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I am a bass player and am working with my guitarist on setting up our first recording studio in his garage. I have a friend who does film and TV scores that is helping me come up with a decent, low budget studio. He has a Yamaha O1V he is willing to sell to us for a very good price. I am looking at the m-audio 1814 with m-powered Pro Tools into my guitarists mac.
What I hope to accomplish is being able to record our practices to catch anything we might come up with, record new material and be able to use the O1V through our PA live. SO, my thinking is that we could run guitar, vocals, bass and drums into the O1V. Then using ADAT run 8 digital and 4 analog (if needs be) out to the 1814, Then into the computer through firewire.
Our goal is to save the $ we would use in the studio and build a little studio of our own. Obviosly we would get the tracks mastered. My question is will this give us a passable product to give to someone to master or will it always sound like it was recorded in a garage. We're thinking of using mostly SM57's for the drums with a differnent mic for the kick. A mix of mic's and direct for guitars and bass.
With practice and work can we make our little studio turn out a good product (recording wise)? Will the O1V be an asset in our studio? Will this configuration even work?
Thanks for reading and I appreciate any of you that can lend some of your experience to help us out. :D

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Comments

anonymous Fri, 02/23/2007 - 21:17

As a former owner of the original o1v I can say that this is a good versatile setup - but it has one drawback: you cannot route direct outputs to the ADAT ports on the o1v. Because of this it's only good for one thing at a time: PA or recording.

You can assign tracks to buses and route the buses to the ADAT - but that is post fader, post EQ, etc...so the thing that sucks is you can't really run live sound (for rehearsals, for example) and record the raw signals... :( This is why I sold my o1v and bought the o1v96 (however, the new model is way more expensive....)

My suggestion would be to buy an eight channel pre of some sort and route the outputs to both your interface and a cheap analog mixer (via splitter cables if your interface doesn't have multiple outs)

anonymous Sun, 02/25/2007 - 09:15

Is there a way aroud that? I have a balanced out jack in my bass head, so I can go direct into the mixer and into my cab. The guitarist has a D.I. box and should be able to have 1 line into the mixer and 1 into the P.A. for his guitar. That leaves the vocals. Is there a way to split the signal so 1 goes to the mixer and 1 to the P.A.? To clarify, the only things we run through the P.A. in practice is the guitar and vocals. Again, this is my first studio so I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about, just trying to use logic to make it work for our situation. I appreciate all feedback and suggestions.

Boswell Sun, 02/25/2007 - 09:44

The 01V is not the right mixer for you. Go up to the 01V96 as eveaudio suggests, as it has not only the facility to route the channel direct outs to ADAT, but also has inserts on each of the 12 mic channels where you can pick off the pre-fader, pre-EQ signals.

Alternatively, there are many other mixers on the market that would be suitable for what you want to do, many of which should be available second-hand at reasonable prices. If you're unsure about whether a particular one might be suitable, come back to this forum with a model number and you'll get an opinion or two.

Boswell Tue, 02/27/2007 - 02:04

It would work after a fashion, yes. You could run all your drum mics into the 01V and mix them down in real time to 2-track stereo which you then assign to 2 channels of the ADAT output.

But you are bending equipment to fit your needs and it will constrain your creative efforts.

If you want to spend $200 on the 01V for PA use, then I wouldn't be one to stop you. I've used 01Vs that have been installed in venues where I've been hired to do live sound, and I've made them work. Not my favourite live mixer, but it does a job.

For multitrack recording, you need to look at getting a multi-channel pre-amp with ADAT output. If you are really stuck at the bottom-budget level and can't stretch to something like a Presonus Digimax, you may have to consider an ADA8000.

anonymous Tue, 02/27/2007 - 12:21

I'm confused. So the O1V can't record multiple tracks. Say if I want to record drums with 5 mics, the only way to record it would be to mix it down and have it come out as 2 outputs? In other words I can't have 6 inputs go into the mixer and come out as 6 outputs, go through the 1814 and into the protools as 6 different tracks? I really appreciate the feedback and am trying to learn. Thanks for helping!

Boswell Tue, 02/27/2007 - 15:45

Unlike the 01V96, the 01V can't route the digitised direct channel outputs to the ADAT lightpipe. You could get 6 analog outputs by panning one channel to each of the L and R main outputs plus 4 channels assigned individually to the omni outs. For digital outs, you may be able to assign the 8 auxes to the ADAT, but it's not something I've ever tried to do on the 01V. Possibly eveaudio can comment on this as she(?) used to be the proud owner of one.