PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic MOTU

Actually to simplify things if I were going to spend $950 a piece for two MOTU units i would just buy a presonus board instead and get it over with. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audio/presonus-studiolive-16.4.2-digital-mixer/478507000000000

I use my Inserts as Inputs, by only going to the half click. A lot of folks using multiple channel soundcards do that.


--Mac

So with inserts and a delta 1010 you could patch 8 outputs from the mixer to the 8 inputs on the delta, and then output the delta back to the mixer for monitoring, i get that way.

Daisy chain two delta 1010, and one 16 channel mixer for 16 channels in.

Don't most Mackie boards have insets on all channels? On my Yamaha board there are 12 channels, but only 4 inserts.

My board does have inserts on all the channels.

See, I stumbled upon 2 MOTU 2408's and the interface card for right around $200, and that was a whole lot more affordable than the $2000 Presonus piece you suggested. And my end goals are not all that complicated.

All I want to do is continue creating music in Real Band and be able to mix it on my Mackie mixer, with my rack mounted effects on the effects bus, EQ if I want it, compression.... those onboard tools just don't work for me. I have yet to be able to use the onboard graphic EQ in Real Band and get anywhere with it because it isn't real time. I don't like "stop the playback, move these sliders with your mouse, hope that it is what you are looking for, and play back, and if it's not right stop the playback and tweak some more." I need to be able to reach out to my 31 band EQ and tweak in real time. The same for reverb.

Until I get this interface card into a computer and see what it looks like I don't know if it will play well with Real Band. That would be the only reason I care about exporting the tracks to Sonar, because I KNOW it plays well with Sonar from being at my friend's studio and using it there. My stuff is so basic that I don't think I have yet approached 16 tracks (maybe 10-11 tracks was my highest).

Rob, you in particular have seen how I struggle with the Real Band onboard stuff. I think for my application external effects are going to work out better for me because I am used to them. I can't EQ to save my soul in Real Band, but that is mainly because it isn't real time. If I can move sliders while I listen, I do a much better job.

My biggest concern here, and the reason for the thread, was whether after generating drums, bass, rhythm guitar, rhythm piano and pedal steel onto 5 tracks in Real Band I can send those 5 tracks out individually to a mixer so I can massage them. According to The Harvmeister I can do that. Obviously I won't have channels for kick, snare, hat, rack, etc..... though I COULD do that by sending MIDI drum events to my drum machine which has an output for each drum, but there is no need to get that deep.

What a deal! $200 great, i hope it all works out well.

Yes "inserts" certainly can be used as direct sends when half jacked. The big difference is that the send point of inserts is after the pre amp & and low cut filter and before the EQ. With Direct sends the send point is Post fader. It utilizes all of the features of the channel. My console allowed the Directs to be either pre or post fader.
Also don't forget if you are going to send from a console to 16 channels of a sound card and want to return those 16 channels back to the mixer you'll need to have at least a 32 channel mixer or do a lot of plugging & unplugging.

Although I use inserts as they are intended, to route a signal out and back, I believe half-jacked refers to plugging the three conductor jack in until you hear one click, not all the way in to hear two. This makes connection with only one of the two circuits. In other words, don't plug it all the way in. You'll feel the first tension point even if you don't hear it.

PS
When you plug a cable only to the first click it allows that cable to grab the signal to be sent to your soundcard WITHOUT activating the switch so the signal continues to also go through the rest of the channel.

Eddie, you wrote: "I can't EQ to save my soul in Real Band, but that is mainly because it isn't real time. If I can move sliders while I listen, I do a much better job. "

This is the root of the entire problem. Offline processing is not easy to use when performing EQ - in fact it's just about useless.

Get a freebie EQ plugin. Save the $200 for the acoustic treatment in your studio.

When you go D/A to the board, outboard effects, etc. and then A/D back in to the computer you WILL introduce noise.

The entire problem is trying to cram a square peg into a round hole with PG's offline processing for EQ.

Here is a link to the freebie classic Kjaerhus series of plugins: http://acoustica1.cachefly.net/other/Classic-Effects-Installer.exe

(There's a fine EQ in there that is real-time)

You can work wonders with those. They are all real-time. None of them will introduce noise like your wiring situation with outboard processing will do.

Also, learn to use the automation envelopes in RB for volume for mixing. With them, you'll find you can mix with more than 10 fingers at a time!

Honestly, I think the reliance upon off-line processing of the PG plugins is really at the root of your frustration; particularly when it comes to EQ. It just doesn't make sense to do it that way - even though offline processing is what comes native in PG products (as far as I know).

My 2 cents which will hopefully save you $200.

-Scott

I don't get what you mean. "not in real time".I assume you mean while recording. This is true if you aren't using ASIO drivers.Scott are you saying that you can use those free plugs "in real Time" to record and not use ASIO?

Plugins worked like a dream, Scott. TY!

I still can't EQ worth a damn, but I'll work with it....

John, in my case, I mean while playing back and mixing down. I was not aware that while playing back I could load in virtual EQs and EQ in real time. I was stopping, opening the Pg 10 band, moving sliders, and playing again to hear the changes I made, which were usually wrong. With the VST EQ I can EQ while the song plays back. I still can't make this foghorn voice sound like Sinatra, but I am working with it.

Looking for that Sinatra/Bennett/Como plugin....

John,

Yes - you can use VST plugins in most hosts both during mixdown/playback, as well as while recording, even though the effect isn't 'printed to tape'. ASIO with low latency is the key.

For example, you can do this with gain changes in most hosts, but it's a virtual gain change, instead of a destructive gain change. You can now do it in PG products with envelopes. But only recently. Most time that people talk about gain change here at PG, they are talking about the destructive (read: permanent) gain change made on a file.

And the recommendation for Kjaerhus classic series of plugins is mine but has been echoed here on PG forums by rharv and others time and again.

Whether someone uses these or PG's or others is beside the point. The main point of the 4 pages of discussion is actually that monitoring of effects in mixdown is very important. This is not what Eddie was doing. He was about to go spend a little bit of coin on a solution that would have been much more complicated than just mixing in the box. And still have questionable results in the end.

This was the nugget quote from the whole 4 pages: ""I can't EQ to save my soul in Real Band, but that is mainly because it isn't real time. If I can move sliders while I listen, I do a much better job. ""

Scott,
The point I tried to make was that Eddie never even tried to use the PG plug-ins ( EQ )in real time. If he had he would have found out they are just fine and CAN be monitored while playing back or doing a mix-down. I am not at all debating the difference in quality of PG vs Kjaerhus as I've never used them. I'm debating the Statement that PG is not real time . They are.

Now maybe what he REALLY means is the ability to listen to the track, be making EQ fader moves,play the track back and have those faders move as recorded.This is automation.Whole other story. As I type this though I realize it can't be what he's after as I doubt he has an automated HW EQ.
Yes being able to go through your tracks and automate all the VST effects moves is wonderful. Once your happy you can just let her fly and have your mix print all by itself. PG effects are not automated.

Perhaps Eddie has only found the older, non-realtime plugins in the Edit menu and does not know that the realtime plugins are accessible via the DX plugin routine...


--Mac

My last post for this thread.

Eddie, you keep referring to your 'foghorn' voice, etc. and how you want to change it via EQ.

I'm afraid that this is going to be quite impossible to do.

Here's an analogy to keep in mind:

When you receive a phone call from a close relative or friend, is there any doubt as to who the person is on the other end of the line?

Usually not. What is remarkable, is that the bandwidth of telephone audible transmission is much more narrow than what you have available with your recorded voice, but the mojo of the voice, it's character and nature comes through loud and clear in a telephone conversation - even with it's limited bandwidth, and sharp resonances and valleys, distortions from crappy speakers and mics, etc. Like old AM transistor radio frequency content but worse.

Your voice is your voice. You can EQ it till the cows come home and it will still sound like your voice.

I listened to your recordings and in most of them, you have a clean recording, with little evidence of room resonances showing up in them that EQ can help to fix. A little high-pass filtering would be all that is necessary to take some of the low end out for clarity in a few spots.

Think of the most popular, lasting bands that have been in pop-music in the last 40-50 years.

Beatles, Stones, Alabama, U2, Rascal Flatts, (insert your favorite here) etc. etc. etc. Have ANY of them, had a singer with a beautiful voice? I mean Tormé Velvet Fog quality. Some of the R&B vocal combo groups did actually have great singers in them, but in R&R and C&W, for the most part there's a whole spectrum of what would be considered crummy solo singers by voice quality alone. Think of favorite local bands - same story I'm guessing. Very, very few pop/rock/C&W bands or even pop solo acts rest on laurels of great voice quality.

In listening to the recordings, I do think there's probably a little bit of room for you with vocal technique. But that's just to my ear. You need to decide precisely what it is about your voice that irritates you. Here's a wild idea:

1. Take the $200 you were going to spend on the MOTU units and the $50-100 you would likely spend on decent cables to hook it all up, set that money aside.

2. Burn a home-made CD of your recordings.

3. Find a local, recommended voice coach/teacher

4. Find out how many voice lessons $300 would pay for. I'm guessing you will get 5-8 lessons out of that. In the first visit with the coach, use that CD and while listening, point out what it is that bothers YOU to the coach. If you can't verbalize it to the coach, it's going to be very difficult to either process it out of the music, or teach it out of your technique. You might find that to be a very difficult process, but it is central to being able to change what irritates you about your recorded voice.

The reason I recommend this last process is that the coach might want to train your technique to what suits him/her, and you could still end up disappointed. You need to be able to verbalize what it is, at specific moments and phrases, that sounds irritating to your ear. If you can point out something like: "Here, when I sing the word 'really', I don't like how nasal it sounds" to yourself or to the coach, then the voice lessons will be kind of a waste.

In fact, you don't even have to do this with a coach. Take one of your recordings (one without alot of outboard processing) and critically listen to it bar by bar. Write out notes like the one above. When you are able to do that, go spend some coin on the voice lesson #1.

Getting voice lessons is nothing to be ashamed of. No more shame than taking guitar lessons, drum lessons, etc.

And by the way, at least with Sinatra and Bennett, the key there is their technique and ability to smoothly slide in and out of notes with their own identifiable flair. Neither of their voices is particularly rich. EQ had very little to do with their success. My High School choir teacher abhorred Sinatra (at least back in my day) as exactly what they would try to teach out of our technique. He used the term derogatorily as in 'Hey, Sinatra, hit the note at the beginning, not 3/4 of the way into it!'

Think of your fave Sinatra phrases from his entire discography. I'll lay money there's a serious slide involved. Whether it's: "Come ffffffllllllllllyyyyyy with me", or "New Yooooooorrrrrrrkkk" For examples of a slide up and a slide down, Sinatra was the master of that and made it cool.

If that's what you're shooting for, a good vocal coach can help you learn how to do that - maybe not with the same flair, but at least get you close.

Just another 2 cents.