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My New Studio Build (perhaps overly detailed)
- Thread starter silky smoove
- Start date
You know it!"Retro Cream" is worth waiting for.
I see you're in Tacoma. Are you part of the Seattle Area Bass Nerds Facebook group?
I am, I see you on there from time to time. That would be me who posted that post yesterday about looking for a cheapo acoustic bass.
I'm also part of the "Bass Northwest" group too.
Oh yeah yeah, I saw that post. Nice to see you here and there!I am, I see you on there from time to time. That would be me who posted that post yesterday about looking for a cheapo acoustic bass.
I'm also part of the "Bass Northwest" group too.
My ancient MOTU 828 just recently died and I replaced it with a 16A. Amazing sounding piece of kit. I immediately noticed an improvement across the board--tighter lows, sweeter high end, nicer stereo spread. Nothing else changed--still listening on my Event ASP8 monitors.
The lack of a headphone output was a challenge--I ended up building a CAPI headphone amp for my 500 rack and that does the job more than admirably. I've got the 16A fronted by a rack of CAPI and Sound Skulptor preamps. I opted to go the 500-series route years ago and I'm glad I did. Great quality as well as the ability to upgrade as I'm able to free up funds for another channel.
I'm using a Mackie MCU Pro as my control surface (fronting Cubase 10.5). Can't speak to the preamps in it as I don't use them. But as a control surface, I like it quite a bit. I don't have any extenders, but I love that they're there and easy to integrate.
I guess my point is, you would be quite happy with the 16A should you decide to move in that direction.
Cheers,
Wade
I'm still considering a 16A for the studio. The lack of dedicated headphone outs was an initial concern, but once I realized that any of the 16 analog outputs could be routed to anything through the matrix mixer I realized that for my needs I could route one to a monitor controller's headphone input for me, then I could route as many as I wanted to a patchbay for connection to something like a Behringer Powerplay P1 mounted on a mic stand. That would give the performer control of their headphone level rather than asking me for more or less level to their cans. Three people is about the max I can record simultaneously, and three of these with mic stands would not break the bank.
Just as an FYI in case you ever try to use the Mackie MCU Pro to expand your preamp count; It doesn't have any preamps. It's just a control surface. The SSL Nucleus is the only control surface I can think of, outside of digital mixers that can also function as control surfaces, that includes mic preamps.
For some reason, I thought it did--but clearly I was confusing that with the Big Knob. No need for those non-existent preamps anyway. I've got 10 really kick ass sounding preamps (and a handful of less than "ass kicking" ones) and I rarely need more than that these days. I don't record drums in my current location (no room for a kit, which as a drummer bums me out), but I will again once I move. That should align well with building 6 additional CAPI/SoundSkulptor preamps to round out the inputs.
Mackie preamps are OK in general--I've owned two of their mixing consoles over the years. As long as you don't push them, they do a fine job.
I've got an ancient Beri PowerPlay Pro XL (the 4 channel guy) and it does an OK job at making headphones loud (sounding good is a different story). But much like the Mackie preamps, there's no comparison to the CAPI offering.
Mackie preamps are OK in general--I've owned two of their mixing consoles over the years. As long as you don't push them, they do a fine job.
I've got an ancient Beri PowerPlay Pro XL (the 4 channel guy) and it does an OK job at making headphones loud (sounding good is a different story). But much like the Mackie preamps, there's no comparison to the CAPI offering.
These would be solely for the performers’ monitoring needs through a set of iso headphones which are already not nice sounding. My space is a combined control and live room due to space limitations. I need isolation in the cans and sufficient volume. Anything beyond that is prioritized WAY lower. If I’ve got a drummer and keyboardist tracking simultaneously I just need them to hear the click and/or backing track, their inputs mixed independently, and as much of the other player as they want. If that happens and they have their own self-controlled and independent overall volume control I’m in good shape.
@mrface2112 your post’s timing is excellent. I finally got Apogee to agree to a refund. My Element 88s are going back and a 16A, two 8-channel preamps, monitor controller and patchbay will be taking its place.
That’s amazing news, tempered by the lameness you’ve gone through trying to get them operational.
Just need to call MOTU tomorrow during business hours to confirm some of my thoughts on how I’d route everything. Their software mixer grid is very complicated, but looks immensely powerful. I think what I have planned will work, but I need to confirm with them before pulling the trigger on anything.
I’m considering a pair of Line Audio 8MP preamps to start. I’ll probably replace one of them with four channels of Neve and four channels of API somewhere down the line. That will give me 8 channels of clean, and two sets of 4 channels with a more colorful sound. For now I need to prioritize clean channel count over “money” channels since I’m going to be about $2,000 out of pocket even after the refund from Apogee.
I’m considering a pair of Line Audio 8MP preamps to start. I’ll probably replace one of them with four channels of Neve and four channels of API somewhere down the line. That will give me 8 channels of clean, and two sets of 4 channels with a more colorful sound. For now I need to prioritize clean channel count over “money” channels since I’m going to be about $2,000 out of pocket even after the refund from Apogee.
MOTU confirmed that everything I need the 16A to do will work as I expected. I placed an order for everything this morning. The Line Audio 8MP was a little tricky since it's built by a one-man operation in Sweden and sold through No Hype Audio in France. Roger, the owner of Line Audio isn't going to be building more 8MP preamps until August with delivery to No Hype Audio in September. My plan was to order two 8MP preamps, then down the road have an 8MP, a Warm WA412 and four GAP 73Pre-JR preamps make up my 16 channel front end, with the Warm and GAP units replacing one of the two 8MP preamps I had planned on ordering. Since I can't have anyone come to the studio to record during the pandemic, and the fact that I can easily get by with 8 channels for the time being I've opted to just get the one 8MP rather than ordering a second ahead of September delivery. This will cost less in the long run and I'll just have to accept the fact that only half of my interface will be utilized 
Apogee Element 88s packaged and dropped off at FedEx. As soon as they issue my refund I'll be done with them as a company, at least for the time being. I really like their integration with Logic, the sound of their preamps, the sound of their converters, and the general design philosophy of their products as an all-in-one solution for working on a Mac. That said, they simply did not work as advertised while they were working, and didn't work at all while they weren't. Their Symphony converters are used by some of the best in the business, but it's unfortunate that in order for me to get reliable performance I would seemingly need to jump up to their flagship product which is thousands of dollars more expensive than their mid-tier, prosumer offerings in the Element series. Fittingly enough, the MOTU 16A that I have en route uses the same converters as the Apogee Symphony, so my conversion quality should be making a big step up. The preamps I'm getting are very high quality, but to be fair to the Element 88s their preamps were also excellent. Until I get some specific character preamps in here I think the preamps will be a lateral move from one great set to another.
Everything from Sweetwater will be here on Wednesday, except for the 16-point patch bay to get microphones into the mic preamps and then to the converters. The Line Audio mic preamp is en route from France as we speak, and hopefully won't take long to clear customs. I also just grabbed some more Softube plugins during their May sale for a 19-song record I'm mixing and mastering next month. Happy days despite all of the chaos going on in the world with the pandemic.
Also, the debut from my band The Getup will release on Saturday. It's the first full production to come out of my studio outside of some film soundtrack work I did a few months ago that's yet to be released. I even edited the video for it myself. I'm quite excited. The mastering was done by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound in Nashville who's won a bunch of grammys and has worked with everyone from Paul McCartney to Adele to Lady Gaga to... the list goes on and on. I'll share it here when it's available. For those of you not averse to social media, here's a teaser clip:
Also, the debut from my band The Getup will release on Saturday. It's the first full production to come out of my studio outside of some film soundtrack work I did a few months ago that's yet to be released. I even edited the video for it myself. I'm quite excited. The mastering was done by Randy Merrill at Sterling Sound in Nashville who's won a bunch of grammys and has worked with everyone from Paul McCartney to Adele to Lady Gaga to... the list goes on and on. I'll share it here when it's available. For those of you not averse to social media, here's a teaser clip:
Thanks!
The drums are a love/hate thing for me. That’s my studio kit with my drummer Jack’s cymbals. I screwed up a Massenburg overheads arrangement and as a result the stereo image of the drums is really narrow to the point that it almost sounds like it’s collapsed to mono. Panning the toms helped, but all the cymbals are nearly mono. By the time I caught it we were well passed the point of fixing it. I tend to fully mix in mono, then spread everything out at the end and make final tweaks. Because of that the lack of spread didn’t occur to me until far too late. Oh well. It still came out great.
I have only listened through headphones so far, but I really wouldn't worry about that, cymbals are fine. To be honest, so much of the horns and percussion were hard panned (again, listening in phones) that it felt good to have plenty of drums grounding the mix firmly in the center sound stage.
Agree with @IconBasser , great work!
