Can I ask how many channels you need to record at once?

If you only need a few, I would recommend high end outboard preamps with a small mixer or even go rack mounted.

Please elaborate.

chye - If you don't want that FREE Control 24 - PLEASE pick it up anyway, and I'll pay for you to ship it to me :D (Seriously). PS - The Control 24 won't do ANYTHING to the sound once "in the box" - as it is just a control surface.

Heyman's advice is sound IMO.
:cool:

I wont need many channels but I want extra (just in case). Whenever i do get the analoge board (which is soon) i was going to dump everything into the board so I can get that warm sound, sequence it than transfer my audio tracks back over to protools and touch it up if it needs it. You see, right now I do all my sequencing on protools and its ok i guess, but its not the sound I want. (sounds to digital for me....real thin). I have a few rackmounts (roland ,emu, korg, yamaha) as well as an mpc 3000. Later i would want to get the avalon 737 for my mic pre which should do well w/ my akg 414. Also I want to get a few analoge keyboard synths.. (moog, nord lead, matrix 12, juno 106) And once im done doin my tracks from home i was gonna go to my pops studio in the L.A. area where he has a neve console w/ 1081 eqs on it and do my final mix on that.....(board sounds incredible!!!) so my next question is....Am i doin too much here??

chye wrote: Hi everyone.....I'm the new guy here and i would really appreciate any info that would help decide on what analog board i should get. I want that warm sound. The music i'm doing is hip hop/r&b so i use midi alot. Right now I'm using the digi 001 but i'm think about upgrading to a control 24 (my dads friend is giving one away for free) but also getting an analoge board such as a mackie 32/8 or the soundcraft ghost so i can do my recording into the analoge then dumpin it into protools to mix it down. This is just my pre production studio at home. I'm leaning more towards the ghost. My budget is about 5 to 8 grand. Another thing is im new to the game so i'm still learning so anyone out their.......please give me some good advice and let me know if i'm heading kinda in the right direction.

$5-8k you have a bunch of options that will do what you're trying to do... all of them are older desks. The stuff like Ghosts and Mackies don't have the headroom nor phase response with insufficient power supplies to deliver proper current on demand to form a proper bass wave or pass a transient.

Some older desks like MCI 400 and 500 series [which were like $30-80, 000 desks in their day] can be had for as little as $5-8k.

I use a Yamaha PM-2000 in my place which has slightly more headroom than an API, about the same frequency response as an API [providing linear phase response] and can form a bass wave like nobodies business. We bought the desk for $2,500 delivered then proceeded to drop about another $1,000 into it to replace all the old capacitors and just generally go through it.

The thing sounds big and warm and opulent as all get out [WAY better than any SSL that has ever been made!!] and while it lacks some features [like automation] it more than makes up for it with the size of the sound.

8 buses, 6 aux sends, 32 direct outputs, an output matrix... damn thing is a bear.

Fletcher, you've stirred some "warm" memories alright.... I used a PM-1000 back in the late 70's (it was new, out of the box at the time), and it sounded much better than I expected for the price & brand. Looked pretty cool, too.... for 16 channels, it was huge! All discrete circuitry, I believe, which suprirsed a lot of folks who expected to see little inside but op amps. (Not so...)

It was used for summer outdoor festivals/live sound, but we snuck it back to our little demo studio for a while in the winter months. Those tracks still sound great in spite of how inexperienced we were.

Makes me wonder whatever happened to it, and who's got it now. I remember the wood trim was impressive as well as the sound. Lemon Pledge was needed as much as Caig Tech spray in those days...

mmmmmm......lemon-y........ :wink:

ay fletch thanks for the info :) . I'm gonna go look into the mci400-500 as well as the yamahas. Let me ask you somethin though. have you herd how the pm 3000 series sounds cuz i was looking into those as well......

There's the MCI 600's too .. actually more reliable and in the same price range as the 400's and 500's ...

ok fletcher you are using a great board i am using 02R 96 yamaha..
so i would recomend the same as yamaha 02R or the one flercher is using

THANKS FOR ALL THE FEEDBACK GUYS... AY KURT ABOUT THE MCI 600.. WHERE CAN I PURCHASE ONE THATS IN GOOD CONDITION. (WITH AUTOMATED FADERS)

I did a search at
here and came up with a lot of stuff.

MCI's came with VCA automation ... not moving faders. I suppose that one could be upgraded to moving faders if you wanted to do that, but it would probably cost more to do the upgrade than you would spend on the console itself ...

A good place to start looking for a used MCI in good condition would be Blevens Audio in Nashville ... Randy has a ton of MCI stuff (they call him Mr MCI) and he's a good person to do business with ...

http://

Randyman... wrote: chye - If you don't want that FREE Control 24 - PLEASE pick it up anyway, and I'll pay for you to ship it to me :D (Seriously). PS - The Control 24 won't do ANYTHING to the sound once "in the box" - as it is just a control surface.

The Control|24 actually has some really nice focusrite preamps in it, 16 in fact, so it's not just a control surface.

It depends what you're planning to record through the desk, or whether you're just going to be using it for mixing. If it's just for tracking, I'd invest in some really nice channels as opposed to a big desk, especially if you're going to be mixing in the digital domain.

The pres in the Control 24 are not the high end Red Series pres Focusrite makes ... they are the Platinum range which is really not much better than the pres found in most small table top mixers IMO ... (but for free, who can complaine?)

If you're looking for warm fat pres with high headroom and good phase response that can propagate full bass waves... don't look to the Control 24.

Wow. Can I meet your Dad's friend? He seems like a pretty generous guy/gal that's a $8.995 gift !!

I would go with the MIDAS Venice 160 and use it strictly as a summing box for the 'analog' effect that you mentioned. I trust you are working mainly in Pro Tools or Nuendo?

ya i'm working with protools. ay kurt thanks for the website and all the info you gave me. And come to find out my dad used to own the jh-636. and he also said it was a nice warm board. but then he goes to tell me "nothins like my neve though" (neve5306 i think he told me) with 1081s and 33609j's. but he lives in cali. myself, i live in New orleans but go back and forth from san diego. Anyways....... thanks again for all the info...

If you can affoprd a Neve, more power to you ... :tu:

If you can afford a Neve, more power to you ... 8-)

MCI's are the least expensive consoles that really "sound good" in my opinion ... and a lot of huge hit records were done on them ... They still command a lot of respect in the audio community. Still, keeping them in good condition can get very expensive very fast ... be sure you know what you are asking for ... you might just get it.