[wintaki]

Hi,

I am setting up a new home studio for myself. I'm a bit stuck now
trying to decide exactly what to get.

Basically I'm not doing anything complicated or recording many live
sources at once (typically maybe 2 vocals, a synth or two, drum
machine, etc). I wanted a rack mount interface however, as I don't
like those small boxes that sit on top of the computer, etc.
Basically I want an 8 in/8 out interface with at least 2 pre-amps.

So, I was looking at some of the MOTU devices, they seem to be popular
and fit the bill. I think the 828 has pre-amps and is more or less
what I need. However, I really want to be able to mix with a board
instead of mouse/keyboard (I know I will be using the mouse for some
things, but would like to have faders available, etc). I also would
like to patch in, for example, a compressor when recording vocals.

I looked at the Mackie Onyx 1220/1640 with the FireWire option. This
at first seemed to be a nice fit, but further investigation reveals
that it sends everything to the PC pre-insert/send/eq etc. I would
almost always record clean, but do like slight compression on the
vocal just to manage peak levels, etc. Also, the Onyx can not control
PC software (I am using Sonar) as far as I know. Its a great device
if using it with a live band and also getting a clean 16 track
recording at the same time, but all my work is done in the studio.

The Tascam DM3200 seems to do exactly what I want but is surely over
kill - I guess it will cost me about $3500 with the FireWire card but
it will do everything I need and much more. If that's what's needed I
can go that route. I was hoping to spend somewhere in the $1500 range
instead though. But I do want a reasonable good "prosumer" device.

Anyone know of other alternatives? I know there is the Tascam 1884
firewire device but I read that it was fairly old product and reaching
the end of its lifetime (not sure how true that is).

Anyway, any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

-win

[Mike Rivers]

On Nov 16, 1:59 pm, wintaki wrote:

Basically I'm not doing anything complicated or recording many live
sources at once (typically maybe 2 vocals, a synth or two, drum
machine, etc). I wanted a rack mount interface however, as I don't
like those small boxes that sit on top of the computer, etc.
Basically I want an 8 in/8 out interface with at least 2 pre-amps.

So, I was looking at some of the MOTU devices, they seem to be popular
and fit the bill. I think the 828 has pre-amps and is more or less
what I need. However, I really want to be able to mix with a board
instead of mouse/keyboard

I looked at the Mackie Onyx 1220/1640 with the FireWire option. This
at first seemed to be a nice fit, but further investigation reveals
that it sends everything to the PC pre-insert/send/eq etc. I would
almost always record clean, but do like slight compression on the
vocal just to manage peak levels, etc. Also, the Onyx can not control
PC software (I am using Sonar) as far as I know.

The Tascam DM3200 seems to do exactly what I want but is surely over
kill

You've done your homework pretty well. Have you considered combining
the 8x8 interface of your choice with a mixer? That's going to be
overkill some of the time, but it's an expandable system and you may
find the mixer to be useful on its own some of the time. You won't be
able to control the software with the mixer, but you will be able to
mix the 8 outputs of the audio interface hands-on and you'll have some
extra preamps available should you need them. A Mackie Onyx 1220 mixer
(without the Firewire card) and a Mackie 400F (or a MOTU or RME or
Focusrite or Presonus or Whatever . . . there's a truckload of 'em
now) should get you in pretty good shape. It'll take up less space and
cost less than a TASCAM digital mixer, and will take much longer to
become obsolete and unsupported. And having a real analog mixer will
give you real no-latency input monitoring, which is a nice thing.