[Rwp] A soundcard accessible?

[Chris Belle]

hey Patrick?
Maybe you missed my question.
Was just curious if you have found any performance differences with the 
audio express using it firewire vs USB?
I know you tend to favor fw like I do, but wondered if you had done any 
tests with it on the USB side, or had ocation to use it that way when fw 
wasn't available?


On 2/4/2016 12:05 PM, Patrick Perdue wrote:
> Yeah, the hardware is accessible, however, you still need the software 
> for a few things, like changing clock, sample rate, buffer size, 
> headphone routing, etc. The Audio Express is one of those interfaces 
> you can't override the asio block size with Reaper as you can with 
> most. Fortunately, these things are all accessible in the MOTU Audio 
> Console, the basic control panel for the device, though the MOTU 
> Cue-Mix FX software is not. With the Audio Express, the only things 
> I've not really been able to do are invert the phase of channels, and 
> making channel pairs link their volume controls, neither of which are 
> a big deal to me, personally.
>
> The MOTU MicroBook 2, which is a smaller interface based on the same 
> idea, however, is more of a challenge, as it has far less hardware 
> controls than the Audio Express. For example, the AE can be used as a 
> small 4x4 (technically 4x6, I suppose,) stand-alone mixer away from a 
> computer. Thus, you can route any input to any output all from the 
> front panel, as well as creating submixes for each output within the 
> hardware itself. The only two controls on the MicroBook 2 are input 
> gain (controls either mic or line input, depending on which is 
> selected, also toggles phantom power for the single XLR input,) and 
> another knob that controls either the main or headphone out, depending 
> on which has been toggled. If you want to do any routing, you have to 
> use the inaccessible Cue-Mix FX.
>
> I eventually resorted to having a sighted friend make some templates 
> for me, as one of the few accessible parts of the software is 
> switching presets.
> The presets are all XML-based, so perhaps with a little time and 
> effort, I could figure out the tags and change what I want.
>
> For example, by default, with the MicroBook 2, the headphone out is 
> it's own mix and routable output, meaning if you route something to 
> main, it doesn't come across the headphone out. Maybe this is fine if 
> you want two discrete mixes, but in a simple situation where you just 
> want to plug in and go, it's annoying, since you have to change your 
> DAW's output routing. There is an easy (if you can see) way to route 
> things to the headphone mix, of course.
> This is even possible accessibly with the same software and the AE 
> through a menu bar option, but, while the AE and MicroBook 2 use the 
> same software, those options are greyed out, and you have to go to 
> another part of the mixer to accomplish this. I'm not sure why they 
> didn't leave that well enough alone.
>
> There is also no accessible way to control the dynamics processing in 
> the MicroBook 2. Each channel and mix can have it's own dynamic 
> compressor and parametric EQ. I actually don't think the Audio Express 
> has this, but it's more flexible in every other respect.
>
> On 2/4/2016 11:43 AM, Chris Smart wrote:
>> At 11:30 AM 2/4/2016, you wrote:
>>> The mark of the unicorn audio express. The hardware is totally
>>> accessible. Get that, and you won't go back.
>>
>> Great to know this!
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>
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