Gary Carey

Hi, I haven't tried the OC18 as I don't need the pad or additional roll-off setting. Happy to save a bit of money to spend on other gear! On paper the OC18 has lower self noise and higher sensitivity. Probably the big advantage of the OC18 is that any two off the shelf mics can be used as a matched pair, tolerances are higher. Austrian Audio say the capsules are tuned differently but all the reviews I've read give the impression they are very similar in sound. After buying my OC16 I came across the following review on YouTube. Warren Huart's comments are very much in agreement with what I found. (Ignore the sound quality on his spoken bits - apparently the video editor used noise reduction which created some artifacts. Lovely music track to listen to, though).

Any guitar strap which comes with an instruction manual is too technical for me. ?

I'll second the recommendation for Austrian Audio. The capsule in the OC18 is hand made in Vienna by ex AKG people. The same capsule, tuned slightly differently, is also used in the OC16. If you're OK with just cardiod pattern and a three position roll-off switch the OC16 offers a lot of 414-style mic for a very keen price. Two observations about the OC16. I'm spending much less time dealing with sibilance issues when mixing, it tames it nicely yet still sounds clear in the top end. Plus I get a good, neutral acoustic guitar sound. For my own projects I could happily use just the one mic if needed. (Although where's the fun in that? )

I'm a big Overloud fan, love their reverbs especially. TH-U is my favourite amp simulator ( I have several) for getting bread and butter sounds quickly. There's a sale on their website at the moment. For anyone who records acoustic guitars you might like to take a look at the 'BM Pro Acoustic' Rig Library. I want to go back and re-mix all my guitar tracks now!

I'm very happy with the SSL 2+. It's been rock solid, has an efficient driver, and comes with a good selection of bundled software. The SSL 2 is even better priced if you don't need the extra features of the plus model. Make sure to consider how you'll be using your interface. For example, the SSL 2+ has all the connections on the back. Ideal for my preference and desk layout but won't suit everyone.

True Iron - my only Kazrog plugin - working fine here. Updated in the last few days. Hope you get that sorted soon Steve.

Not time-limited, no nag screens. Good basic sounds, especially for a free instrument. It's a player and comes with a very useable acoustic drum kit. There's a variety of presets, which all have an info panel to suggest the genre of music they're best suited to. There are enough options to let you fine tune each kit element and save your tweaked kits as new presets. Like most drum VSTs you have a library of groove patterns, I'd say these are mainly useable and not too busy. You can purchase additional drum kits and grooves. (I suppose the point of player software is to get you to buy in to their eco-system). Once you have more than just a single kit you're able to mix-and-match elements, swapping the snare drum for example. I already had Addictive Drums 2 but the BFD player was included with my SSL interface bundle so I thought I'd give it a try. And yes, worth installing. Easy to get to grips with and fast to use. While this doesn't have the bells and whistles of the flagship BFD software there's enough control and tweakability for me. I've got the factory kit plus a Pop Essentials (I think?) expansion and I've used both on demos with pleasing results. CPU load seems quite light, too, though I haven't measured it. It's free, why not give it a try. I'm having fun with it.

Two thousand! I'm impressed you can remember which one to search for. ?

Original post asks if dropping the input level to the master bus is OK. That's what I was saying would be fine, sorry if it wasn't clearly expressed. However, if there's no audible artifacts I don't worry about the visuals. I lost any nervousness about red lights quite some time ago.

Hi John. We're using 32-bit floating point, so the full range audio can be recovered by dropping the fader. Provided everything is in the box there's no problem. This YouTube video explains it better than I could:

If you've not already done it, just full down the Master fader.You won't hurt anything as long as each individual track sounds good.