The mixerless studio

This is very true, and often goes toward what an individual's expectations
were.  I never tried the Audigy products because I didn't expect they were
intended for the professional or semi-professional market.  They always
seemed to me to be marketed toward consumers, especially gamers.  I don't
expect a product marketed in that direction to be great for my area, even if
it accidentally might be.  You have to look at intentions, not just
features.  It's kind of like buying a car that happens to have an amphibious
feature that turns it into a boat, then expecting it works as well as a boat
as a dedicated motorboat.

On the other hand, it is pretty clear to me that the 1820m is marketed
toward at least semi-professionals, if not professionals -- e.g. they
prominently mention in their ads that it is using the same A/D converters as
ProTools HD (and, while ProTools' converters haven't historically had a
great reputation, ProTools HD's converters have gotten quite positive
reviews).  Not to mention that they've got sync options up the wazoo that
would make them fit nicely into a post-production environment (perhaps one
of the key professional environments for home and project studios).  I don't
expect to find the 1820m in a gamer's rig, and the bundling of the product
isn't one I'd expect to attract gamers, either.

Also, E-MU, while owned by Creative, does have a pretty decent history of
making strong products for the professional and semi-professional music
markets.  Emulator X, at least on paper (and I haven't used it enough to
have a real hands-on perspective), seems like it is designed to try and get
back into that territory in light of the sampler world's having recently
been taken over by software-based instruments, starting with GigaStudio and
now adding KONTAKT, MachFive, and HALion.

Rick

-- ==============================­=======
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: http://home.earthlink.net/~ric kpaul
MP3s: http://www.soundclick.com/rick paul
==============================­=======

Rick,

I'm not saying that people can't use EMU products successfully. And it's good
that you have yours running.

I am saying Creative who owns EMU has a long history of putting out poor
drivers.  They have a history of poor customer service;They build products based
on buzz words instead good engineering; And they don't owe up nor try to correct
the products that are outright failures
( The Audigy being one).

PapaNate

In article <422E47F3.2D45 @nc.rr.com>, nospamag @nc.rr.com says...

I really have to wonder at posts like this. Did an EMU/Creative product
beat you up as a child or something?

Pick a product, any product, and you will find anecdotal evidence
suggesting it sucks and is also the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Why do people make it their personal mission to denigrate certain
products?

I seriously don't get it.
--

Imagining a world with no hypothetical situations
BC Project - www.bcproject.com

In article <Ne-dnU68AO_92rPfRVn @suscom.com>, deibl @suscom.net
says...

I like 'em. My mixes are better and translate better but I also did some
fairly extensive room-treatment at the same time so I can't give the
BlueSkys all the credit there.

I really like the EMU 1820m as well. Super-flexible and sounds fantastic
(the FX are marginal but useful for headphone mix FX etc.).

IMHO -For the desktop musician, the "soundcard + mixer" model is getting
kind of anachronistic. Things like the Mackie Big Knob or the
CentralStation (or dare I suggest EMU/Bluesky?) are the way to go.
--

Imagining a world with no hypothetical situations
BC Project - www.bcproject.com

As has been stated in this newsgroup a gazillion times, Creative drivers are piss
poor. They don't play well with DAW software. EMU is owned by Creative, and as such
their drivers are built by Creative people.  Does this mean you can't get a Creative
product running on your system...Of course not. It does mean that more people than
not have problems with Creative drivers and products. And I wouldn't recommend any
Creative product to a Sonar user such as Eric.

OTOH Companies like M-Audio,Frontier, RME, and  Avid/Pro Tools always work at
keeping the customers happy, have superior customer service, and professional
products, and great drivers. And problems are owed up too, and fixed.

Did reality beat you up as a kid?

PapaNate

The only issue I've seen to date with the ASIO drivers for the 1820m in the
roughly a month and a half that I've been using the 1820m is that, if SONAR
(or Project5, for that matter) crashes, the ASIO drivers get locked up until
a reboot.  Thankfully SONAR doesn't crash very frequently.  I've also heard
E-MU is working on a fix for this problem, but don't know an ETA.  I
consider this issue to be a pain, but relatively minor in the big picture,
at least for my singer/songwriter studio (read "no paying customers on the
clock") uses.

I haven't done much with the FX and Emulator X side of things to date, but I
really like the hardware side a lot, especially the quality of the mic
preamps and A/D converters (i.e. compared to the Mackie 32*8 mixer and MOTU
2408 mkII I was using in these respective areas previously).  A few people
who have heard in-progress recordings made with those have specifically
commented on the improved sound of my recorded vocals (all my instrumental
tracks are softsynths).  One guy who heard a female singer I'd recorded
recently was even asking about special sound treatments in my studio
(absolutely none, and the computer is less than 6 feet away from the mic,
too), and what kind of mic (CAD Equitek E200, but through Antares Mic
Modeler made to emulate an AKG C414 in that particular case) and preamp
(just the one on the 1802m) were used because he was very impressed by the
vocal sound.

I'd used the MOTU 2408 mkII for something like 3 years, and was pretty happy
with that, but I've deconfigured it and boxed it up now, because the 1820m
has definitely proved to be the upgrade I'd hoped it would be.  (Anyone
wanna by a 2408 mkII???)

Rick
-- ==============================­=======
Rick Paul
Closet Cowboy Music (ASCAP)
Web: http://home.earthlink.net/~ric kpaul
MP3s: http://www.soundclick.com/rick paul
==============================­=======

Ah...  Never mind.
eric

I'd forgotten about that.
I'd put in a filter for all those words, too.

Steven

I believe this is an effective solution to the above dilemma:
http://www.presonus.com/centra lstation.html
I have it on my own wishlist.

--
Rev. T. H. Eslam
http://members.SibeliusMusic.c om/tomeslam

Dang!  I've been considering the exact same rig!  How do you like the
Blue Sky monitors?  How do you like the EMU?
eric

"Mod Bod (Dave)" <mod @tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message

Technically, no.  Practically, yes.

I still do have a Mackie 32*8 in my studio.  Until a few months back it was
only being used as a mic preamp, and, on rare occasions when I record
someone else in my studio, for an extra headphone output.  As of the moment,
though, it is sitting there idle, with a towel over it to keep dust off, and
isn't configured into my signal chain at all.  Really it's just waiting for
me to get off my butt and try and sell it.

Right now I have an E-MU 1820m sound card, with its AudioDock, as my audio
interface.  I'm just monitoring in stereo, so am using its first two outputs
to feed my power amp, which then feeds my (non-powered) nearfields.  If I
need to use headphones, I just use the built-in headphone jack on the
AudioDock.  E-MU was thoughtful enough to include a splitter for the
headphone jack, so I can even use this when recording another vocalist
(which I have done -- it worked fine).  That limits me to having the same
mix for both of us, but I just set it for the other person's preferences
since it's only for tracking vocals (or possibly other miked instruments,
but I haven't done that to date), and the tracking usually doesn't take long
anyway.

Needless to say, this may be a bit limited if I needed to track more people
in parallel, but that hasn't happened in the 7 or 8  years since I moved to
the computer for my "tape deck".  I think there was one time I was almost
going to have to have three people in here -- one being a guy paying me to
record some demos for him, another being a hired vocalist, and the third
being me -- but the vocalist never showed, so the session didn't happen.
That was back when I did have the mixer, and I'd jury-rigged a third
headphone connection using a cassette deck set in Record mode (at the time,
my soundcard didn't have a headphone output and the Mackie mixer only has
two).  But my room is so small that it wouldn't be convenient for working
with more than two people anyway, and most of the time it is just me, so I'm
not going to worry too much about exceptions like that.

I'd say as close to it as you can reasonably get, but not necessarily zero.
The E-MU 1820m does have zero latency monitoring, and it also has onboard
DSP for FX, so, for example, it is possible to let the singer hear reverb
(that doesn't go to the recording) if she needs that for optimal
performance.  Personally, I prefer to track my vocals totally dry, so the FX
wouldn't have been an issue for me.  However, if it were, say, a guitar
player going direct, and wanting to hear an amped signal to play against,
this could be handy (there is also built in amp simulation among the onboard
FX).  On the other hand, SONAR's input monitoring can go reasonably low on
latency, and probably low enough for use in this application.

The area whe

Yes - I'm now mixerless.

I'm using a EMU-1820M that has all the ins & outs that I need. My main
monitors are Blue-Sky ProDesks that have a wired volume control. I don't
use much outboard so 8-ins are enough. I don't miss my mixer at all.

--

Imagining a world with no hypothetical situations
BC Project - www.bcproject.com

The EMU is made by Creative. You are asking for months of driver pain, even if
people have the system working and swear by it.

Why tempt fate so?

PapaNate

Hi Dave!
Go back to the thread of 2/26 where I asked about headphone mixing
ideas....it totally fits your question.

"Mod Bod (Dave)" <mod @tampabay.rr.com> wrote in message

  > Maybe use that for monitoring purposes and get another with better
mic pres.

You don't need a mixer for that. Get some killer pres
and just mult the output into your mainstream mixer for monitoring.
Any decent pre will drive two or three outputs in paralell with zero
problems.

Pat

Well, you used to. But I really meant the low dollar monitoring mixer
that you have to handle all the "more me" requests.

Very good.

Actually, most "io card" definitions of 'zero latency' are really more
like three sample times if they do the routing as digital,
as it takes at least one sample time to convert from analog to digital,
some tiny amount of time to move it to the DAC, and one sample time
to generate the analog voltage from the 16 (or 24bit) sample.

But for most practical purposes, since 4/44100
is a small number, even twenty sample times is
effectively zero.

With a analog mixer for monitoring, you can get it close to
zero, but if you add in a digital reverb, you get
at least some latency back

That is tons, I sometimes use three headphone mixes, but
even that is a royal PITA to manage

Knobs are theological as well.
You can use any knob that sends signals, I use
a Contour USB controller for that.
YMMV.

--
Pat Farrell
http://www.pfarrell.com/prc/

I have been mixerless for quite a while.  I have a rack of various pre amps
routed directly to my two delta 1010's which also provice near-zero latency
monitoring.

My nearfields are plugged into H/W Out 1/2.  I use the various other outputs
for headphones.

Have you seen my posts about multi-monitor mixes using input monitoring and
aux buses?
While this does not apply to someone recording themself, the concept still
applies:
Use SONAR as your patchbay.  Put your Medusela on eBay.

Steven