I am considering expanding my studio, at the moment i just use my digi 002 rack, a Pod XT live for recording guitar and bass straight into 002 rack, I have Pod farm plugins and an Alesis drum machine, plus a triton keyboard and various amps. However there are not enough preamps on the digi rack for me and I want to D.I. my guitar and bass parts as well as maybe either Micing the amp up or recording the Pod XT live at the same time.
My question is this do I need a D.I. Box to do this? or just a signal splitter to send the guitar signal simultaneously to the 002 rack and my amp or Pod at the same time? Also what piece of hardware should I buy to get more Preamps? A Focusrite Octopre Maybe? That seems to get a good write up as I want to be able to compress the guitar/bass signal when I am D.I.ing it and also be able to compress other signals i.e. Vocals etc when recording.
I am told that you cannot set the Threshold, release and attack times though on the Octopre, Would I be better of getting a unit suchas a TL Audio 5060 that lets you set the compressor up as you wish and also has some presets for compression? But then this would only give me 2 line inputs and a Mic input?
Also is it better and easier to use plugins than buy loads of external hardware units? I am considering a Universal UAD quad card also. I just want to get a good D.I.'d signal when recording and then be able to tinker with it as necessary later on.
What is everyone using for drums out there? I am looking at Toontrack superior drummer 2.0 and the Metal Foundry expansion pack
any help and advice much appreciated!
Rocker 73
Comments
I'd think twice about the UAD card. Latency is a B with PT LE an
I'd think twice about the UAD card. Latency is a B with PT LE and the UAD cards. Most everything else, that I'm aware, is good in combating that latency. UA gives you MellowMuse Auto Time Adjuster, which is a workaround. If you don't mind taking the time to get to know it and use it, I'm sure it'll be fine.
The Studio Classics bundle (or any individual plug-in within that bundle) from Waves is pretty nice, and isn't a hog on DSP.
If you're considering using the outboard processing for mixing, you'll run into latency issues there, too.
Outboard gear for use with Pro Tools Le Tell me about it! Laten
Outboard gear for use with Pro Tools Le
Tell me about it! Latency! When I first boot Pro Tools up its ok as long as nothing else is running in the background and my PC is an XP3200 dual core Athlon with 4GB in. Surely you should not have latency issues with a quad core UAD card installed as the processors on the card should be doing the hardwork of running your plug-insand keep your pc processor free for other tasks.
I have had to dual boot my machine, 1 config for going on internet and the other for Pro Tools and everything else! Considering building a high end PC just to run Pro Tools on, moving to windows 7 and getting Pro Tools 8 and then using my old Pc for everything else!
Octopre looks good and as you said I would need the ADAT board.
What is everyone else running out there with Pro Tools LE? i.e. PC spec and OS and version of Pro Tools etc?
I've got the UAD card and I'm running PT M-Powered. The plugs on
I've got the UAD card and I'm running PT M-Powered. The plugs on the UAD are top notch, but they to bring a lot of latency to the track you apply then to. Annoying as hell, but I love the plugs, so I've taken to tracking and editing in PT and then doing the mix in Cubase, which has the automatic delay compensation to handle the UAD's latency.
As for more preamps and all, I recommend the True Systems P-8. There's no cleaner, punchier preamps out there. The P-8 is 8 channels of preamp in a 1u rack case. 2 of those channels have DI inputs, and for my money they are the cleanest around. This unit has absolutely no character, though; just scary clinical precision. You'd need to pipe all the signals into the 002 for conversion, though, or have an additional a/d.
Universal Audio is releasing a new unit next month, the 4-710, and it might be just your ticket. It's got 4 of their 710 tube/solid blendable hybrid pre's in it, each of which has DI's and "1176-style compression/limiting" on each channel. It's also got 8 a/d converters, and can pipe it all out over either ADAT or AES. Here's a link: http://www.frontendaudio.com/Universal-Audio-4-710D-p/9999-08664.htm
Currently I get sound drop out when i am just sat playing guitar
Currently I get sound drop out when i am just sat playing guitar through my pod xt live into pro tools and have to shut it down and re launch it or reboot my pc!
I have dual booted my system with Xp and load minimal drivers etc in msconfig and i still get sound drop out if i leave pro tools sat there for a while, most of the time its fine though if i have just booted up and am using pro tools.
My pc has an Athlon XP3200 dual core in and 4GB of memory! I am sure I used to run pro tools on windows 2000 and did not have this many problems, am considering building a new 64 bit pc, windows 7 and upgrading to pro tools 8, surely i should not have these problems then or what is the point of even bothering with pro tools LE!
Any help appreciated!
bicasaur, post: 355277 wrote: Also, the UAD doesn't introduce sy
bicasaur, post: 355277 wrote: Also, the UAD doesn't introduce system latency, it only drags the audio you run through it.
The problem there isn't the UAD. It's ProTools LE and it's lack of automatic delay compensation. Rumor has it this will be a thing of the past. Good thing! It's only 10 years behind. I have a UAD card as well as ProTools LE and an MBox 2. I also have a Presonus interface and Acid, Sonar 8.5 and Samplitude. None of these other (legal) programs have a latency issue with the UAD.
rocker73, post: 355780 wrote: Does this latency issue still exis
rocker73, post: 355780 wrote: Does this latency issue still exist with Pro Tools 8 then? Any one out there got this issue whilst running Pro Tools 8?
I don't have latency issues with ProTools 8 and the UAD-1e. For that matter, I don't experience a lot of latency with the ProTools plugins either. There is a delay compensation plugin included with UAD-1 cards but the newer version is much more efficient afaik. The plugin([[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.mellowmu…"]melloowmuse[/]="http://www.mellowmu…"]melloowmuse[/]) that is now included with UAD-2 and the later versions of UAD software is purchased but it's cheap. Somewhere around $50. The irony of it is that you have to use the plugin to deal with delay created by plugins. Essentially what it does is, it adds latency to the tracks without plugins in order to match the latency created by other plugins.
There are tutorials out there that can help you to manually adjust tracks for latency. What a pain though. I would be patient. There is now a ProTools Native. It may be that very soon they will release ProTools 9 with ADC included. They have the code for native ADC now so it seems very likely.
Yet another correction:
The Mellowmuse ATA is included with UAD-2 cards. Nice.
Pro Tools Latency issues Ok cheers! I may bide my time, probabl
Pro Tools Latency issues
Ok cheers! I may bide my time, probably by the time i can afford to build a new PC to specifically just run Pro Tools and my other music software and upgrade to Pro Tools 8 and a UAD card Pro Tools 9 maybe out!
I look foward to the day though when I am able to do a session with the above and not get sound drop out every 5 mins!
A slew of questions. When you are speaking about entry level ge
A slew of questions. When you are speaking about entry level gear or even much mid level gear, plugins can often be just as effective. At the high end of the gear spectrum you don't see too many multipurpose units. A preamp is not often also a compressor or an eq though you do find these in "recording channels". The catch is these channels are always just a single channel.
Point number two. If you are speaking strictly of recording, it is far better to record the dry signal (unprocessed) and then apply your FX/reamping/modeling after the fact. Some folks (again with some high end gear) will lightly compress as the track is being recorded but no heavy FX are applied.
Three. To combine a unit with your Digi 002 you will need something that utilizes ADAT optical to route into the 002. Essentially a set of preamps that converts to digital and sends that data to the Digi 002. The Onyx 800R fits that bill, some Presonus stuff, the Octopre if it has the optional digital card installed, and a few other things.