TimI guess first things first, our band blog is a hot mess and we need to improve it. Been trying to see if I can just have it display our ActivityPub posts but so far no luck.
John suggested I should document a project that's taken me years to finally do - upgrading the "studio" (quotes since it's just my cluttered messy home office). While I was gonna write this on our blog, until we make that thing not embarrassing, I'll post it here. Might not be super interesting but here we go anyway!
My current digital setup is a MOTU 828mk3 with a Saffire Pro 40 connected to it over ADAT. Because I like to track at 96kHz, that means I only get 4 I/O from the pro 40. And 8 (ish) from the MOTU. MOTU is connected over Firewire. Yes Firewire. In 2024. It's better than USB. There. I said it. Fight me.
Sounds like a lot of I/O. And it is! But it gets eaten up quick when considering the synths, the reel to reel, wanting to send to things like my tube pre, etc. I had solved this via a patch bay (I was using wrongly turns out). This mostly worked though.
Two things tipped the scales into wanting to upgrade. I wanted to add in John's MS2000 to our synth army, and importantly I've wanted to use our 16 channel Allen & Heath MixWizard we used for live shows for both tracking (for analog EQ) and mixing. I've tested this out and I LOVE it! A third distant option is finding a solution for being able to easily record my piano, which isn't at all close to the studio.
The problem? Well, I've tried this before several times. And every time I get stuck on something being out of stock, or having to chance paying like $200 for getting Thunderbolt on my PC (don't, and honestly a solid FU to Intel for bricking fleets of audio gear due to forced deprecation of TB1).
This time around I got so. damn. close. to what I was wanting by way of MOTU's AVB lineup. Why AVB and not Dante? Many folks probably don't know what those even are but basically Dante is license encumbered and expensive (much like Thunderbolt, again, FU to Intel here for putting us in a darker timeline on purpose...). Both of these are Ethernet based solutions, but AVB is an IEEE standard and, on paper, I actually think seems superior (there is also Ravenna, also a non-licensed standard but it hasn't caught on too much in the music space).
Sadly, most MOTU gear is unobtanium at present. Which sucks. A lot. I've been at this for about 3 weeks now to try and find a solution, largely running around in circles.
But! I finally found a solution. It has been more of an investment than I planned, but seems to tick all the boxes.
More on that in part 2!
#StudioNightmares
John suggested I should document a project that's taken me years to finally do - upgrading the "studio" (quotes since it's just my cluttered messy home office). While I was gonna write this on our blog, until we make that thing not embarrassing, I'll post it here. Might not be super interesting but here we go anyway!
My current digital setup is a MOTU 828mk3 with a Saffire Pro 40 connected to it over ADAT. Because I like to track at 96kHz, that means I only get 4 I/O from the pro 40. And 8 (ish) from the MOTU. MOTU is connected over Firewire. Yes Firewire. In 2024. It's better than USB. There. I said it. Fight me.
Sounds like a lot of I/O. And it is! But it gets eaten up quick when considering the synths, the reel to reel, wanting to send to things like my tube pre, etc. I had solved this via a patch bay (I was using wrongly turns out). This mostly worked though.
Two things tipped the scales into wanting to upgrade. I wanted to add in John's MS2000 to our synth army, and importantly I've wanted to use our 16 channel Allen & Heath MixWizard we used for live shows for both tracking (for analog EQ) and mixing. I've tested this out and I LOVE it! A third distant option is finding a solution for being able to easily record my piano, which isn't at all close to the studio.
The problem? Well, I've tried this before several times. And every time I get stuck on something being out of stock, or having to chance paying like $200 for getting Thunderbolt on my PC (don't, and honestly a solid FU to Intel for bricking fleets of audio gear due to forced deprecation of TB1).
This time around I got so. damn. close. to what I was wanting by way of MOTU's AVB lineup. Why AVB and not Dante? Many folks probably don't know what those even are but basically Dante is license encumbered and expensive (much like Thunderbolt, again, FU to Intel here for putting us in a darker timeline on purpose...). Both of these are Ethernet based solutions, but AVB is an IEEE standard and, on paper, I actually think seems superior (there is also Ravenna, also a non-licensed standard but it hasn't caught on too much in the music space).
Sadly, most MOTU gear is unobtanium at present. Which sucks. A lot. I've been at this for about 3 weeks now to try and find a solution, largely running around in circles.
But! I finally found a solution. It has been more of an investment than I planned, but seems to tick all the boxes.
More on that in part 2!
#StudioNightmares