Just to be sure, you want 48 channels of digital input?

Yeah, do you really need 48 channels?

I hardly use 8 but I'm not recording many bands at the moment either. I suppose you want to run digitally into the DAW? That would make the most sense.

First see what type of digital format your 02R's use. I would guess ADAT? But man, at 48ch thats almost overkill. I am not sure what your thinking. Do you use Logic 8?

I would imagine your 02R's channels run into a bus. They may be S/PDIF or AES? Let us know.

The Lavry Blacks might be a good choice. I have the AD10, DA11 and the MP10 in transit as we speak. I haven't heard them yet, but I've heard excellent things about this line. Once I have a chance to test them out, I'll let you all know what I think.

I have a similar setup and I want the AD10 to run my O3D keyboard mixes into my DAW.

Lavry is running a banner here pointing to them below. Hope that helps.

See: Lavry Black DA11 then follow the links to their AD10

He must have a few older keyboards :) Love those keys...

I've used an external drum sequencer like an MPC with 8 outs plus stereo left/ right . An emulator with another 8 outs, a few other samplers, couple of modules, extra Nord lead, some old analog synths and you have channels coming out your ying yang. Mix it all down into stereo and AD it into your DAW.

Thank science for USB.

thanx guys! let me be a little more specific.
1. yes! i have many older keyboards and modules and drum machines i still like to use. everything helps when scoring film and t.v.
2. yes! we want to run digitally into the DAW. 48 trax summed down to 2 basically.
3. this is for the older system. we have logic 8 with an open labs nekp on another system. that's fine.
we want this system to run digitally into the DAW. here's the catch the system will not be upgraded to the latest OS as we will lose some applications. that rules out apogee stuff and any other newer interfaces.
4. when 02r's are linked one is the master and the other has to follow that one. there is an adat module but it would only work for the first 02r and not the other.
5. s/pdif could be an option. we'll look into that. AES is being used already.

hopefully that's a little clearer. more suggestions welcomed. thank you!
m~

Greener wrote: Just to be sure, you want 48 channels of digital input?

we want the 48 analog channels summed into two basically...

It's ain't going to be cheap. Do you have a budget?
A 48 channel summing mixer and 2 channels of conversion. It can be done, but about a hundred different ways.

Budget would help define a few things. :)

we just want to see a few different ways. we'll determine the budget based on that. thanx for your time and expertise. it's easier on the newer stuff.trying to keep the older stuff up to date is the hard part.
any advice is welcomed!
m~

I can't help past putting "48 channel summing mixer" into Google.
I found an API unit for 25 grand... Prolly not...

To do it on the cheap is going to be a bitch, like three 16 channel mixers into some sort of 4 port interface?
Without a massive console you're goig to be doing a boat load of tweaking before tape.

Really... Someone will actual knowledge and not just wild guesses chime in. My curiosity is peaked.
:P

hey audiokid! thanx. i think this is going to be a good approach to what we want to do. the AD10 looks like the easiest solution.
m~

audiokid wrote: The Lavry Blacks might be a good choice. I have the AD10, DA11 and the MP10 in transit as we speak. I haven't heard them yet, but I've heard excellent things about this line. Once I have a chance to test them out, I'll let you all know what I think.

I have a similar setup and I want the AD10 to run my O3D keyboard mixes into my DAW.

Lavry is running a banner here pointing to them below. Hope that helps.

See: Lavry Black DA11 then follow the links to their AD10

it's hard to get across in e mail form what is really happening.
we already have 2 02r's. not looking to sum the keyboards as they are already connected to the 02r's. we're using it like a big keyboard/module sub mixer for all of our older gear we still like to use. that part is done and has been for a while now.
we were just looking for a way to AD that into the DAW. we think the AD10 by lavry might do this.
if we did a mix in logic and did a fade at the end, the soft synths would follow the fade but the analog gear would not. this is because we could only monitor the sound and not control it digitally. that's all. just wanted to be able to use older stuff with newer technology.
is this getting any clearer?
believe it or not, the answers so far are helping us!
m~

It's just my ignorance then.

If you already have it in analog stereo then any 2 port converter will be choice.

if you can, hit up the Song and Mix Critique page and show us what you're doing. It sounds fun.

Rock on. :)

thanx greener. you guys can check out the cover of keyboard magazine in june, that will explain a lot.
we looked at the lavry stuff. pricey! but we do have some choices out here. just trying to find the best one...

You are doing what I've been doing for years. Its nothing short of fun lol.

The Lavry stuff is choice for what you need then. My understanding is, the new Blacks have tons of headroom and sound pristine. Ideal for AD into any DAW. Feed the O2R in groups or entire mix into Logic and you'll have it digital. There are a few ways to migrate it all.

Our Daw Mod Alecio, has some O2R's, maybe he will chime in here.

Since I don't have the units yet, I'll invite Brad from Lavry here to see what he thinks.

I don't understand why you want to convert the output of the digital mixers back to analog and then re-convert back to digital to go into the computer. Why not use two channels of an ADAT link into the computer and avoid the expense and quality loss of the double conversion?

For Logic, you could use almost any interface that has an ADAT input. For ProTools, you would have to use a DigiDesign interface, but the Digi00x series have an ADAT input port.

You say you want to mix down to stereo from the two 02Rs in real time and capture the 2-track result. You can route the stereo mix from one 02R via ADAT into the ADAT input of the other 02R, sum it as a stereo signal into the stereo mix of the second 02R and then export the summed mix via ADAT to the DAW. Either use an external wordclock for both 02Rs and the computer interface, or set the first 02R on internal clock, and both the second 02R and the interface to clock from their ADAT inputs.

You could replace ADAT with S/PDIF on either of the legs with identical results.

Someone make this man a Moderator...

Boswell makes a good point in suggesting that you keep the signal path "all digital" back into the recording DAW. The only question I have is if there is a reason why you prefer the other approach (such as the need to do some analog processing on the resulting stereo "mix" before it is recorded back into the DAW).

If that is the case, then the most important point I could make is that the DA conversion in this type of transfer is as important as the AD conversion, because they both can "color" the sound. More often than not, this coloration detracts from the quality because the type of distortion introduced in less-than-good quality conversion is anything but "musical" in nature.

I have heard over and over again from our customers that they feel our converters were a great investment because then no longer have to "fix" what happened in the conversion. If they got the sound they wanted in the analog domain, they get it back using our AD and DA converters.

Mykeeb- if you do want to want to go the analog route, it would still be a good idea to mix the output of the first 02R digitally with the mix in the second 02R as Boswell had suggested and use a single (stereo) DA to convert the entire mix to analog. It would be cleaner than using an external analog mixer to combine the 2-bus output of two 02R's, unless the external mixer and the playback DA's were all very good quality.

If you are seriously considering more than a stereo AD and DA, the LavryBlue line is sonically very close to the LavryBlack AD10 and DA10 (or DA11), and offers reduced cost and space requirements for more than two channels.

Either way, you won't be making extra work for yourself having to "fix" the mix after going the analog route with mediocre conversion.

Brad Johnson
Lavry Engineering

Yes, high-quality D-A, maybe some analog processing, and then quality A-D conversion as Brad suggested would be fine. I would be unhappy about using the D-A converters in the 02R as the first stage of this process.