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I have a chance to scoop one of these up cheap ... ... I understand it's a discontinued product, it does have available drivers for windows 7 /64 bit ( I have a desktop that will support it). I'm not finding much in reviews, The odd posting about failures and the odd posting about the dbx preamps having a limited range on the gain controls ...

I though I'd pick it up to play with, I have a ton of other gear it's more for the novelty and if it runs okay, I'll stick it in my daughters studio "B".

Anybody tried one of these out ?

Thanks
K

Comments

kmetal Tue, 04/05/2016 - 20:23

Never used it, or any lexicon interfaces. They have USB or FireWire for some of there reverbs, and they've had other incarnations of the USB interfaces. So they're note new to interfacing and drivers. I just happened to never have used any if they're interfaces, or know anyone who has. I would suspect they work adequately relative to price point. Lexicon doesn't seem to be a hugely popular choice for interface for some reason.

Harmon owns lexicon so they're is plenty of technology know how floating.

I've been play mixing on a cubase app for my iPad, pretty full featured, it was half price $25. I really like touch screen editing.

Guelph_Guy Tue, 04/05/2016 - 21:21

good score! ...I had grabbed music creator pro vr 7 from cakewalk when it was on sale to use for scratchpad ideas on my Microsoft surface , it was like 20 dollars , I have a little practice AMP for guitar (Yamaha thr10) which has a USB audio interface ... I can just grab this little amp and tablet and go !

(however tonight it's TRANCE in ableton!) ...

yes I'm going to get the lexicon to mess with , right now the thr10 is the only usb interface I have ...

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can run the windows 7 /64 bit drivers in windows 10 for the lexicon ... if not there will still be a windows 7 PC in the house ...!

Don't know if you looked at the lexicon unit but it's a desktop unit ..instead of rack ... small and compact ..!

miyaru Tue, 04/05/2016 - 21:58

Hello Guelph,

I had the Lexicon IONIX FW810s. As interface it was OK, but not super. It broke down twice in 6 yrs. The second time, it was not repairable anymore. It had a DBX preamp/dynamic section.

Nowaydays, I have a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, less equipted in terms of pre recording processing, but better in sonic quality.

Yes, you can have fun with it, but beware of Win7, as it can be stubborn to configure for audio........

Robin.

Guelph_Guy Wed, 04/06/2016 - 17:31

Thanks Robin , Oh I've gone through the whole gamut with windows ...from 95 to win 10 ... LOL ...

My motu stuff is solid on windows 10 ( PCI 424 and 2408/1296's) .. my old Mackie 1640 onyx Firewire is still running (don't know how). sort of shocked .....

The ionix is more of a novelty piece for me ( and pretty much Gratis , I just have to pick it up..) ... I'm up for the challenge !!! ( nothing like a good round of frustration with drivers and new hardware to get you rev'ed up on Saturday morning..

LOL

I also seem to be doing a fair amount of gear repair in the last little while .... ( my stuff is getting old)

cheers
K

kmetal Wed, 04/06/2016 - 18:48

Guelph_Guy, post: 437739, member: 47293 wrote: My motu stuff is solid on windows 10 ( PCI 424 and 2408/1296's) .. my old Mackie 1640 onyx Firewire is still running (don't know how). sort of shocked .....

Are you running FireWire audio on a W10 machine? If so is it built in or a pcie card? I ask because some FireWire drivers have problems w non Texas Instruments chipsets in the FireWire cards.

Guelph_Guy Wed, 04/06/2016 - 19:26

I got a bunch of TI FW cards at tigerdirect about 5 minutes from my office ... 19.00 each ...
TI Cards are fully transparent and install all by themselves!! ( in retrospect, I suspect they all install transparently)
I can say yes FW is fine on Windows 8 , have not tried the Mackie with FW on Win 10 ,
I'll fire it up this weekend and let you know ..

I know that there are some FW chipsets that are not "fully implemented" firmware wise .... This apparently contributed to all of the FW bad press...
Personally, when I ran the Mackie 1640 with FW on Windows 7 it was pretty much flawless...

I thought it would be neat to use the Mackie as a "summing mixer" and use the digital master out of the Mackie back to one of my DAWS on Firewire ...
I've been sort of curious about outboard analog summing , the problem I'll have is trying to identify if what I'm hearing is the result of summing or the coloration of the Mackie 1640 mixer!
All I can say is that if it sounds great I'll keep it handy ...!!!

Right now I just want to mess around with the Lexicon I-onix u82s ,

kmetal Wed, 04/06/2016 - 19:48

Sweet. From what I understand if, you sum using an external mixer Ect, the key is having a capture DAW. So the mixer would feed a 2nd daw. From what other have said around here summing w a capture daw makes a huge difference, even with modest hardware. I know bos uses an AH zed, which is on par w the onyx, and he could use anything he wants for the task.

Good luck.

Guelph_Guy Wed, 04/06/2016 - 20:23

yes I was going to pipe it to another DAW for mastering ,, I'm either going from Sonar Platinum or Ableton to Studio One ....( they have some mastering tools in there ..)

I'll come out of my motu 1296's and into the Mackie ... will be a fun test.

I just got (Samplitude in the house about a month ago but no time for it yet )

Well as everything will be going in at line level to the Mackie , hopefully there won't be too much coloration... I can come out on FireWire and back to the other DAW with Studio One ..( still learning that DAW too LOL)

I bought the Mackie a few years back and really have not used it much, but I was pretty impressed with the pre-amps in the unit for the price . I went to a digital console shortly after that purchase .. (only because one was available)
So I barely remember what the Mackie sounds like , going to have to get re-acquainted .... Like the gear hoarder I am, I've just never let it go ...

to be honest, the last few weeks I've spent all my time in Ableton which is a pretty slick package ...

kmetal Wed, 04/06/2016 - 22:59

Guelph_Guy, post: 437747, member: 47293 wrote: So I barely remember what the Mackie sounds like , going to have to get re-acquainted ....

If it's like all other mackies, it's sounds better than it should, and worse than it could. Lol I've spent many hours on mackies boards, and I I own hr8mk2 monsters by them.

They did Ricky martins 90's hit album on a mackie 8 bus. Mackies don't sound bad in general. Usually just a bit dull and lack headroom. I'm a fan of mackie.

The onyx was had a good rep. I considered the standalone ore unit years ago.

Guelph_Guy Thu, 04/07/2016 - 15:26

I had scooped the onyx 1640 with the firewire card cheap , guys were setting up to record their band and the band fell apart before they made it happen
Things happen people change .... all they wanted to do was get some $ back ... when I got the unit , a couple of months there was a problem with the mains levels on the firewire card ..
the output was unbalanced. wound up to be bad caps on the firewire card as well as a bad op amp ...

I took it into my music shop, where the unit had been purchased. When they ran the serial it was covered under a 3rd party "performance warranty". So It was fixed for Free...!!
So they re-built it under the warranty. It was in perfect condition when it went in , not a scratch .. but it got a new power supply and some other upgrades.

The only downfall is that the Perkins EQ was POST A/D conversion .. So the EQ only worked in the Analog world and the Digital side had straight pre-amps out and no EQ.. bit of an oversight.(However I could see where that would be good for recording a live gig,)
I understand there's a mod to place the EQ PRE A/D and have the eq "tone it all up" before it goes to A/D ..

I still have a Mackie 24 X * 8 bus in the basement which is driving 3 m-audio delta 1010's rack mounts , was an okay setup at the time ...
My bud who was over doing some work went out and bought the same setup ! ...( I'm putting the 24 bus up on the local buy and sell here as well as the 1010's and cables) ..

after that solution (which was a lot of fun), I had an opportunity to pick up a Tascam TM-D 8000 my first digital console , using TDIF to a MOTU 2408 Mk2...
The thing is a tank and built to go the distance , it's only 16 bit and 44.1 and 48K but it's a real workhorse ...( and I still use it ). I learned ALOT on that console....
It was Mackie 8 bus size ..!!! Sonar works great with it ( and that's been the workhorse for my projects and for some friends that drop in that also own smaller studio solutions but like the console work flow.)

I'd still consider picking up a Tascam HDR 24 track hard drive recorder for it ... I just can't find one with TDIF locally ( at least not yet) ..

It certainly eliminated all the crackles and pops I experienced periodically on the other system .... and a ton less wiring ... Life is good .... and it's a console where everything is in about 3 clicks ...
you execute it once or twice and you can still remember it 3 months later ! .. wish I could say the same for some of the DAWS I've used ...

Right now, I'm focusing on In the box solutions ... So That's why I'm picking up the Lexicon I-Onix to play with ....
It's basically going to be on one of those HP I5 boxes I keep picking up periodically running Ableton. It has midi in and out as well , so I'm slaving 2 keyboards into it as well as an Ableton push on USB
and there's a nice 4K UHD 34" monitor to run it as well ... (I'll put some pics up when I'm done..). I have some Yamaha HS 80's to throw on the solution as well ..

( I think I need that bigger house soon) LOL...

GG

kmetal Fri, 04/08/2016 - 12:52

Lol bigger house indeed. I spent a few years on a mackie D8B which and motu 2408 and I loved mixing on the mixing surface. It's built in Dsp sounded great, barely have to crack the manual. But over the years they and the others became unreliable. I long for the day where the daw and control surface are that well integrated ! The tablet control is going to aid that.

Mackie used to be reliable initially , but they either sold the company or switched to overseas manufacturing in the mid 90's(?) and that went out the window. I think around the VLZ days and maybe a bit before is when the switch happened.

itb isn't all that bad, just not quite as forgiving or tactile yet. IMHO it's about knowing all itb isn't equal. I'm very carefully selecting a couple choice plug-insand vsti's for use in the new system. Not many, but good ones. I recently grabbed the waves Renaissance eq and comp and vocal channel for $53, along w a couple others in the bundle. I have always like those, and I've used just about every waves offering. They're forgiving and simple, with a non deteriorting quality to them. They happen to be probably the most widely used waves plug-insamong comercial engineers (I read a lot, and see a lot of screenshots Ect). That and I've got fab filters package on the list. That takes care of my precision eq, multi band compression, and a coul,e others. Kinda the "ooo la la" plug-insof the bunch. audiokid and pcrecord both use them I belive.

Man, I've used probably over a thousand plug-insover the years, and I've learned they don't all do the same thing and a few good ones go along way vs a ton of others.

When I picked my interface had to choose between channel count and quality, and I chose the channel count, which came in handy for what i was doing. Now my flow has changed.

I think w the software vsti it's too easy to get caught up with amassing stuff, especially cuz it doesn't take up physical room in the music space. its only once in a while a program, patch or pluggin sounds exceptional, I try to note the ones that do.

miyaru Sat, 04/09/2016 - 00:47

I also spent a lot of hours with a D8B, back at school (SAE - Amsterdam), and well as for clients. I really loved the console for it's hassle free operation, and ease of use........

Then again, I owned a Yamaha 01v at home in my studio, and man was it a strange thing with all it's menus and stuff LOL - but for the time then the only affordable digital console.

Nowadays, I don't have a console - I use my interface as console in my new mini home setup. Just enough to connect my three synths to it, and then some mics.

Times change, and so do our habbits in recording.......

Robin.

pcrecord Sat, 04/09/2016 - 05:44

kmetal, post: 437791, member: 37533 wrote: That and I've got fab filters package on the list. That takes care of my precision eq, multi band compression, and a coul,e others. Kinda the "ooo la la" plug-insof the bunch. audiokid and pcrecord both use them I belive.

Yes I do use Fabfilter's plugins. I find them to be focused on the job they are ment to without trying to emulate anything. Their EQ, Comp and Limiter get used on every mix I do.

I did miss the tactile aspect of a mixer so I got a Mackie Controller. I feel better now :ROFLMAO:

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