The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Okay, so the DACs in my trusty Tascam US-428 have decided they're too indie to actually produce any sound. (The rest of the device is fine - ADCs, MIDI, control surface, and direct monitoring work, but the DACs are dead. Too bad those are the most important part!)

So does anyone have any reasonable recommendations for what to replace it with? I'd like an external box (USB is okay, USB2 or FireWire would be better of course), at least 4 inputs (though I can live with 2), and MIDI would be nice but I'd be fine with switching to a dedicated MIDI interface too. Built-in phantom power and a control surface are like-to-have but not must-have (I find I don't actually use the control surface in the 428 that much, and anyway there's better dedicated surfaces available with better Logic integration).

I'm pretty interested in the Tascam US-144 (2 audio, 1 midi, phantom power) but it's not available yet and its predecessor (the 122) didn't get very good reviews.

I suppose as a stopgap thing I could feed my mixer through the onboard audio on my G5 (which is actually pretty okay) and just get a dedicated MIDI box (or maybe keep using the 428 for MIDI and control surface). Actually I might be pretty happy with that setup overall. But I'd still like to keep my eyes open for a nice dedicated external box.

Okay I like <a href="http://www.guitarcenter.com/shop/produc ... 6432">this MIDI interface</a> (5x5! wow!) and so that + onboard audio = probably fine for me.

I know a lot of people who are retarded for the Firebox. Haven't used one myself. I think it's 1x1 in the midi department, though.

If that's actually 6x10 in the AD/DA department, then yes, that seems pretty dang amazing. The description is a bit confusing and vague though, and sounds like it could just be a 6-input software-controlled mixer which records through a 2-channel ADC. The description on the <a href="http://www.presonus.com/firebox.html">official product site</a> doesn't really clear things up, though, but it still seems like it's only stereo recording.

Meanwhile I'm trying mixer direct into my computer and I'm finding that the G5's onboard audio doesn't allow hardware monitoring. That's annoying! Maybe there's some mode my mixer can go into which lets me mix in a signal from my computer without it being fed back through to REC OUT or something. Time to RTFM.

I moved up from the US-428 to the Yamaha 01X. Its a trully great control surface/audio-midi interface/Digital mixer with DSP effects on-board . It has everything you describe you'd like. 2 x midi in's, 8 controllable inputs and loads of configurability

CONS -
-It is fiddly to set-up initially. Once you crack it though it is solid as a rock
-It is $999 new but on Ebay there are a couple that look like they will come in at $500-700.

Bethany inherited my US-428 until it strated to misbehave and we switched he to the Presonus Inspire 1394 . It is a great simple interface which you can get for around $199 for her but has no midi and only 2 audio interface physical inputs. There is no control surface, but you can daisy chain these and the software/drivers will map all the inputs as a virtual total.

I did own for a short time the Alesis Multimix Firewire Mixer. This gives you 8-16 physical inputs with all mapping as simultaneous channels in whatever DAW software you are using. Unfortunately the mix out is just a simple stereo. I used this for live recording and it worked really nicely.

Alesis however have now introduced something new in the last year which I have not tried but looks like it is a fit against your requirements for physical control/midi input and multiple simultaneous audio inputs. They are called the Alesis IO and come in 3 flavors. Looks intriguing if you want to check deeper.[/url]

Sounds like 428s have an annoying tendency to fail after a while. Guess I'll stop recommending it to others, if mine wasn't an isolated failure. Meh.

Hm, the Inspire 1394 looks like it's exactly what I want, actually. I've decided it'd be better to go with separate MIDI and audio anyway, and I don't really use my control surface much so I'll just get a separate jog controller or something (which is all I used on the 428). Actually I look forward to freeing up a lot of desk space; you know how bulky the 428 is. :)

I'll look for it at Guitar Center tomorrow since I've been meaning to pick up some other things anyway (yay labor day sales!). It looks like Guitar Center carries it on the website, though dunno about actual stores.

Eh, I dunno, I'm kinda apathetic about the PreSonus. It's kind of... disruptive to set the levels and things. You can't just bump up the levels a little on a dial, you have to open up that little program and do it and eh. I dunno. Maybe I was just used to the Tascam. I think if you have a permanant set up(unlike me, who has a laptop that's always getting turned off/unplugged from everything thus it loses all the levels) it would work, but for me it doesn't. It sounds like it'd work for you though.

Buy me an audio interface which is small and has dials to turn for levels and holes for me to plug mics in and I will send you my Presonus It's not used much and has been mostly sitting under my desk for a few months.

Does your dad know this? ;)

Shh. It's unlikely I'll get to do any recording this upcoming school year anyway, so it's all kinda moot.

Bjam wrote:It's unlikely I'll get to do any recording this upcoming school year anyway

Hopefully you'll find a bit of time here and there!

Bjam wrote:Buy me an audio interface which is small and has dials to turn for levels and holes for me to plug mics in and I will send you my Presonus It's not used much and has been mostly sitting under my desk for a few months.

I suggest the M-Audio MobilePre. It is exactly that. Also, it is buss powered, so you can take it with you and record anywhere.

Ken

Bjam wrote:Shh. It's unlikely I'll get to do any recording this upcoming school year anyway, so it's all kinda moot.

Never make predictions like that.

Guitar Center had the PreSonus Inspire 1394 on sale for $150 today, so I picked up one of those, as well as a MOTU FastTrack (they didn't have the 5x5 one but I only really need 2x2 for now anyway) and a Contour Shuttle Pro controller. Now to redo all the connections in my studio! Joy!

jb wrote:

Bjam wrote:Shh. It's unlikely I'll get to do any recording this upcoming school year anyway, so it's all kinda moot.

Never make predictions like that.

AP classes plus 2 extra 'major' classes plus dramas and musicals plus SATs plus college crap = Screw you, free time to do music.

Okay, I totally see what Bjam means about the annoying UI on the Inspire, though it's livable.

The Inspire also comes with a bunch of pretty cool plugins, including some from the Pluggo collection. I'm having lots of fun with Feedback Network right now, and Resonation is really cool. Expect future Sockpuppet songs to be full of weird. :D

fluffy wrote:The Inspire also comes with a bunch of pretty cool plugins, including some from the Pluggo collection. I'm having lots of fun with Feedback Network right now, and Resonation is really cool. Expect future Sockpuppet songs to be full of weird. :D

It turns out Pluggo Jr. is a free download (here) that has 12 plugins, including both of those. I'm planning on having a tinker with 'em later this evening :)

Bjam wrote:

jb wrote:

Bjam wrote:Shh. It's unlikely I'll get to do any recording this upcoming school year anyway, so it's all kinda moot.

Never make predictions like that.

AP classes plus 2 extra 'major' classes plus dramas and musicals plus SATs plus college crap = Screw you, free time to do music.

IB Classes + 3 IB Tests in May + Jazz Band + Logic Class at Community College + College Crap + NHS/YearBook/Underground Newspaper/4000 Word Extended Essay/150 Hours Community Service... Still != Screw you, free time to do music. JB's still right no matter what you've got going on.

(Granted I'm not an active SongFight contender, but that doesn't mean I'm not an active songwriter/recording artist/whatever.)

Yes but in the meantime this Inspire 1394 is rather nice. There's a bit of an annoying twitter in the right headphone but the speaker outputs are clean and the inputs are also nice. I can't figure out how to set the phono jacks to hi-z though. Maybe they autodetect? Who knows.

Bjam wrote:

jb wrote:

Bjam wrote:Shh. It's unlikely I'll get to do any recording this upcoming school year anyway, so it's all kinda moot.

Never make predictions like that.

AP classes plus 2 extra 'major' classes plus dramas and musicals plus SATs plus college crap = Screw you, free time to do music.

Ahhh...the distinctive, mournful cry of the earnest teenage student! Haven't heard that for years! Better get it down on tape - it changes very quickly

jb wrote:Hey guys, just a few notes to try to help us all make the Help and How To forum as useful as possible.

1. Make all the new threads you want, but whenever possible use the <b>most specific subject that you can think of</b>. If you don't know what the subject should be, just indicate that in your first post and a moderator will come up with one after the discussion is under way.

2. Don't start discussions on unrelated subjects in a thread. If it's related, that's fine, but it will be better to put new topics into new threads.

[...]

<b>NOTE:</b> Posts that aren't actually helpful might be removed. I don't just mean flames or whatnot, but boring old regular replies too. Please don't be offended, it's simply an effort to keep the content of this forum with <b>as high a signal/noise ratio as possible</b>.

[...] I'm sincerely hoping that you will all help make this forum a useful resource for songwriters and not just another in-joke-and-flame-ridden morass of useless banter.

(i.e. could we please keep this on-topic?)

obscurity wrote: It turns out Pluggo Jr. is a free download (here) that has 12 plugins, including both of those. I'm planning on having a tinker with 'em later this evening

oooooh, thanks for the link.
nice plugins

-craig

Quick question:

I just got a big fancy keyboard thing. Actually it's my mother-in-laws, who left it at my house so she can practise piano when she comes visiting.

How do I use it for recoding? It has a USB output. And MIDI.

Is it best to plug it straight into my Mac using the USB - or should I plug it into my pre-amp first using MIDI cable?

I haven't really had a chance to play with it yet to see what it can do - though I have been able to get it to make some amusing farting sounds. It came with a really fat manual - so if at all possible, I'd like to avoid having to read it.