Hi all,
This is the sort of question I will prolly be embarrassed I asked in 6 months but I am really perplexed at the best way to approach this problem.
I have have a fair amount of synths, drum machines, and samplers that amount to many inputs of patch bays consumed.
Previously I was using using Ableton as my sequencer and composing tunes only in there while playing (and ultimately recording) external devices directly through the multiple inputs on my soundcard. As you can imagine my midi timing was crap and I was really battling to keep the groove.
I recently got an MPC60. It syncs terribly to ableton as most of you know.
I would like to midi all my machines to to the MPC and use it for composing my primary grooves, then record these as audio into Ableton with a lot of live tweaking as a long "jam" session. From there I would edit/ arrange the jam into a song, add ear candy, add vocals, and ultimately mix these stems in Harrison Mix bus.
Originally I was going to simply record each device into my sound card's 8 inputs - however I have been collecting a lot of hardware effects that I would also like to start using to build the grooves.
The obvious choice would be to get a mixer (I actually have access to a old Mackie 1604) and set it up traditionally with aux/sends. The problem then is that I would not be able to record each synth individually in one pass as stems - I would have to solo them and record one at a time which would kill the spontaneous "jam" vibe.
I also don't think I want them all passing through that cheap board.
If you were in my situation - how would you go about recording all devices, aux effects, live tweaking, etc as multi-tracked audio that I can then edit and arrange in Live into a cohesive song that sounds "finished" with a proper mix ITB?
I appreciate people's ideas.
Confused as to the best way to track OTB to mix ITB
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whitegirllust
- Posts: 52
- Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2005 9:09 pm
Re: Confused as to the best way to track OTB to mix ITB
When I used to work that way it was roughly as follows:
Master sync provided by MPC2500 when jamming, this fed an Edirol UM-880 MIDI router/interface and from there to a whole hep of hardware synths - virus, v-synth, atc-x, ks-rack, v-drums and some roland yamaha and korg rompler sound modules and a machine drum and some other bits.
All the audio and another 8 or so hardware fx processors where all plumbed into a yamaha 01x and i88x via a 3 x 24way patch bays. The mixer provided 24 analog inputs in all via its own analog ins and a ADAT analog I/O.
The patch bays provided access to all audio ins and outs on all hardware to I could route (for eg) all the separate outputs from the MPC, MD and Virus through whatever was needed and into the mixer.
The mixer itself was also an audio interface that provided 16 outs and 32 input to my PC as well as being a digital audio router/patch bay internally, so I could separately track everything in sync simultaneously.
When Yamaha decided one day to f*ck everyone over and not produce 64 bit drivers for Win7 I eventually switched over to an RME UFX which provided similar multi-I/O functionality with better quality and lower latency and actually more I/O as well as 4 high quality mic preamps instead of just the two on on the yamaha i88x, but of course doent have the mixer control surface of the yamaha 01x.
At one time I was actually thinking of buying a mackie 32:8 recording mixer because being a properly studio recording mixer (unlike most small/medium format consoles) it provides record/playback taps for all its inputs, but in the end didnt bother as I started moving over to enstirely sofwtare based production.
When I was actually recording into Live or Cubase, then I would have the computer providing the master midi clock to everything - it was a simple matter to program a couple of routing presets into the Um-880 midi router to quickly switch all the midi clocking between computers and MPC or even use the patcn bays to record midi or audio into the MPC instead of the computer.
The big things that made it all work well was the UM-880 midi router/interface and having an audio interface with at least enough inpuit and output channels to cover whatever I needed to do and of course a heap of patch bays. Trying to work with an audio interface with less channels or lacking in hardware mixer functionality just never worked very well at all - either you are dependent upon the computer and at the mercy of latency, or you have a mixer and can only record from mixer and/or its aux busses which was never enough.
If you are looking for a mixer - then you really do need either a dedictaed record mixer with a record/play tap on each channel like the mackie 32:8 and a multi-channel audio interface with enough in and outs as you need and to support the mixer, or you find a mixer+audio interface whos mixer part is actually setup as a proper recording mixer, or at the very least, something that lets you record its inputs rather than just its mix bus.
AFAIK - good studio hydribs just dont exists anymore until you have several 10s or even 100s of thousands to throw at the problem - PT HD systems and large console etc - everyting seem geared up for fully ITB production with a few external hardware fx and mic/guitar record in an ITB work context.
That said - with the RME UFX you can work with low enough latency and low enough hassle these days to get the kind of hardware live jam vibe thing going quite easily, but nothing beats the flexibility of a proper studio recording mixer with record/play taps feeding a muti-channel audio interface that has enough inputs and outputs and all of them patched into the mixers inputs and outputs. Even without a proper recording mixer, the RME UFX has low enough internal latency in its hardware mixer to be placed between the patch bays and the mixer rather than having to get a proper recording mixer. To do this you will of course need a couple of ADAT<->Analog I/O boxes - behringer do a cheap one that is actually fine for alot of stuff - the RME units are expensive and obviously have way way better preamps etc.
Master sync provided by MPC2500 when jamming, this fed an Edirol UM-880 MIDI router/interface and from there to a whole hep of hardware synths - virus, v-synth, atc-x, ks-rack, v-drums and some roland yamaha and korg rompler sound modules and a machine drum and some other bits.
All the audio and another 8 or so hardware fx processors where all plumbed into a yamaha 01x and i88x via a 3 x 24way patch bays. The mixer provided 24 analog inputs in all via its own analog ins and a ADAT analog I/O.
The patch bays provided access to all audio ins and outs on all hardware to I could route (for eg) all the separate outputs from the MPC, MD and Virus through whatever was needed and into the mixer.
The mixer itself was also an audio interface that provided 16 outs and 32 input to my PC as well as being a digital audio router/patch bay internally, so I could separately track everything in sync simultaneously.
When Yamaha decided one day to f*ck everyone over and not produce 64 bit drivers for Win7 I eventually switched over to an RME UFX which provided similar multi-I/O functionality with better quality and lower latency and actually more I/O as well as 4 high quality mic preamps instead of just the two on on the yamaha i88x, but of course doent have the mixer control surface of the yamaha 01x.
At one time I was actually thinking of buying a mackie 32:8 recording mixer because being a properly studio recording mixer (unlike most small/medium format consoles) it provides record/playback taps for all its inputs, but in the end didnt bother as I started moving over to enstirely sofwtare based production.
When I was actually recording into Live or Cubase, then I would have the computer providing the master midi clock to everything - it was a simple matter to program a couple of routing presets into the Um-880 midi router to quickly switch all the midi clocking between computers and MPC or even use the patcn bays to record midi or audio into the MPC instead of the computer.
The big things that made it all work well was the UM-880 midi router/interface and having an audio interface with at least enough inpuit and output channels to cover whatever I needed to do and of course a heap of patch bays. Trying to work with an audio interface with less channels or lacking in hardware mixer functionality just never worked very well at all - either you are dependent upon the computer and at the mercy of latency, or you have a mixer and can only record from mixer and/or its aux busses which was never enough.
If you are looking for a mixer - then you really do need either a dedictaed record mixer with a record/play tap on each channel like the mackie 32:8 and a multi-channel audio interface with enough in and outs as you need and to support the mixer, or you find a mixer+audio interface whos mixer part is actually setup as a proper recording mixer, or at the very least, something that lets you record its inputs rather than just its mix bus.
AFAIK - good studio hydribs just dont exists anymore until you have several 10s or even 100s of thousands to throw at the problem - PT HD systems and large console etc - everyting seem geared up for fully ITB production with a few external hardware fx and mic/guitar record in an ITB work context.
That said - with the RME UFX you can work with low enough latency and low enough hassle these days to get the kind of hardware live jam vibe thing going quite easily, but nothing beats the flexibility of a proper studio recording mixer with record/play taps feeding a muti-channel audio interface that has enough inputs and outputs and all of them patched into the mixers inputs and outputs. Even without a proper recording mixer, the RME UFX has low enough internal latency in its hardware mixer to be placed between the patch bays and the mixer rather than having to get a proper recording mixer. To do this you will of course need a couple of ADAT<->Analog I/O boxes - behringer do a cheap one that is actually fine for alot of stuff - the RME units are expensive and obviously have way way better preamps etc.
Nothing to see here - move along!
Re: Confused as to the best way to track OTB to mix ITB
sometimes its good to have limits - 8 inputs could be enough for that kind of thing 