At the studio I work at we are looking for a new console to use. Currently we run a Mackie 32x8 into M-Audio Delta 1010 (4) into a tweaked out monster PC running Vegas 5.0. At the other studio I use to work at, we used ProTools HD3 systems with PowerMac G5 (dual 2.0 cores) and Digidesign control surfaces. The owner of the studio wants something with motorized faders for automation, something sleek, something professional (of course)...BUT, nothing ProTools. He's anti-ProTools because he beleives that Vegas can do everything that PT can do and he doesn't see the point in paying a ton of cash more if he can spend less for the same thing. Beleive me, I've argued with him for countless hours about this, but he won't budge. Anyway, I was running through Mackie's site and found the Digital XBus console.
http://www.mackie.com/products/digitalxbus/index.html
Now I watched all the product videos they have up, looked at the manuals they have in PDF format, read all the reviews I could find, looked at all the pictures, found a price, bla bla. I like it. The only thing I can't find is what softwre you can use it with. As in, could I use this to control Vegas? I simply CANNOT find this out. The unit has a hard-drive and a Pentium 4 CPU with 1gb of RAM...so I'm under the assumption that you track INTO this thing...much like a hard-disk digital recorder...only bigger and a lot cooler. It has a serial jack for connecting a monitor...and in the videos you can see an edit window ont he computer monitor they have on top of the desk with waveforms on it...but again, I'm still not sure.
I think this would be cool as hell to upgrade to (my choice being all ProTools though...) but the owner is one of those guys that doesn't like to learn new systems/software etc. One of his problems with ProTools was that he couldn't find everything as quickly as he could in Vegas. But when I brought in my G5 and ran a session in ProTools there, I was faster in ProTools than he was in Vegas. I tried to explain to him that if you mess with it as much as he did with Vegas when he first started using it, he would probably be much happier with ProTools. Then he starts bashing Macs saying that he's seen them crash with ProTools so many times at competing studios and my argument was that either A) they didn't have their system set-up correctly, B) they didn't know what they were doing, or C) they had something wrong with the Mac and ProTools had nothing to do with it. It's true though, his PC has never crashed, we've TRIED to make it crash to bring up a backup of a session, 1,000 tracks all with plug-ins armed and recording...it was asking for more. I love PT. It's what I started on, it's what I use for my mobile recording setup, it's what I use for my home project studio, and it's what I used for years at the multi-million dollar studio I started at in this business. I never had a problem with ProTools, other than trying to get it to run correctly on my PC
I can't figure out how to get him to at least try it. I can't bring in my G5 with my 002 for a long time as I'm working on a project at home and can't move anything ATM. Otherwise I would just take it over there and when I do sessions, always do it with the Mac since he kinda hangs around in the control room when I do sessions just to watch. It would let him see the efficiency and power that the program has.
Woops, I strayed from the topic...So, could you guys check this out and tell me what you think of it? It's $12,995 MSRP, and then you have to buy the little cards for the back seperately, not sure on how much those are but we would be getting a bunch of the ADAT cards to use with Mackie's Onyx rackmount mic pre's, or a few OctoPre's or anything similar with ADAT out. It seems like a really cool console and so far really the only thing that is jumping out at me as an ideal replacement other than DigiDesign's stuff which I would prefer.
Also, if anyone has a better idea, please post it, I'm open to anything, but it's up to the owner as to what we get. I was charged with the task of finding anything reasonable for a replacement since I have more free time than he does. So, check it out, comment, throw ideas out, and thanks a ton in advance.
~006
http://www.mackie.com/products/digitalxbus/index.html
Now I watched all the product videos they have up, looked at the manuals they have in PDF format, read all the reviews I could find, looked at all the pictures, found a price, bla bla. I like it. The only thing I can't find is what softwre you can use it with. As in, could I use this to control Vegas? I simply CANNOT find this out. The unit has a hard-drive and a Pentium 4 CPU with 1gb of RAM...so I'm under the assumption that you track INTO this thing...much like a hard-disk digital recorder...only bigger and a lot cooler. It has a serial jack for connecting a monitor...and in the videos you can see an edit window ont he computer monitor they have on top of the desk with waveforms on it...but again, I'm still not sure.
I think this would be cool as hell to upgrade to (my choice being all ProTools though...) but the owner is one of those guys that doesn't like to learn new systems/software etc. One of his problems with ProTools was that he couldn't find everything as quickly as he could in Vegas. But when I brought in my G5 and ran a session in ProTools there, I was faster in ProTools than he was in Vegas. I tried to explain to him that if you mess with it as much as he did with Vegas when he first started using it, he would probably be much happier with ProTools. Then he starts bashing Macs saying that he's seen them crash with ProTools so many times at competing studios and my argument was that either A) they didn't have their system set-up correctly, B) they didn't know what they were doing, or C) they had something wrong with the Mac and ProTools had nothing to do with it. It's true though, his PC has never crashed, we've TRIED to make it crash to bring up a backup of a session, 1,000 tracks all with plug-ins armed and recording...it was asking for more. I love PT. It's what I started on, it's what I use for my mobile recording setup, it's what I use for my home project studio, and it's what I used for years at the multi-million dollar studio I started at in this business. I never had a problem with ProTools, other than trying to get it to run correctly on my PC
I can't figure out how to get him to at least try it. I can't bring in my G5 with my 002 for a long time as I'm working on a project at home and can't move anything ATM. Otherwise I would just take it over there and when I do sessions, always do it with the Mac since he kinda hangs around in the control room when I do sessions just to watch. It would let him see the efficiency and power that the program has. Woops, I strayed from the topic...So, could you guys check this out and tell me what you think of it? It's $12,995 MSRP, and then you have to buy the little cards for the back seperately, not sure on how much those are but we would be getting a bunch of the ADAT cards to use with Mackie's Onyx rackmount mic pre's, or a few OctoPre's or anything similar with ADAT out. It seems like a really cool console and so far really the only thing that is jumping out at me as an ideal replacement other than DigiDesign's stuff which I would prefer.
Also, if anyone has a better idea, please post it, I'm open to anything, but it's up to the owner as to what we get. I was charged with the task of finding anything reasonable for a replacement since I have more free time than he does. So, check it out, comment, throw ideas out, and thanks a ton in advance.
~006
