Alan Tubbs

For that amount of money it is special. It is the purist recording chain I’ve used, including the pres. You want to record a saturated guitar, it will capture that as well as capturing a sine wave as cleanly as can be. as for usb, it works. End stop. And while the fan starts loud, after a second it disappears. I’ve never heard it otherwise, even when recording in the same room in the summer Texas heat with the AC off (temporarily). when mixing, I can move the interface to the sweetest spot in the room onto a small mobile tabletop and work from there. No reflections from excess table or giant screens behind the speakers radiating sound back. I use the onboard screen to do all the work except for play, stop and record. The screen is quick and intuitive and very fun I don’t use any other effects now except reverb etc. The onboard eq and comp are classy and more than enough to get the job done (tho I’m looking a fab filter). If the sound needs some saturation, I mostly use analog hardware. And there is no delay if you use only the onboard effects, or no more than if you use a digital mixer. fyi I don’t record the affected audio and the dry at once. Seems silly except for special effect things, NY compression etc., done old school. It is a lot of money for a 4 x 4 interface, but i learned to put my money in recording hardware itself, not instruments, since I can’t play as well as those I usually record.

The Neumann mt48 interface has the ability to record dry and wet tracks at once, using the onboard effects. You end up with both tracks. i don’t know of any other interface that is set up like this.

Volume automation affects the entire track. Clip automation effects separate Clips within your track. It can help with matching vol of separate takes at different volumes.

The Audient id44, which has the same pres as their big boards. Really nice sounding pres and conversion. Not transformer coupled but sounds thick like it. I’ve never heard or used the evo line tho it should be fine.

I use the Neumann mt 48 and is the best and clean in/out system I’ve used. 4x4 and one adat in/out. The fx (except for reverb) are top notch and you can use it as a straight line from Sonar with no real latency from the builtin mixer. Lastly, the touch screen is a killer for manipulation - goodbye to mousing vol and eq points etc (you can still mouse transport controls and editing). the downside is cost, a cool $1800 list. Audient is another good interface and their 4x4 unit is less than half the price The preamps are more analog sounding rather than the clean and crisp Neumann pres, which can repro any distortion saturation perfectly if you need that. lastly I would buy a tascam unit for a less expensive option. I used their 8 banger unit and it was solid and you can get a pro sound out of it, tho a nice transformer pre helps to expand your palate.

You can also open a project w/o the effects live and turn them on one at a time, if you have a problematic plugin.

Most audio interfaces provide a built-in preamp for mic input A preamp is needed before a line level input for mic input. Running one mic preamp into a combo usually inout works fine. I run an RND Portico II channel strip into the “line” input of my Neumann MT 48 interface. Works great.

Cakewalk updated(?) the old DX effects to vst. At least they look and work much like the old sonitus suite. The compressor has one of the most explicit graphs to show how the knee worked. so maybe there is hope for Rapture etc to upgrade. It would nice to have the presets all work like Rap Pro for all the dimpro/rapture presets. My biggest problem is getting the old synths installed and activated. And I still use them on new projects. @

Jim’s Purrfect audio Studio Cat does a laptop. But even it comes with warnings. His desktop is silent.

Thomas, you realize cakewalk by bandlab will no longer work after this September? You need to switch to the free version of Cakewalk Sonar or pay the subscription. Or switch DAWs.

The simple fact is that Bandlab believes it can make more money by renting the software than selling it. I imagine bandlab have a Much better grasp of the financials than than us users - I know I don’t. BL claims over a million users, tho most of those are free subs. But BL judged that buying the software once isn’t the best method to keep the software going, and we can count on one hand those users that continue to fight fora paying model. Bandlab must figure that it ain’t worth it to lose a few buyers when most users can scrounge up monthly payments and provides some security for the future of Bandlab.

Next works on both Mac and pc and there are translation tools between the two. If you use a Mac you may find it useful or have somebody you work with uses apple a sub opens up easy co operation.

I don’t know if the tc unit is still made but a buddy used his b room tc in his main when his big console had to be sent off. He had no complaints.

Small form computers have heat problems. I had a hp all in one with the excellent adjustable screen that was great for mixing(it would lie flat to straight up). It died to soon and it wasn’t even my main computer. My last computer was a micro center build slimline unit that I had to jury rig in a second drive. It worked for a few years but the power supply got wonky and fried the motherboard. A small format computer is great but not for any heavy workload. They die young and not even pretty. It is such a time suck to get all my hardware many programs loaded and working I went ahead and bought one of Jim’s StudioCat computers. Nothing small form or lightweight about it. (Jim joined in before I got finished writing).

You need to update your status once a month, so they say. Just be sure to check in with Bandlab before a show etc. where you do have a connection.