforms in it's lack of access.
> That's where the Mackie stuff has an advantage, since you don't rely on it so much.
> 
> If you just want a basic I/O configuration that works, you can just install the software and run away. If, however, you want to do some of the customization stuff that I wanted, I.E. routing the assignable virtual inputs to sends, buses and returns, making the WDM inputs default to something other than channels 1/2, or upgrade the firmware, then you need to play with the control panel. I think I also had to turn off it's insanely high safe mode buffer, though I don't remember if that's a default in recent firmwares or not. It did change at one point. I then adjusted the latency to where I wanted it to be in the DAW itself rather than the Presonus Universal Control, down to a more comfortable 64 or 96 buffers. It used to default to 512, but I think it now defaults to 128 or 256. Can't remember which.
> 
> As far as using the board itself, as I said earlier, it's not a true substitution for an analog experience. Everything is controlled by the phat channel strip. You select your channel, then do everything on the strip in the middle of the board. You're right in that the gate, compressor and all bands of the EQ have their own buttons. If you have no audio going through the channel strip, it might be hard to tell the status of things, although keeping a list of snapshots helps with that a lot. Set things up the way you like, save a snapshot of the board, then load it up again when you've screwed something up and want to start from "last known good configuration" as it were.
> Fortunately though, the only thing I'm aware of that wraps around in the board's setup anywhere is editing effects, and the effects processors aren't all that interesting anyway. Changing pages always lands you on the first item, so it's easy to figure out where you are if you don't remember. If you're in system, page 2, and you don't remember that you're there, you can go to another mode, like effects edit, then back to system, which will land you on the first item of page 1, etc.
> 
> Pressing system brings you to all the fun things like setting the internal sampling rate (not effective if it's linked to your DAW through firewire, as the DAW sets the sampling rate,) telling the SP/DIF output where to go, changing your individual channels from having downward expanders to gates (I prefer the default downward expander about 90% of the time,) pre/post send routing, not to be confused with assigning each aux send as pre/post, that's done somewhere else entirely, with dedicated buttons, etc. That's the biggest thing you'll need to memorize, and it isn't even all that deep. I've been using this board for almost three years, and it's served me well. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone though.
> 
> On Nov 1, 2012, at 12:16 PM, "Colin McDonald" <blulemon at telus.net> wrote:
> 
>> I've been drooling over the presonus studio live 24 board for a while.
>> I obviously can't justify 3600 bucks at this point for a want, but it sure does seem nice and reasonably accessible.
>> I haven't gone through the web tutorials on youtube, but the few video's I did check out on you tube made it seem as though pretty much everything is right there at your finger tips.
>> A small bit of memorization obviously, but nothing like some of these really convoluted interfaces like the yamaha units or others.
>> How is the supplied presonus software for accessibility with a screen reader?
>> I know you don't need to use that software specifically, but the recording software and control software seem pretty cool.
>> Is there a tutorial for a blind user on the presonus studio live somewhere?
>> I know if I had one I could probably figure most of it out through trial and error, but some quick tips and tricks might be nice as I can rent one pretty cheap here to try out.
>> from what I gathered from the video, each set of dynamics has it's own button on each strip, and once you enable that particular item, you can set parameters using the strip knobs...then go to the next item etc.
>> Is it difficult to keep track of things like assigned graphic equalizers and things like that since it's all controlled with soft buttons and not manual buttons.
>> 
>> regards
>> Colin
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Perdue" <patrick at pdaudio.net>
>> To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2012 6:51 AM
>> Subject: Re: [RWP] chuseing and audio interface for reaper
>> 
>> 
>>> I have one of the Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 units. Considering it's a digital console, it's not hard to run without seeing it. I've seen much worse. But yeah, any of those other options are, by their nature, easier to operate, regardless if you can see or not. Presonus did a pretty good job of not burying useful things in dumb places, though.
>>> This having been said, either the Mackie Onyx or the A&H Zed stuff are probably better values if you want a solid, flexible audio interface/console combo. The SL gives you a lot of dynamics in the box, which you probably won't be tracking with anyway, but it's nice for other stuff when using it independent of a DAW. You could achieve similar things with the other two boards and a DAW with track templates everywhere, sending things to and from the DAW as individual channel inserts. I've done some of that with plugins that I think are more interesting than the board's on-board dynamics processing. Not that it's bad, but I wanted certain characteristics that I couldn't get with just the SL itself, and it really is nice to be able to just simply plug any virtual effect directly into a physical channel strip like that.
>>> 
>>> The first analog/firewire combo boards I had, both from Phonic, had 18 individual trackable inputs, one for each of the 16 mono channels, and a two track input which could be assigned to main, a pair of aux sends, or a pair of subgroups, but only a stereo return, like any of the Onyx series smaller than the 1640I, the number of channels and buses being the defining differences with those units. Those Phonic boards fell under the category of "looks nice, sounds good, but doesn't stay that way for long." One of them killed it's firewire controller, the other one had power supply issues. Oh well, that's what I get for buying something with so much I/O and so many features for under $1000, I guess. Had the Mackie Onyx 1640I existed at the time, I probably would have gone with that, but at the time, the Onyx boards required a $400 upgrade to make them firewire capable, and the preamps weren't as nice as they are now.
>>> 
>>> As it is, I kind of want one of the smaller Onyx boards, maybe the 1220I or something, for road operation when needed. I'd really like the 1640I, but can't really justify it given what I have, and what I'm doing, which all works at the moment.
>>> 
>>> On Nov 1, 2012, at 8:30 AM, Monkey Pusher <monkeypusher69 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Yes it's the $11200 to $2000 range but the other zed mixers only give
>>>> you the stereo bus  over USB which is really limiting when trying to
>>>> do multitracking of more than  two tracks at once, otherwise it
>>>> probably wont be much of a bother for you. But there are other cool
>>>> things like using the boards eq as an insert on any track so you have
>>>> knobs instead of a plug in interface and being able to send the
>>>> individual tracks back to teh board for mixdown.  The Mackie 1640i has
>>>> alot of similar features for a bit less and the studio live from
>>>> presounus is another worth while one in this category, but has screens
>>>> and etc on the unit that requires  some memorization for a blind user
>>>> to fully take advantage of.
>>>> 
>>>> On 11/1/12, Kevin Brown <cursebuster at samobile.net> wrote:
>>>>> It is a plug and play,...It has global phantom power,...You're right
>>>>> though,...if you are in the top end of professional recording,...you
>>>>> want to go with the more elaborate units,...then you're talking about $1200,
>>>>> to
>>>>> $200...
>>>>> 
>>>>> But I think those units give you the items you're talking about...
>>>>> 
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