Musicians on the board

[Jarek]

Guitars
Yamaha APX5
Ibanez AW800CE
Cort katana (hey don't look that way, it's a very tonally versatile axe)

Profire 610 audio interface
Rode NT1a
Shure beta 58a

Harrison Mixbus DAW Software.

 

[adamsmasher]

Guitars
Yamaha APX5
Ibanez AW800CE
Cort katana (hey don't look that way, it's a very tonally versatile axe)

Profire 610 audio interface
Rode NT1a
Shure beta 58a

Harrison Mixbus DAW Software.

How does the Profire 610 interface treat you? I could use a better audio interface for recording.

 

[Jarek]

Hey adam

I am very happy with the profire. I mostly live track with 3 inputs/2 mics one for vocals one for guitar + guitar input/pickup fed into stereo mix for each channel. Maybe overtrack some lead/melody guitar after.
Usual settings are

sample rate 88200
buffer size 256
With a rack of plugins active (8-10 stereo) I get around 4-6ms latency, no background noise.
The card retails on apple here for £300 I picked it up for £200 so shop around mate.
No driver issues works fine in logic too although logic is overkill for my live takes and sounds nowhere near as nice for acoustic stuff as Harrison does.
Works well in windows, all round a solid device, portable too, have used it with macbook pro.

 

[adamsmasher]

I usually just record one input a time and overdub, since it's just me. All the effects I apply are usually done in Logic so they are non-destructive and I can manipulate them later if I want.

£200 is a fairer price - the average cost here seems to be about $400 USD.

What is Harrison?

 

[Jarek]

You can still record non destructively with plugins enabled in realtime mate, compressors little vocal verb and EQ.
I record mostly acoustic so it's easier for me to make a mixed template, load the template, record live and be done. That way you hear the (almost) final product as you perform. It helps with performing live too, what hits the tape can be fed out of a laptop for live performance + a couple of tweaks for natural environment acoustics.

Harrison are responsible for a lot of big studio mixing consoles, they recently released a DAW with a beautiful analog sound.
http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/joomla/index.php

Mixbus
http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/joomla/ ... &Itemid=42

Some insert mixbus into logic, but for my needs using mixbus as a standalone works fine.
Very cheap price for a hell of a lot of audio quality

 

[adamsmasher]

I have a behringer V-Amp Pro that I record through line-in, so any effects I use on that are on there for good, unfortunately. Really, you can't get any simpler than the set-up that I'm using. Integrating Mixbus into Logic piques my interest; I'm always looking for new tools to play with.

One issue I hope to solve by switching to an audio interface is reduction of digital noise. My previous computer setup wasn't as noisy, but some reason my current setup generates a lot more noise.

Btw, do you have anything online to listen to that you've recorded?

 

[Jarek]

PC noise can come from a few sources (internally speaking) It's usually IRQ related.
Example USB sharing IRQ with audio card, you move the mouse and hear faint buzzing.
Reasons for this are down to remapping the PC's 15 hardware IRQ's into a larger software table and sharing the results between devices. A way round this is to check your IRQ table at boot to see if any devices are fighting for the same hardware level IRQ. If one is a PCI device swap it out to another slot, go into system BIOS under PnP and set to manual (if you have this option) and manually set a separate IRQ for each pin/slot. If it's the onboard LAN try disabling it, re post machine then re-enable LAN, or swap out for a PCI LAN card, try different slots. (disconnect boot drive to hold IRQ boot table on screen to view)

Some fans cause internal interference/buzzing (bad design)
Then there is the quality of the audio device being used, or a badly earthed case.
The profire has no background noise whatsoever, my only noise problems stem from using the mics a gate plugin will take care of the silent passages and a NR plugin to control passages of sound. Ideally I would like a recording room far away from the pc but with 4 kids in the house there are only 2 hopes of that happening, bob hope and no hope
I don't have anything online but if you p.m me your mail addy I can send something over.

 

[adamsmasher]

With the headphones on and volume turned up, I've noticed brief interruptions in the noise when opening folders in the finder and doing similar tasks.

Changing IRQs is not beyond my understanding but a bit more involved then I want to get a the moment, mostly because I use this computer for work. The only PCI device I have is the video card.

You can hear some of the noise on some audio files on my website (the ridiculously huge link in my signature). They're on the portfolio -> music -> rock section. The first two songs are with this computer and the second two are from my old computer.

 

[lulraep]

Going to be building a beastly hackintosh rig soon - not sure whether to wait for stability on sandy bridge or go all out when the prices come down for a core i7-980x rig.

I basically want a blisteringly fast hackintosh to replace my old 2nd gen core2duo imac and an old dual core amd64 PC... i cba to pay £over9000 for a mac and i don't have that kind of money at the moment.

It'll be running Reason 5 rewired into Logic 9 for production and Ableton Suite 8 for pre production of live/DJ stuff (stuff that will get transferred over to my macbook for playing venues).

not massively sure on how good Digidesign (now Avid)'s CoreAudio drivers will be on the new system. and i will have to make sure that i get good component compatibility with firewire.

Would love to have Logic, Reason and the Rewire interface running all at 64bit and ridiculously fast without paying a stupid sum of money for a Mac Pro. And i really need just a better production workhorse that i can use for software development as well.

-------------

My gear at the moment is as follows:

- iMac Core2 Duo 1.8GHz 2GB Ram
- Macbook Core2 Duo 2.4Ghz 4GB Ram
- Various other PC's and laptops that i don't use for recording.

Running Digidesign 003 Rack (FW) and Lexicon Ionix U42s (USB) audio interfaces.

Monitoring:
Adam A7 Pair (Primary)
KRK RP5 SE2 Pair (Reference)
Mackie Big Knob Monitor Controller

Guitars:
Gibson Dove Acoustic
Gibson Les Paul Studio
Epiphone Les Paul Standard
Epiphone J-200 Acoustic
Fender USA Standard Telecaster
Fender Jazz Standard Bass

Mics:
Neumann TLM-103
SE Electronics z5600a MK2 Valve

Keys/Synths:
Alesis Photon X25 Midi Controller
Dave Smith Prophet 08 PE
Roland Juno-106 Synth
Moog Little Phatty Stage 2

Outboard:
Avalon 737-SP Valve Pre-amp/ Channel Strip
API Lunchbox (with 2x 512c preamps, 2x 525 compressors)
Focusrite Platinum TwinTrak Pro
Alesis 3630 Compressor/Limiter

 

[adamsmasher]

It might be quite a while (if ever) before Apple incorporates Sandy Bridge into future models, so it really comes down to whether you want to run a vanilla system or not. To me, Sandy Bridge may have higher performance but the i7 980x is nothing to sneeze at and will be screaming fast. There's a lot of issues right with Sandy Bridge motherboards and unless you're dying to be on the bleeding edge, it's probably not worth the possible effects on usability. That's just my opinion of course.