Digi002, Expansion suggestions, and Reaper

[darthjujuu]

So here's my tale.

I've been grappling with trying to decide on a solution for upgrading from a firepod. do i want just another 8 pre firewire interface? if so, which brand? how bout a PCI system? maybe a lightpipe interface and start a preamp collection?? do i want to eff around with protools??

all questions that would bounce around my skull unanswered for weeks at a time.

until i crossed paths with a buddy of mine who went to school for engineering, graduated in '07, and then never mixed again. he said i could keep his digi002 board in my studio, indefinitely. awesome.

so this pretty much answers all my questions/decisions for me.

4 mic pre's isn't enough, so right off the bat i'll need more.

QUESTION #1:
should i start collecting a pile of tube pre's and channel strips, or just pick up a strip of 8 and ADAT into the digi?

QUESTION #2:
i'm leaning towards the strip of 8, but which ones?? digimax? octopre? onyx?? other?? does it REALLY matter? whichever i find cheapest on eBay first??

QUESTION #3: Reaper, ProTools, and life.

i've heard (from ryan@catharsis) that the digiboards controls can MIDI map to reaper. this sounds epic. but i've also heard (i believe it was one of marcus' posts, could be wrong) that the digi hardware is ALMOST unusable in anything other than PT. i consider myself to be a master of PC hardware/drivers, so if anyone can get it to work, i can, unless ofcourse it simply cannot be done.

the workflow i had envisioned would be tracking/beat detective/editing in Protools, bouncing each track, and resuming mixing/tweaking/whatever else in Reaper. realistically, i'll probably end up fulltime PT. i don't even know why I want to do it this way, i think it's because of my increasingly obsurd VST plugin collection, and also because i feel some sort of strong allegiance to reaper, and have always held a grudge against PT. but alas, eventually reality sets in.

thoughts, advice, anything?

 

[Metaltastic]

i've heard (from ryan@catharsis) that the digiboards controls can MIDI map to reaper. this sounds epic. but i've also heard (i believe it was one of marcus' posts, could be wrong) that the digi hardware is ALMOST unusable in anything other than PT. i consider myself to be a master of PC hardware/drivers, so if anyone can get it to work, i can, unless ofcourse it simply cannot be done.

Yup, that was me, and that was my experience with the MBOX2 - maybe the ASIO drivers (for use with Reaper) on the 002 are better, but I've heard from many people that the WDM drivers are as shitty/non-existent as ever! (so good luck using it as your interface for music listening, youtube, etc. ) You're in quite a dilemma I must say, as the offer of a free interface is pretty damn enticing; come to think of it, my only qualm with the ASIO drivers on my MBOX2 was horrid latency, but if you're not going to be tracking in Reaper (just mixing), then I wouldn't think that'd be too much of a problem! (granted, it's annoying having to move the fader/eq control/other FX parameter really slowly so you don't overshoot the mark, but that's little enough to get used to I'd say!)

As for the 8-channel ADAT stuff, OctoPre LE with the ADAT card seems like the best value!

 

[darthjujuu]

marcus, you are an unstoppable posting machine. thanks for the info! anyone else?

 

[darthjujuu]

and LE aside, the big kahuna Octopre looks amazing o_0 A/D is built right in and it has analogue compression/limiting on every channel with one knob 0_0 !!! $899 on musiciansfriend. uh oh, i feel an impulse buy coming...

 

[Nitrobattery]

I've used my 002 with both PT and Cakewalk with zero issues. I haven't tried it with reaper though

 

[Metaltastic]

Hmm, interesting - was this on a Mac still, or PC?

 

[Nitrobattery]

The 002 with cakewalk was on a PC

 

[darthjujuu]

i shall report my results in september whence I move into the new place and get down to business.

 

[AEL89]

8 channel with ADAT out - can only be Audient ASP008! Completely different league to the other stuff - obviously more expensive but you won't feel the need to upgrade any time soon!

 

[darthjujuu]

$1500 for the audient I think i'll go with the octopre ._. I doubt my rokit 5's could detect a difference =]

 

[Metaltastic]

Even the regular OctoPre seems pointless to me; I doubt the sound of the compressor/limiters is anything too spectacular (certainly nothing I'd wanna commit too and risk hating when mixing time came, unless you subscribe to the JP22 school of restoring dynamics via eq :Spin: ), and while the case could be made that it's useful just to be sure something doesn't clip, since everything is so low-noise these days and you'll hopefully be tracking at 24-bit, there's no need to have the gain as hot as possible without clipping anymore!

 

[CatharsisStudios]

Yup, that was me, and that was my experience with the MBOX2 - maybe the ASIO drivers (for use with Reaper) on the 002 are better, but I've heard from many people that the WDM drivers are as shitty/non-existent as ever! (so good luck using it as your interface for music listening, youtube, etc. ) You're in quite a dilemma I must say, as the offer of a free interface is pretty damn enticing; come to think of it, my only qualm with the ASIO drivers on my MBOX2 was horrid latency, but if you're not going to be tracking in Reaper (just mixing), then I wouldn't think that'd be too much of a problem! (granted, it's annoying having to move the fader/eq control/other FX parameter really slowly so you don't overshoot the mark, but that's little enough to get used to I'd say!)

As for the 8-channel ADAT stuff, OctoPre LE with the ADAT card seems like the best value!

i got an mbox2 to work in reaper i was working on it for 5 hours but i got it ALOT OF READING

 

[Metaltastic]

How, and how well? And it worked for me back when I was using Cubase, it's just the latency was hideous