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Recommendations for Logic Interface


UZi706
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I want to record Live drums. I like like to have something with like 12-24 XLR inputs, but I'll settle for 8

 

Basically I was thinking along the lines of the M-Audio Project Mix i/o but I know there issues with Leopard. I tried it out on my machine and all I could do was get the faders to work, no audio though. I tried to fix it in the preferences but then I just got a blank screen when I click on Audio, Global and Midi. I checked thier site and it appears that they have not developed Leopard drivers yet

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Are you going to want to record 24 tracks at a time?

 

Since you are doing drums I would suggest going with the MOTU 8pre as it is one of the few interfaces with mic pres on all inputs that I know of. Or if you want to use outboard pres, hit up the Echo Audio Fire 12. I have a PreSonus FirePod which is the older version of the FP10. It does have 8 XLR inputs but only the first 2 have mic pres on it. A lot of these interfaces can be daisy chained together for more ins and out or just make an aggregate device in Audio MIDI setup.

 

Once I get my MacPro finished, I am going for the Apogee Duet but I only need 2 in and 2 outs.

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i'd go for motu as well. unless you want to get all spendy on RME or apogee gear.

 

of course, there's always protools - but if you're going to get an HD setup, you'd probably want to avoid a hacpro for fear of downtime with clients...

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I am close to buy a ESI DuaFire.

 

On their site they say that all drivers needed are allready in MACOSX, so no download exists.

 

Still i havent heard anyone tried this hardware on a hackintosh yet.

 

So i guess ill be the first then. ;)

 

Do you think it will work ??

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Have you considered just running your mics into a mixing console (Mackie or something like that), and then running that into your interface?  Paying for all those inputs will be more expensive in one interface rather than just having a separate mixer and interface, but not knowing your exact setup it's hard to say...

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Uzi706, something you may not have considered... If you want to keep at a fair or a REALLY big bang for buck budget you could go for an ADAT card such as one of the RME range (or a cheaper known working alternative.. although its worth the extra for RME and AFAIK the range of cards do work on all OSX flavours) then interface to that via an adat cable with a nice (but cheap) a/d d/a converter such as the behringer ADA8000 (roughly around £100 each last time I looked for a deal)..

 

This would then give you 8 XLR in/out per ADA8000 (obviously all seperate tracks/channels). You could obviously expand on the number of inputs/outputs (by adding ADA8000 units) depending on how many ADAT ports you have on the interface you choose, the added advantages are that it provides you with a great deal of flexibility (should you want to interface with any future purchases such as digital desks or multiple PC's (via Adat)), you can expand at your leisure/requirement and you can keep the units well away from any interference from equipment. it would also be nice and easy to route between a drum room and control room with longer adat(TOSlink) cables) not to mention being way cheaper than an 8xlr interface if you play it right.

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Uzi706, something you may not have considered... If you want to keep at a fair or a REALLY big bang for buck budget you could go for an ADAT card such as one of the RME range (or a cheaper known working alternative.. although its worth the extra for RME and AFAIK the range of cards do work on all OSX flavours) then interface to that via an adat cable with a nice (but cheap) a/d d/a converter such as the behringer ADA8000 (roughly around £100 each last time I looked for a deal)..

 

This would then give you 8 XLR in/out per ADA8000 (obviously all seperate tracks/channels). You could obviously expand on the number of inputs/outputs (by adding ADA8000 units) depending on how many ADAT ports you have on the interface you choose, the added advantages are that it provides you with a great deal of flexibility (should you want to interface with any future purchases such as digital desks or multiple PC's (via Adat)), you can expand at your leisure/requirement and you can keep the units well away from any interference from equipment. it would also be nice and easy to route between a drum room and control room with longer adat(TOSlink) cables) not to mention being way cheaper than an 8xlr interface if you play it right.

 

cheers bongfury, this sounds like a prince of an idea. I have an M-Audio 1010Lt that I use with the Pc but which won't work with an intel mac (PCI not PCI express). So I've been thinking about options and this seems like a good one.

 

I made a big mistake buying an internal sound card. Don't do it people. People will be using their firewire cards in ten years time, mine will probably be sitting in my junk pile, with its outdated pci interface.

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cheers bongfury, this sounds like a prince of an idea. I have an M-Audio 1010Lt that I use with the Pc but which won't work with an intel mac (PCI not PCI express). So I've been thinking about options and this seems like a good one.

 

I made a big mistake buying an internal sound card. Don't do it people. People will be using their firewire cards in ten years time, mine will probably be sitting in my junk pile, with its outdated pci interface.

 

 

don't beat yourself up.

 

FW is more portable, but i dont think it's better.

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I haven't used firewire.. but I don't imagine you are going to get the kind of bandwidth you'll get from your PCI bus under load.. I'd be interested to see what happens at higher sample rates 96khz+.. PCI has been around a decade already and there's not many mobo's without PCI now, I doubt that will change for a long, long time yet and the day it's all surpassed PCI-E and the next generation of PCI slot is the only choice on your mobo there'll be a converter/riser board able to convert.. plus the audio card's/interface's AD/DA converters won't be worth jack by then anyways, technology only gets better and cheaper, probably better to base your choice on the inputs/outputs and features you want than the way it interfaces.

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not sure about using two interfaces at once UZi.. never tried.. I would test it for you if I could get my PCMCIA adapter to work for my RME Cardbus/digiface.. but I've kinda given up on it for the time being and just getting on writing tunes with my shiny new logic setup and gigasampler machines :D (when I'm not browsing through here ;) )

why would you want to do that anyway buddy?.. if thats your thing then I recommend you go for the MOTU 2408mkIII with a PCI-E or X 424 card.. you can connect four 2408mkIII interfaces to one PCI424 card (so that would be like having 2, 3 or 4 audio interfaces (as you've just asked) is definately supported and probably a neater solid way of doing it :angel: ..

 

each 2408 (thats a single external hardware unit) gives you a possibility of 24 audio in/out on either adat or tdif or 8 in/out on analogue (you can use any of these 3 types of audio connection in any config.. so you could have 8 analogue, 1xadat (8 channels) and 1xtdif (8 channels) simultaneously from the one MOTU2408 (or just 3xadat ot 1xadat and two tdif.. any combo (you still with me)... again...you can add four 2408's to a single PCI 424 card!.. for a grand total of.. errrm 96 seperate audio ins/outs ;) .. monsterous!).. expand at your leisure... (and don't forget the possibility of ad/da converters as I also mentioned to convert adat to analogue if you want an all analogue rig)...as I said before the 2408 is running amazingly well in logic 8... will go down to 2ms and remain solid.. hardly hits the cpu at all.... I can still make full tunes with no holds barred at 2ms, no compromises (although I am using a q6600 hacky and don't buy into the 96khz.. I like 44.1 at 24 bit)... thats a whole different topic though!

 

MOTU are very good at providing driver updates very quickly too, one of the first on the block with leopard drivers

 

I've tried to explain as best I can, you may want to google a little to understand fully what I'm talking about..

 

 

christ... somebody please stop me talking... good luck to ya uzi

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Here's what I'm going with:

 

1-M-Audio ProFire Lightbridge FireWire/Lightpipe Interface

2-Behringer ADA8000 Ultragain Pro 8-Channel A/D D/A Converter

 

 

What the hell is a word clock?

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Uzi, glad you've come to a decision, wordclock will not be required in your case (and I'll explain why in a moment) if you want a detailed explanation of what it is and does there's lots of info to be found via google but in a nutshell wordclock ensures that digital devices are synchronised and use the same audio resolution (44.1/96khz etc) (synchronisation here is not to be confused with midi clock or mtc type synchronisation.. it does not ensure that two devices 'play' at the same time/keep in time, it is on a much lower level.. the level of a single sample (a tiny, tiny unit (when using 44.1khz there are 44100 samples played per second, using 96khz there are 96000 samples played per second in an audio stream)).. wordclock says to device 1 you play a sample, then to device 2 you play a sample, to device 1 play a sample to device 2 play a sample.. and on and on..... this ensures that the two devices do not try to play a single sample at the exact same time or out of sync.. without a clock audio quality will suffer badly, you'll hear clicks, pops or worse all kinds of nasty things can happen, however; the ADAT format transmits and receives it's own clock within the adat cable and therefore you do not have to worry about it in the scenario of the MAudio/ADA8000.I have no knowledge of the M-Audio interface at all, but it seems like it will do the job quite nicely, certainly in regard to the connections available.. I would suggest you really research hard in regard to latency/stability at all resolutions (44.1/96).. remember the highest resolution (96khz/192khz) will always provide much lower latency.. so evaluate latency by the lower resolution of 44.1I'm sure this setup is gonna be great but for peace of mind down the road I would try to buy all the stuff from the same shop.. physically (not online), even if it means going out of your way to do so/paying a little extra on the deal (you never know you might be able to negotiate the same or a better deal as you would get online in the shop if there's a price differrence :rolleyes:), just so that you can test it there and check you like the results. the shop assistants will then also feel somewhat responsible (if the {censored} hits the fan) for helping you in your decision, it's never a good idea to jump into a multi device digital setup without doing the due dilligence... bloody hell another mega blog!.. all the best to you Uzi, don't forget to let us know your thoughts when you've received/had some time to play with it

 

EDIT:Just checking the interface out again, I see why you're going with this one.. Protools Mpowered and its a good mobility choice for you're macpro..I like this bit of the advertisement too

 

Build a Custom I/O Setup with the AD/DA Converters of Your ChoiceProFire Lightbridge plays nice with others too. Pick any ADAT Lightpipe-compatible A/D or D/A converter and utilize our fast and reliable FireWire driver technology to get the most out of your DAW.

 

seems they made it just for you :D

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Uzi, glad you've come to a decision, wordclock will not be required in your case (and I'll explain why in a moment) if you want a detailed explanation of what it is and does there's lots of info to be found via google but in a nutshell wordclock ensures that digital devices are synchronised and use the same audio resolution (44.1/96khz etc) (synchronisation here is not to be confused with midi clock or mtc type synchronisation.. it does not ensure that two devices 'play' at the same time/keep in time, it is on a much lower level.. the level of a single sample (a tiny, tiny unit (when using 44.1khz there are 44100 samples played per second, using 96khz there are 96000 samples played per second in an audio stream)).. wordclock says to device 1 you play a sample, then to device 2 you play a sample, to device 1 play a sample to device 2 play a sample.. and on and on..... this ensures that the two devices do not try to play a single sample at the exact same time or out of sync.. without a clock audio quality will suffer badly, you'll hear clicks, pops or worse all kinds of nasty things can happen, however; the ADAT format transmits and receives it's own clock within the adat cable and therefore you do not have to worry about it in the scenario of the MAudio/ADA8000.I have no knowledge of the M-Audio interface at all, but it seems like it will do the job quite nicely, certainly in regard to the connections available.. I would suggest you really research hard in regard to latency/stability at all resolutions (44.1/96).. remember the highest resolution (96khz/192khz) will always provide much lower latency.. so evaluate latency by the lower resolution of 44.1I'm sure this setup is gonna be great but for peace of mind down the road I would try to buy all the stuff from the same shop.. physically (not online), even if it means going out of your way to do so/paying a little extra on the deal (you never know you might be able to negotiate the same or a better deal as you would get online in the shop if there's a price differrence :rolleyes: ), just so that you can test it there and check you like the results. the shop assistants will then also feel somewhat responsible (if the {censored} hits the fan) for helping you in your decision, it's never a good idea to jump into a multi device digital setup without doing the due dilligence... bloody hell another mega blog!.. all the best to you Uzi, don't forget to let us know your thoughts when you've received/had some time to play with it

 

EDIT:Just checking the interface out again, I see why you're going with this one.. Protools Mpowered and its a good mobility choice for you're macpro..I like this bit of the advertisement too

 

Build a Custom I/O Setup with the AD/DA Converters of Your ChoiceProFire Lightbridge plays nice with others too. Pick any ADAT Lightpipe-compatible A/D or D/A converter and utilize our fast and reliable FireWire driver technology to get the most out of your DAW.

 

seems they made it just for you :D

 

Thanks, I tried looking up word clock on google and it asked if I meant world clock, and all the links were for word clock converters or actual world clock, even though I did not indicate that that's what I meant.

 

And yeah I coudn't aggree with you more as far as how they made that just for me. I was sooo excited when I figured out how that worked. I ignored it for the longest time because the name included the word "LIGHT" and in my experiance with digital audio, any thing with the word light (which I guess they mean lite) or LE mean less advanced or stripped down with way less features. I can't wait, I'm going to have Guitar Center special order it, that way (Like you suggested) they'll be responsible if the product is defective

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good on you uzi.. I take it you do realise that the reference to 'light pipe' is a generic term for an optical cable connection (Tos Link) used for formats such as ADAT and SPDIF rather than it signifying a cut down version of the interface.. anyways.. enough of the audio geek {censored}.. here's to you getting some legendary recordings down with that thing

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UZI, thats handy mate!.. maybe blow the dust off that beggar, that'll fit quite nicely in the setup (especially for totally silent recording :( with the ADA8000 hooked up to it over ADAT 'ahem... Light Pipe' you can get away from the PC fan's if required with super sensitive mic's).. in fact!.. is there any analogue inputs on the Alesis model you have because it could also work nicely as an A/D or D/A bridge to the Maudio as well as or until you receive an ADA8000?... possibly.. hmm it's prolly not 24bit though is it.

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  • 1 month later...

ERRRR!!! Finally Got everythig. Got the 2 Ada8000 from Guitar Center $200 each, found a Profire Lightbridge online for $339 so I decide Let do Over night Delivery, NOPE, the company doesn't have them in stock for 8-10 business days, so I canceled the order, Guitar center (Which there are 4 of in MN) does not have any, I'm Directed to the website ($399), I choose overnight Delivery, Once again They don't have them in stock, so I go on Ebay find it for $319 (Best deal) I get the guy to over night it to me, I got it today, get everything set up, I plug in 4 SM57s to test and I notice the monitering alone cuts out every 3 seconds. I look on thier site at the system requirement and notice I have to have a 7200rpm HD with at least 8 MB cache, mine, Which I Just bought, is 5400rpms, SO... Found one with only 200 GB for $189, Gunna over night it...

 

Now that I've ranted, I guess it all seems funny how impatient I get and how I spent about $3,500 on gear in the last week and then it all comes down to 1 stupid little $189 problem holding me back from recording. Got some great deals off Ebay and got some people that work places that catch me some dscounts. Can't wait to post my setup in that thread

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