Hey 1st post. gear question - monitors or metric halo -rme

snakes and ladders · Post by **snakes and ladders** » Tue May 08, 2007 4:12 pm

I've been reading on this forum for about a year - I have a reactive IT job so nothing to react to - nothing to do -anyhooo.

So I've purchased Live 6, sampler and operator a coule of months ago and haven't really touched Logic since - its been a total revelation for how I work and am thinking about ditching logic - another question for another day

I've read so much and have learnt so much from reading the tips and tricks section and th general forums ace as well (the OT's are hilarious) and have come to respect some of hte peeps like sweetjesus, machinate, hoffman2k, nebulea (sic), Tarakith (not blowing smoke up too many arses but its true) and a whole bunch of others,,,,,,,,,,,

SO I have a question I'd love some advise on.

I currently have a firebox an sl25 and alesis M1Mk's and have some cash to either upgrade my soundcard or my monitors. I have around 2.5k to spend and am looking to buy either a RME fireface 800-or 400 a METRIC HALO Mobile I/O or SM6 Solo6 Be (pair) monitors (which are fucking brilliant) - and these are gonna be keepers (interface and monitors)

So.... I make mostly electronic music at the moment but I'm a drummer and really want to start bringing in my drums into my productions ( I also play some bass and some keys albiet fairly poorly but I'm improving) so I'm going to need more ins and outs than my firebox can provide plus the mic-pre's in all the interfaces above are without dubt in a different league - but to get one of those and run them through the alesis' - waste of time?

Monitors or interface? I'd love to hear some constructive feedback - I want to listen to your opinions -so let me have them please!

(computers OK 24" Imac) - sorry about the rambling post

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue May 08, 2007 4:34 pm

Thanks for the shout out

Honestly I'd say get the interface sorted first, the Alesis you have are pretty damn good speaker for the money, I still use mine as a reference and for DJing in the studio. I think if you're going to get high end monitors, then it's a real waste of money if you don't also think about some sort of acoustic treatment a well. The best monitors will sound like the worst monitors in a poorly treated room. So I'd say wait until you can afford to do both at the same time, as I'd say the state of your room's acoustics has a greater impact on what you hear than the monitors themselves. I always tell people shopping for monitors to split the amount of money they want to spend, and spend half on speakers, and the other half on acoustic treatment (realtraps are nice bang for the buck).

As for which soundcard...

Metric Halo is very well respected, and a great sounding card. Only downside is that you're limited to 2 in/outs unless you go with the 2882. Certainly you can't go wrong if you want to spend that much on a soundcard.

RME is always a top player, though I'd ask yourself if you need that many IO to justify the cost of the FF800 versus FF400. If you only need the 400, then you're talking Motu Ultralite territory which is a lot cheaper and (depending on who you ask) every bit as good sounding. Do you need 8 pre's? Maybe pair the ultralite with the Motu 8Pre card? Just throwing options out.

A top of the line soundcard is never really a bad thing, except it does tie up money that could be used in other areas of the studio. For what you want to spend, you could get great monitors, soundcard, and some room treatment for the price of just the MH card. Will you have more money in the future to spend, or is this a once in a few years purchase?

Just things to think about.

snakes and ladders · Post by **snakes and ladders** » Tue May 08, 2007 5:36 pm

Well I'm planning to go part time from a very well paying job so I can salary sacrifice a "Laptop" now and my guy at the audio store will write it up as such so I can get whatever I want as they do both computers and high end audio gear. In the future I will still be earning roughly the same as before but without the option to salary sacrifice and as I'm in the highest tax bracket in my country its quite a large saving - almost half the price.

These purchases are most certainly keepers so thats why I'm looking at the top 10% in each catagory.

I completly agree on what you are saying about traps and the room is almost as important as the quality of the monitors in terms of actual sound improvement but I'm thinking about the future- spening 5-10 years with these. I have good cans -AKG 271 so its a toss up and thats why I'm asking opinions from experienced people like yourself. The room i'm in currently is only very short term so I can work on building something nice in the next year or so when I move out with the GF.

I like the motu stuff but the rme and MH just sounds more "there" to my ears and I've pretty much narrowed it down to either of the above.

So I'm looking to buy either the soundcard or monitors now and save for the other over the next 6-10 months.

sweetjesus · Post by **sweetjesus** » Tue May 08, 2007 6:26 pm

since u are on a mac you can use this...

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/ensemble.php

im pretty sure it has a lot of ins/outs not sure how many mic's/di's/mixers/preamps you have in your kit but check it out anyway.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Tue May 08, 2007 6:50 pm

Thanks for the honorable mention - I can't believe you'd put me in the same sentence as the other esteemed gentlemen

As for opinions, I gots 'em, so here they come: for the most part, it's Tarekith's comments +1. Once you get to a certain level of quality of monitors, you reach a point of diminishing returns UNLESS you have a perfectly treated room, which a lot of us don't. If you do treat the room with bass traps, have non-parallel walls, lots of sound absorbers, etc, then go get a high end set of monitors and you'll hear a big difference. Otherwise, you can stick with good but cheaper monitors and learn them well. I still use my Alesis MKII monitors to develop songs. I then go back and forth between headphones and then gauge where the sound is, and then when I master, I listen to the song on many sources in many places (car, room, boombox, laptop speakers, etc). So arguably, there are ways to get around without the most expensive monitors.

But do get the best soundcard you can afford. RME is always a good choice - I've used my RME Multiface for years and still love it. But the Echo cards sound pretty good too. Now, to record drums, you'll needs lots of inputs, 8 at minimum. However, the Fireface 800 might be overkill because unless you're recording drums all the time, you can get by with 8 inputs. The latency will be low, the drivers excellent, and the ADDA conversion will be top notch. My recommendation is to get the Fireface 400.

Looking forward to hearing what you produce.

snakes and ladders · Post by **snakes and ladders** » Wed May 09, 2007 10:17 am

Thanks guys - all good tips. I was going for the interface first but then I thought "whats the weakest link in my chain" and I thought "my monitors!" - but the weakest link is actually my room - so thanks for making me think a little harder - but its not something I'm going to do much about because its only temporary accom.-
so you think I'm goint to notice more of a difference with an RME/Metric compared to Alesis/Focal? Eventually I will get both but for now I have money for either one or the other.
I'm leaning towards the RME and putting the focals on Layby after thinking about your comments. The guys at this store aren't a big fan of the RME stuff because they think the drivers suck and the converters are OK whereas they say the Metric shines all round. But as far as I can tell Metric just use core audio/firewire drivers and with the Metric I'm stuck with the mac which is the problem I have with Logic - I like having a choice (even though OS X is a million times better OS, Apple as a company pisses me off)
The Apogee is getting a little bit ridiculous as far as prices goes - surely its getting to the point of diminishing returns - I know there stuff is good but I'll wait till my first record comes out

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Wed May 09, 2007 1:16 pm

I completely agree that Apple is probably a better OS, but the pricing and the tactics of the company pisses me off, and I get just as good results with XP, which is why I stick with it. Also, my RME has served me well for 3 years, and recently I built a PC, so then I got the RME PCI card, and I simply plugged in my Multiface into the PC, and I can get less than 1ms of latency. When I perform, I stick the card into my laptop's PCMCIA slot, and then I can be mobile. Having the flexibility is really cool.

And the drivers are amazingly good, so I'd question what your local music store is really talking about

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Wed May 09, 2007 1:57 pm

RME is known for fast and stable driver releases, so yeah no worried there. I'd also suggest teh Ensemble, cheaper than the MH.

snakes and ladders · Post by **snakes and ladders** » Thu May 10, 2007 4:47 pm

Ensemble cheaper than MH - where? I see a good $1000au difference between the Ensemble and the MH mobile I/O.

At gearslutz adamjay said: I've listened to alot of converters over the last 6 months.
and for overall a/d-d/a this is how i rank what i've heard:

1) Lynx Aurora
2) Apogee AD/DA-16x
3) Metric Halo 2882/ULN-2
4) Apogee Rosetta
5) RME Fireface 800
6) MOTU Traveller

yes, the metric halo is THAT good.

I'm getting the MH. All this has made me think that after this purchase and the monitors -no more - back to the music. Gear lust, damn the time and money!

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu May 10, 2007 4:57 pm

Again, this goes back to my argument against high-end monitors - to really "hear" the difference between high-end converters, you really need some golden ears and a well-treated room AND high-end monitors. There's a big difference between low-end consumer converters and high-end ones. But once you get to the level of the big boys, it can get fairly subjective. At that point, I look for the most flexible setups, the best drivers, and the most options for the money. To me, that's RME, because the drivers rock, and the gear works on multiple platforms, laptop/desktop configurations, and allows you to have as many inputs as needed for your setup.

Like I said, no shortage of opinions here

3dot... · Post by **3dot...** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:02 pm

one is useless without the other so...both

snakes and ladders · Post by **snakes and ladders** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:12 pm

Ah, no. You can have quality converters and a decent set of cans, and no gear is perfectly matched to the next in your signal chain so you have to get used to what you got, when you've got it.
I guess its all pretty subjective when you get up to MH/focal level but fuck it, I can afford it now and it'll eventually make me money and its a tax right-off. Cant loose really.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:18 pm

from what I've read, the metric halo doesn't have PC drivers yet...

also, do you know if it's firewire 400 or 800?

snakes and ladders · Post by **snakes and ladders** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:36 pm

No PC drivers and unfortunently doesn't look like there ever will be. Firewire is pretty dodgy on the Windows side of things, unless you have the TI bridge chip your pretty fucked as far as reliabilty goes, so dont think they're going to bother.
MH is 400 only - I was talking to this guy was behind the boards at the Kiss concert ( I wasn't there, but he was) in Melbourne and he ran everything daisy chained off one firewire 400 portand pretty much laughed at me when I said I wanted an external HDD with firewire 800 to stream my sample library- so looks looks like 400 is enough for audio. Audio AND Video dunno.

nebulae · Post by **nebulae** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:42 pm

agreed that firewire on PC is dodgy, especially firewire 800.