Harrison 950mx Analog Console : workflow

I beat you to it by about 4 weeks. LOL - I mentioned this console about a month ago as my "if I had the money" dream desk.

 

Not a fan of being limited to 24 channels ,

 

I'm not sure you're getting the jist of what the board was designed to do. You'll still have total individual and unlimited track control within your DAW. The console allows you the ability to record through it to add the analog warmth through its preamps and EQ, and, upon mix down, you can mix up to 24 channels / 24 stems through it.

Or are you saying you want the ability to record more than 24 tracks at one time?

 

This may sound odd, but I like the look of the bigger console , I think it makes a grand statement when people come in to see what you can offer them in services. The 1st time I walked in to Sound City in 88 ,that Neve , jumped out at me and said "Son your in the big leagues now", it screamed History, it made us confident that if we did our part, it was going to sound great. "The place we did our demo in in 89 had a Soundcraft 200b , my impression of that place was "hey buddy lets get this done my dad will be home soon and he'll need to park the Jag in here".
In this age of drum machines and keyboard sequencers, midi this and big infinite track DAWs most people and studios won't see a need for 32-80 track consoles .... I know I most likely will not use all 32 from My series 600, and my studio spirit 32,8 is only set to record 24 tracks.. I have 32,8 bus 16 and 24 side car Mackie I bought as a package steal for $500usd for my progressive rock band's barn/studio,(we only record on to 8 tracks with the bus). the studio I got it from had unloaded all their bigger consoles for Presonus studio live 16 4 2s and In my opinion , the place looked cheep, looked like I was going to record in some ones garage....all the expensive out gear they had was still there, but the 16 4 2 on a computer desk just cheapened the place up notch.
Now money not an Issue and If I could have my way and build a studio that relies more on the DAW then I do, I'd buy one today.
@DonnyThompson, I understand what 950MX does, and its a great center piece, but for what I'm doing now its over kill and under Ummph

 

if you consider $80,000 all in cheap .... (i lift a glass in a toast). ? who can afford a $1500 lease and insurance these days? most studios have been forced into self owned buildings with limited square footage.

this is the wave of the future. with shrunken budgets and daw power growing exponentially a small footprint console is what is needed. the large format boards were built to accommodate 48 tracks of tape. excluding the Sound City Neve, there is nothing mentioned here that will sound better. what else is there?

 

@ Kurt Foster ,
for the 12x14 8 foot celling room I'm using now 80K is beyond "look what I have" most of the people who buy, steal, download music now a days won't hear the difference.. 10-15 years ago when people Listened to music yes but 90+% of people today only hear music. they don't take the time to Listen.
as for the wave of the Future, I agree, and If I was building a studio for recording something for the masses, I'd plunk down the 80K if I could....

 

i get it. i couldn't afford it either. my remark was aimed at the pro end of the spectrum who are still recording for mass media and have budget, albeit not as large as in the past. on a "hobby" budget myself, i am trying for a Midas Venice.

 

@audiokid
"In all fun,
How does this 24 channel setup look?"
My drummer buddy and I built this back in 2000 with the idea of doing demos or renting out rehearsal space while offering to record practice sessions.. Nothing serious
The main room(W=14X L=12 X,H=8) has 20 sends off the back wall ,the two sides and front wall each have 4 (32 sends total) all these come into a patch bay in the control room , The 3 iso rooms feed another 24 to another Patch bay in the control room . From the Patch bays I chose which channels to record. The band we did last Sunday, a 5 piece . 12 sends off the back wall(drum set), 3 off the sides, Bass went Direct, Both Guitar players were in the main room and patched to the smaller Iso rooms where their amps were. The singer was in the bigger Iso room. So I brought 13 in from the main and 3 from the iso rooms for a total of 16 tracks, patch bays feed the lower 24 Channels on the board, the upper 8 are where I feed the play back from the ADAT that's hooked up to the 8 bus. The lower 24 channels record to 3 ADATs XT20s, they Light pipe out to a HD24 for back up and the HD light pipes to the computer, the computer light pipes back to the XT20s . when Recoding is done, I pull the caddy from the HD24 download the uncut tracks to a Dell Powervault via a 2550 sever. I can edit tracks in the box if need be, if not then mix it all from the ADATs on to a Masterlink(main Outs), or a Tascam CD Rw2000(2trk out put).
At the house in my music room, I have an almost Identical set up to the control room, The board here is the 24/8 Channel version of the studio spirit, both were modded by Jim Williams this way I can edit or do a better mix down then what I can do at my drummers place.
I'll do something similar at my house when the studio is built, but the main room and control will be much bigger, and right now the main board is going to be the Series 600 I just bought.

 

why are you going to the XT20's first? if you go to the HD24's and then to the XT20's and computer you will have 24 bit files instead of 20 bit. it's a simple matter of routing the light pipes differently..

 

When we built this back in 2000, I only had 3 Black face ADATs,...(side note , I did the 8 bus out to an Akai DR8 that I found in the trash, still works today) when I added the Hd24 it was strictly for ease of back up, I had done some recordings where I went right to the Hd and cut the ADATs out. the sound is fine,but I feel it loses the tape warmth. also you can play Adats thru the HDs but when you play the Hds thru adats it distorts
My theory is If my final product is a 16 Bit Cd why go thru all the conversions, When I was going from ADATs to computer, I was tying up a lot of disk space,and storing uncut tracks on tape, Now what I do is when the project is done, I reformat the tapes., If I need to revisit the uncut tracks, I download from the Server to the HD caddy, pop the caddy into the computer and then record from the computer to the ADATs
My original Idea was to try and duplicate the sound of the early to mid 90s....which are my favorite sounding CDs

 

Alesis ADATs adding tape warmth - now that's something I had never thought of.

 

first there would be no extra conversions. it would be the same. second there's no "tape warmth" from the xt20's. these are digital tape machines, not analog.

the hd24 is a digital recorder as well. there is no reason you should be getting distortion the way you are describing it.

use the hd24 for your main converters. 24 bit is going to sound better due to bit rate. when you go to mix you will do one conversion and there you can do your src.

 

The 950 looks like a great option.

Not my first choice within my budget, but then again, it does look very serviceable, and considering that more and more multi-media production is on the horizon, Harrison's got the broadcast thing covered perfectly.

So, this might be worth reconsidering... damnit....

Granted, it doesn't have the footprint of an 8028, but it also doesn't have the shame of a Smackie 24•8 Bus.

The biggest concern I have is it's rails... Most smaller bus count consoles don't need the juice like a 16 or 24 bus space heater, so you end up suffering under heavy dense mixes.

 

the summing is on a PCB trace, not in ribbon cables. they are high volt rails too. i wouldn't be concerned.