Converter quandry [message #82096] |
Sun, 25 March 2007 04:31 |
TCB
Messages: 1261 Registered: July 2007
|
Senior Member |
|
|
As I have mentioned here a bit before, I've been in gear accumulation mode
for the upcoming Mold Monkies recordings. I now have a nice selection of
reasonably priced but pretty nice microphones. Two channels of really superior
preamps, six channels of pretty good preamps, and 16 channels of Mackie.
Of course most of this will be barely used save when tracking drums, where
I think we'll be using twelve mics. 2x overheads, kick, top and bottoms snare,
spot mics on three toms, hi hat, a knee high mic a few feet off the kit,
and a stereo pair in the room. The problem now is that the studio has a Presonus
Firebox and a MOTU 828. The studio computer is a Mac, and I've done some
testing and using the two devices together (as an 'aggregate' device in OS
X) yields different latencies that would cause pretty massive comb filtering
problems doing drums.
Sadly, being a complete moron when I bought my Creamware card I didn't get
the Z-link version, which would allow me to get 16 channels of pretty decent
line level converters for less than a grand. Alternately, I could go the
RME route with PCI cards or firewire but that looks like a $1500+ proposition
and with very little utility outside of tracking this band. Right now I'm
leaning toward a Scope Home card (ballpark $500) and an A16 (again, ballpark
$800). Also, being me, I'd probably just get a Scope Pro card with all the
extra DSP and the Z-link I/O options, but I've sunk enough money into this
project that even I'm starting to balk at writing $2k checks.
So, to make a short story very long, are there other options for getting
16 really good line level converters into a computer for recording a a full
drum kit? And this has to be a no hassle, works all the time, we don't wind
up pushing tracks around a couple of samples to compensate for different
latency from different hardware.
And yes, one option would be another PARIS system for tracking, and then
I would fly the tracks over to my SX rig via ADAT, which I've been thinking
about doing, but I'm willing to hear suggestions from anyone.
Thanks,
TCB
|
|
|