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struan87
Sep 8, 2004

What's your sign?

Thirst for Savings posted:

I don't think so, after a quick google search it seems to be an incredibly common problem.
Here's a FAQ about the relationship between the '57 and '58:
"The SM57 and SM58 microphones are based on the same cartridge design. The main difference is in the grille design."
The grille affects frequency response, but overall signal strength should be the same.

nrr posted:

That kind of blows I thought the Fast Track Pro was a bit more capable than that.
For $200, would you really expect the preamps to rival standalone units? There are $1000 interfaces that still need outboard preamps.

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nrr
Jan 2, 2007

struan87 posted:

For $200, would you really expect the preamps to rival standalone units? There are $1000 interfaces that still need outboard preamps.

A $50 standalone? Well yeah kind of. Why even bother adding preamps to a unit if they can't handle a low end mic like an SM-57?

chippy
Aug 16, 2006

OK I DON'T GET IT

struan87 posted:


For $200, would you really expect the preamps to rival standalone units? There are $1000 interfaces that still need outboard preamps.

Of course you wouldn't expect it to rival standalone units in sound quality etc, but if it can't raise the signal of probably the world's most standard issue mics to a useable level then there's little point in it existing. My ฃ250 interface might not sound boutique quality but it certainly doesn't need an external preamp in order to be any good at all.

Hanpan
Dec 5, 2004

I've been mucking about in Logic 9 and want to pick up a really easy to use and affordable MIDI controller. I have been recommended the M-Audio Axiom keyboard. Can anyone recommend anything better or is this a good starting point?

Schatten
Jul 7, 2002

Das ist nicht meine
schnellen Rennwagen
Contemplating a KB37 Studio. They are fetching for around 289 on ebay at the moment. This would be for an all purpose Midi controller and plugging in to record guitar/bass, eventually vocals.

Any drawbacks to this simplified setup? I'm new at midi controllers and the only recordings I've done outside the studio are through an old Tascam 424 back in high school and college.

SlippyHat
May 25, 2003

Delicious!
I tried out a KB37 for a while, and it was shitshitshitshitSHIT. I know that some others on here have had success with it, but the vocal preamp was lousy and it would put a warble/crackle/echo on all my vocals to the extent that it was unusable. The presets all sounded pretty nice (though Guitar Rig 3 is vastly superior, in that regard), and I loved having actual piano keys, but I just couldn't put up with the weirdness of the vocals.

Plus it feels pretty cheap and plastic-y. I would definitely avoid this, though ymmv.

struan87
Sep 8, 2004

What's your sign?

chippy posted:

Of course you wouldn't expect it to rival standalone units in sound quality etc, but if it can't raise the signal of probably the world's most standard issue mics to a useable level then there's little point in it existing.
Don't get me wrong, I think an all-in-one should have a good preamp from an end-user point of view, I'm just not surprised that it doesn't. Despite the "all-in-one" name, these things are meant to be used with outboard preamps or mixers.

I used a $1000 Delta 1010 to record recently, and even it couldn't pull my '57s and '58s up to a usable level by itself. I ran each mike through a channel on a Mackie mixer and sent the per-channel line-level outs to the Delta 1010.

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich

struan87 posted:

Here's a FAQ about the relationship between the '57 and '58:
"The SM57 and SM58 microphones are based on the same cartridge design. The main difference is in the grille design."
The grille affects frequency response, but overall signal strength should be the same.

That is odd that you seem to be getting a better experience then. Either way, I picked up the Audio Buddy, setup is working much better now.

Here is my next question: The Fast Track Pro manual states that I can lower my latency buffer to 80. Yet on my machine it only goes as low as 128 which gives me an overall latency of 10ms. Is there any way to get that lower? I tried using ASIO4ALL but it kept crashing Ableton 7 anytime I adjusted it.

Page 10: http://www.m-audio.com/images/global/manuals/051212_FTPro_UG_EN01_V3.PDF

RivensBitch
Jul 25, 2002

I don't really understand why the fast track pro would be designed so poorly as to not have enough gain for a standard dynamic mic. My MBOX classic has plenty of gain, so it isn't an issue of not enough power in the USB bus, and it's not like op-amps are so expensive that they couldn't have used one that provided enough gain.

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

RivensBitch posted:

I don't really understand why the fast track pro would be designed so poorly as to not have enough gain for a standard dynamic mic. My MBOX classic has plenty of gain, so it isn't an issue of not enough power in the USB bus, and it's not like op-amps are so expensive that they couldn't have used one that provided enough gain.

This guy seems to give a bit of an explination of what's going on but it doesn't make any sense to me. Why M-Audio would do any of this and try and pass it off?

http://breakpoint.livejournal.com/56793.html

quote:

Well, let's start where I did: by plugging a Shure SM-57 dyanmic microphone into one of the XLR inputs on the front. Long story short: to get anything even close to reasonable input out of this thing required turning the gain up all the way. Believe me, I figured something had to be wrong. I spent hours on this. But no joke, at the end of the day, an SM-57-- one of the most common microphones in the world, used for everything from garage bands to speeches by the President of the United States-- would not produce more than 50% scale even when obviously maxed out.

Far more disturbing, however, is what I found when I played back the audio. Now, let me explain that I am not recording a garage band (figuratively or otherwise) here. I am recording voice work. If you are recording loud, blasty stuff you may never notice what I am about to describe. But if you take a quiet room, a cardiod microphone, and read a couple of full sentences into it, with some pausing and breaks, then go back and look at it, what you will find is that the "silent" bits are absolutely dead quiet-- too quiet to believe-- but extremely quiet speech is noisy as hell.

I'd bet money that I know what's going on here. Either that pre-amp is noisy, the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is noisy, or both are noisy, and they're trying to cover for it with a noise gate that is, frankly, not a very subtle way to try and hide the problem.

To verify what was going on, and try to rule out the microphone preamp, I then tried hooking up some unbalanced inputs from a good cassette deck-- a Nakamichi Cassette Deck 1-- and slowly lowering the output level on the cassette deck (which was playing some loud Front 242 music). What I wanted to say was a nice, smooth fade into the noise floor. Instead, I found a point at which I was seeing square-wave pulses between zero and a fairly high sample value with each bass drum hit. This is a dead giveaway.

To confirm this, I used Audition's "statistics" feature on the region in question. I confirmed that the samples were being clamped, but I also got another surprise: my 24-bit recording was, in fact, 16-bit.

It is therefore possible that this noise problem does not, in fact, exist for 24-bit recording-- I can neither confirm nor deny that, as, try as I might, I could not get this device to deliver an actual 24-bit recording. What it gave me was 16-bit data repackaged as a variety of 32-bit formats.

Finally, I tried a very slow ramp in from a low volume, and realized that, as near as I can tell, both things are indeed happening: as near as I can tell, there is a noise gate, AND the ADC is just plain noisy. It literally sounds like somebody bridged the least significant bit with some higher-order pin. For all I know, this thing may have a couple of ADC pins solder-bridged. (As I plan to return it, I'm not going to take it apart to check.) The net effect is a nasty, loud, extremely harsh, high-pitched, signal-dependant noise that sounds like being inside a car skidding on gravel and ice, only sped up and in time with the beat.

Another problem I experienced was the device recording at a sampling rate other than what I was asking for-- and what I was asking for was 44.1 KHz (the "red book" audio CD standard). I was able to work around this by changing the sample format, but obviously, the sample format should have NO effect on the sampling RATE.

No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich
Is there a preamp and DI box two-in-one thing out there? Going line-in on the guitar is no fun with the Fast Track Pro, might as well have XLR inputs too for my mics too. I'm thinking a company like Behringer or something cheap would make one of these...

Edit: Orrrr what's a better alternative to the FTP? A decent audio interface that I can get a better direct-in guitar sound and proper mic preamps. Compatibility with Windows 7 would be nice, too.

No. 9 fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Sep 11, 2009

struan87
Sep 8, 2004

What's your sign?

nrr posted:

This guy seems to give a bit of an explination of what's going on but it doesn't make any sense to me.
Wow, that is a pretty dirty trick. My opinion of M-Audio just went down quite a bit.

quote:

Why M-Audio would do any of this and try and pass it off?
Why else? To save money.

1karus
Jan 29, 2006

The Fun Machine
Took a Shit and Died
I was really looking forward to getting a Fast Track Pro until reading about this stuff. Looks like I'm going to go with an EMU 404 instead.

No. 9 posted:

Edit: Orrrr what's a better alternative to the FTP? A decent audio interface that I can get a better direct-in guitar sound and proper mic preamps. Compatibility with Windows 7 would be nice, too.

EMU 404 imo, unless someone else has a better recommendation? I'm using mine for a laptop based recording setup, so I need usb.

1karus fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Sep 11, 2009

No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich
Has anyone had any experience with the E-Mu? What about this Line 6?

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/Line-6-UX2-with-PF?sku=250004

Edit: I'm leaning towards the E-Mu, assuming it gets better reviews than the FTP.

No. 9 fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Sep 11, 2009

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Ok so who wants to buy a really sweet Fast Track Pro I'll even autograph it :frog:

Schatten
Jul 7, 2002

Das ist nicht meine
schnellen Rennwagen

nrr posted:

Ok so who wants to buy a really sweet Fast Track Pro I'll even autograph it :frog:

how much?

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich
So maybe I should be taking a trip back to Guitar Center tomorrow... My store has the Line 6 UX2 in stock. Maybe I'll take a look at that.

I thought my noise problem on my FTP was ambient. But I guess not. Thank goodness for return polices.

Reviews for the UX2 in this thread and outside seem to be very favorable. Will I even need to hang on to my Audio Buddy if I pick up the UX2 tomorrow?

iSheep fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Sep 12, 2009

No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich
Tell us how it is.

What's the difference between the white EMU and the older one?

Edit: Same question but with the Line 6: What's the difference between the UX2 and the older Tone Port UX2? Anything besides cosmetics?

No. 9 fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Sep 12, 2009

1karus
Jan 29, 2006

The Fun Machine
Took a Shit and Died
I'm pretty sure the new revision simply added cross platform support for Macs (hence the color scheme)

quote:

SCOTTS VALLEY, CA – December 1, 2008
E-MUฎ Systems has announced a new neutral white model of their successful 0404 USB 2.0 Audio/MIDI Interface.
“We’re offering this Limited Edition white 0404 USB 2.0 in response to the many requests we’ve received from customers," said Michael Lee, Marketing Manager of E-MU Systems. "The white 0404 looks terrific and blends in well with other desktop peripherals."
The new Limited Edition 0404 USB 2.0 also comes with a new Vista-compatible version of E-MU’s powerful Production Tools Software Bundle.
Like the original 0404 USB 2.0, this new model delivers an unparalleled level of USB audio quality to the Mac or PC with premium 24-bit/192kHz A/D and D/A converters, pristine XTC™ mic/line/hi-Z preamps, and ultra-low jitter clock. It has plug-and-play functionality and professional features like independent ground lift switches and signal-to-noise specs that are simply unmatched by any other USB interface on the market. The 0404 USB 2.0 will forever change your expectations of USB audio.
The white 0404 USB 2.0 will ship December 2008 at an estimated street price of $219.00 (Estimated Street Price). The estimated street price in Euros is €219.00.

The E-MU 0404 USB 2.0 Audio/MIDI Interface features:

• Premium 24-bit/192kHz A/D and D/A converters offer unmatched USB audio fidelity (A/D: 112dB, D/A: 117dB measured SNR performance)

• E-MU XTC Class-A ultra-low noise mic/line/hi-Z preamps with soft limiter and 48V phantom power (-127dB EIN) with 60dB of gain

• Independent ground lift switches for optimal audio fidelity/flexibility

• Hardware zero-latency direct monitoring (mono or stereo)

• Plug-and-play operation with hands-on control of all major functions

• Cross-platform support (Mac OS X, Windows XP/x64, Windows Vista/x64) and compatibility with most popular audio/sequencer applications (ASIO2, WDM, MME, Apple Core Audio and Core MIDI, AC3 and DTS Passthru protocols supported)

• The PTSB4 Production Tools Software Bundle consists of the following applications:


Windows Applications:

* E-MU Proteus VX (with over 1000 sounds)
* Cakewalk Sonar 6 LE
* Steinberg Cubase LE4
* Celemony Melodyne essential
* Ableton Live Lite 6 E-MU Edition
* Waldorf Edition LE (PPG Wave 2.2, Attack, D-Pole)
* IK Multimedia AmpliTube Duo
* SFX Machine LT


OS X Applications:

* Steinberg Cubase LE4
* BIAS Peak Express 5
* Celemony Melodyne essential
* Ableton Live Lite 6 E-MU Edition
* Waldorf Edition LE (PPG Wave 2.2, Attack, D-Pole)
* IK Multimedia AmpliTube LE
* SFX Machine LT


I/O Configuration:

• Two E-MU XTC mic/line/hi-Z preamps (w/soft limiter and 48V phantom power)
• Two 1/4" balanced outputs
• 1/8" stereo unpowered speaker output
• 24-bit/96kHz optical S/PDIF in/out (switchable to AES/EBU)
• 24-bit/96kHz coaxial S/PDIF in/out (switchable to AES/EBU)
• One set of MIDI input and output
• Stereo headphone output

No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich
Meh, doesn't seem to be anything really for the average Windows user then. Thanks :cheers:

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Schatten posted:

how much?

$150 maybe. All depends on how long before I can get to the city and find something to replace it with.

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Update:

Returned the Fast Track Pro. Grabbed the Line 6 UX2. So far I'm overall liking it better. ASIO4ALL works MUCH better with it than the FTP. I got my latency down without a hitch. Still using my Audio Buddy to power my SM57. I'm starting to think grabbing a condenser mic would have been better for what I'm trying to record. What are recommendations on some budget condensers?

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Why would you use ASIO4ALL? Isn't it pretty much an ASIO emulator to be used when your card doesn't really support actual ASIO?

struan87
Sep 8, 2004

What's your sign?

nrr posted:

Why would you use ASIO4ALL? Isn't it pretty much an ASIO emulator to be used when your card doesn't really support actual ASIO?
Yeah, you'd only want to use it if you can't get a device-specific ASIO driver. I used it for my Behringer UCA202, because Behringer never made an ASIO driver for Vista x64.

No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich

Thirst for Savings posted:

Update:

Returned the Fast Track Pro. Grabbed the Line 6 UX2. So far I'm overall liking it better. ASIO4ALL works MUCH better with it than the FTP. I got my latency down without a hitch. Still using my Audio Buddy to power my SM57. I'm starting to think grabbing a condenser mic would have been better for what I'm trying to record. What are recommendations on some budget condensers?

How is it without the Audio Buddy?

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Without the Audiobuddy it still seemed like I needed to bring the gain up pretty high to get a good signal. I need to really sit down and extensively test it however.

I'm using ASIO4ALL because the on board ASIO drivers give me an overall latency that was much higher than what the ASIO4ALL can do. Neither the FTP or the UX2 on board ASIO gave me the option of going lower than 128 samples.


EDIT: I'm just starting to think about going all out and getting a firewire interface.

iSheep fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Sep 13, 2009

nrr
Jan 2, 2007

Thirst for Savings posted:

Neither the FTP or the UX2 on board ASIO gave me the option of going lower than 128 samples.
Does anyone know why this is?

And Thirst for Savings, did you find your FTP was more stable using ASIO4ALL compared to the M Audio drivers? Cos running Live 8 in 64 bit Vista I'm getting a lot of crashes that mostly seem to be FTP related and the FTP M Audio drivers don't exactly have the best reputation.

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Fast Track Pro was MUCH more stable using the M-Audio ASIO drivers. Ableton 7 would crash at any adjustment I would make with ASIO4ALL. I'm talking full restart of my computer to get it to boot up again.

Playing with the UX2 some more now, I'm really liking the line in for instruments. Still some noise at a higher gain with the microphone. About half of that is ambient (2 computers in this room) I'm definitely impressed with it. But again, I'm gonna think it over and maybe just go balls to the wall and pick up an 8 channel firewire device.

RivensBitch
Jul 25, 2002

I would need to see a lot more evidence supporting the noise gate theory before beleiving it, it's not like mic preamps and converters are so expensive to do right. Adding a noise gate to make up for a "budget" setup like that would easily outweigh any advantages to going with a cheaper preamp/adc/dac design. Occam's razor would say it's much more likely that either the unit is oddly defective, or there's some crazy user error going on.

struan87
Sep 8, 2004

What's your sign?

RivensBitch posted:

I would need to see a lot more evidence supporting the noise gate theory before beleiving it, it's not like mic preamps and converters are so expensive to do right. Adding a noise gate to make up for a "budget" setup like that would easily outweigh any advantages to going with a cheaper preamp/adc/dac design. Occam's razor would say it's much more likely that either the unit is oddly defective, or there's some crazy user error going on.
It shouldn't be hard experiment to reproduce, since the guy in the link tells exactly what he did and what he saw. Several people in this thread have one; anyone feeling scientific?

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich
I probably could have ran some sort of test before I brought it back. I would be interested to see someone do some science on theirs.

So even though I'm really liking this UX2. I'm thinking I just wanna go all the way and grab an 8 channel Preamp so I can do some recordings with drums and possibly some other projects.

Is there really an advantage of Firewire over USB 2.0 when you get up to that many channels?

massive spider
Dec 6, 2006

Thirst for Savings posted:

I probably could have ran some sort of test before I brought it back. I would be interested to see someone do some science on theirs.

So even though I'm really liking this UX2. I'm thinking I just wanna go all the way and grab an 8 channel Preamp so I can do some recordings with drums and possibly some other projects.

Is there really an advantage of Firewire over USB 2.0 when you get up to that many channels?

As I understand it the advantage of firewire IS that its better with more channels. As it was explained to me with only 1/2 inputs there isnt much difference between firewire and USB, however because of the way firewire handles information its much better for a large amount of simultatious inputs.

struan87
Sep 8, 2004

What's your sign?

Three Red Lights posted:

As I understand it the advantage of firewire IS that its better with more channels.

This is true. Here's why, from page 46:

warwick5s posted:

Firewire does everything on chip, is peer-to-peer, and doesn't rely on the computer's processor. Having to wait in line for the processor probably is what causes drops and glitches.

a_pineapple
Dec 23, 2005


Just picked up a Yamaha 16/4 mixer to make band practice slightly easier. I've always worked directly in the box, so this is pretty new territory. I've got a few n00b things to work out then:

- Mixer has "group out". I connect these to a pair of inputs on my audio interface, right?

- If I want more outputs from the mixer to the audio interface, can I connect the 4 aux sends to a few channels on my audio interface or am I begging for terrible feedback with this config? Is it standard practice to do so?

GreatSouthern
May 9, 2009

420 eat peanuts every day
Hi how are you doing
I recently bought an OSP DD502 electric drum kit (cheap but good nonetheless) and have had moderate success recording it on my hp laptop using an M-Audio MIDISport Uno, and Mixcraft 4.5 as the software.
The problem is this program, mixcraft, is not picking up on as many notes I hit as I would like (i.e. I play a simple rock beat, and it misses half of the hi-hat hits, a couple snare hits, etc)
So, I've been looking into better software, and came across the program Reason 4.0, and tried doing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u52zTFH6umE , where you use Edrum Monitor - but when I use Edrum, I cannot add new single/double/etc tracks.

If anyone can help in any way it would be much appreciated (even if this problem has been previously mentioned in this thread and I missed it, a simple "already been mentioned in this thread" will do and Ill double check)
THANK YOU

pennywisdom
Mar 21, 2004

Anyone use Reaper in here?

Every time I try to record in an instrument track, it gives me an offline message. I can't seem to get around it, and I can't find anything online.

Help?

edit : updating to the latest version seemed to solve that.

pennywisdom fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Sep 18, 2009

chippy
Aug 16, 2006

OK I DON'T GET IT
Could someone please translate this sentence from the Steinberg knowledge base before I kill someone...?

"In the Multi Zone change to the Track Inspector Page and click on 'Output Effects'. "

Cubase Studio 5. Thanks. I don't know what the gently caress "the multi zone" is meant to be.

edit: To clarify, I'm trying to use output effects on my overall mix, e.g. maximizer etc. The knowledge base appears to suggest I should do it in track inspector but track inspector disappears when I select Stereo Out in the mixer.

chippy fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Sep 18, 2009

DeathBySpoon
Dec 17, 2007

I got myself a paper clip!
The FastTrack Pro shouldn't have that much of an issue with a 57. I like using the preamp with it but I mainly got that to use with a condenser mic before I had the FTP. I'll do some experimenting later tonight with the 57 going straight into the FTP, I'm fairly certain I've had no problem maxing out the input level with it before...

El Miguel
Oct 30, 2003
I'm thinking of buying a MOTU 828 mk3, to use with Logic and Mainstage. Before I do, I'm curious: has anyone here used one? What do you think of it?

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No. 9
Feb 8, 2005

by R. Guyovich
Alright, I've been all over other forums and it's all just a clusterfuck of too much information that I cannot process.

I want to sell of my Fast Track Pro for a firewire interface. I do most of my recording through a decent condenser mic -- just vocals and acoustic guitar. I also use the line in for electric guitar. I do modeling and effects after recording in Cubase SX 3.

I want something with at least 2 inputs, low latency, phantom power, and 64-bit compatible. Must work in Windows, too.

Naturally, I will be using this to just listen to music for leisure too; so I want it to work for that purpose. I guess the most important factor in all this is having good preamps and good line-in; something that I don't have to crank to the max and get some good sound. I don't care much at all for on-board effects or anything, I have all I need in Cubase.

I've been looking at:

http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=4

and the

http://remixmag.com/production/hardware/remix_focusrite_saffire_le/

Any ideas? This has been getting super frustrating.

No. 9 fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Sep 21, 2009

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