[RWP] chuseing and audio interface for reaper

Chris Belle cb1963 at sbcglobal.net
Fri Nov 2 08:29:29 EDT 2012 

Hardware is good.

I wish I'[d held on to some of my old stuff.

But you know, time and money and space.

But I do have some old efects units still around.

Really junky stuff like the alesus micro-compressor, and micro-verb, and a 
peavey effects unit, but hey, they might come in handy, I still use the comp 
even for listening to talking books or controling input or out-put from 
chatrooms and such.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick Perdue" <patrick at pdaudio.net>
To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
Cc: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2012 12:38 AM
Subject: Re: [RWP] chuseing and audio interface for reaper


> The only time I will ever track with effects on the way in is if its 
> something unique that has a natural reaction with whatever is going on 
> live. Even then, I would probably parallel track and keep the unprocessed 
> dry track. If I want to use a hardware reverb or something, I'll send and 
> mix in post production. I still like my hardware stuff.
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 1, 2012, at 23:36, "Chris Belle" <cb1963 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> Yeh, I don't like to commit to compression on the way in either.
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "TheOreoMonster" 
>> <monkeypusher69 at gmail.com>
>> To: "Reapers Without Peepers" <rwp at reaaccess.com>
>> Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2012 10:28 PM
>> Subject: Re: [RWP] chuseing and audio interface for reaper
>>
>>
>>> 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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