Studio setup

[Brokerhenry]

Hello everyone;

 

I would like to seek advice on the best way to connect up my gear to achieve my objective of working within Logic Pro X.

 

The equipment I would like to hook up are:

 

Stagescape M20d mixer; Korg Pa3X keyboard; Korg Minilogue synthesizer; MPC Renaissance drum kit; Rode NT2-A condenser microphone and MacBook Pro with Logic Pro X.

 

I purchased the gear while in grad school in Australia and never got to use them as I was too busy with school. Now relocated to St. Paul Minnesota and wish to experiment to see what I can come up with. I would appreciate sharing knowledge on for example if I should connect the MPC Ren to the mixer through the Assignable Mix Outs or through the Left and Right Stereo Outs.

 

My aim is to be able to trigger drum sequences on the pads, play keyboard and synthesizer and record vocals, then process them in Logic. I have a 32 gig SD card in the mixer and the MacBook Pro has a 1TB hard drive. Would the sounds be saved on the SD card or on the hard drive?

 

I would really appreciate your feedback. I am a newbie at this.

 

Thanks.

 

Henry

[Rewolf48]

You have the choice as to whether you connect the M20d directly to the MacBook or not - I suggest not and that you get an additional audio interface.

The big problem with the M20d is that while it does support audio over USB for all the channels it unfortunately has dreadful latency (1 second+).

It is possible to connect over USB and directly record all of the inputs directly into Logic, but it is just not possible to use it for overdubs (additional tracks) without being driven crazy: you set up a channel to record and play back what you have previously recorded and record a new track and the misalignment is huge - you have to drag the track back and try to align it just to hear what you did; and that absolutely kills the session. I know because I have tried it.

I suggest you connect all of the gear into the mixer and the mixer into some speakers (or use headphones) but you should feed the instruments you want to record into another audio interface (use the monitor outs for example) and the output of the audio interface into a couple to channels on the mixer.

For recording a band all playing together you record onto the SD card and then read the card directly using the laptop.

[Brokerhenry]

Hello Rewolf48. Thank you for your recommendations. I will give it a go and provide feedback. Thanks man.

[Rewolf48]

I feel obliged to update my earlier post after a more successful session doing a band recording.  We were recording the full drum kit in a separate room using 7 mics (o/h * 2, kick, snare, hats, toms) with the bass (direct + Helix Amp) and a guitar tracking in the control room with everybody playing together. So 10 channels on the M20d had to be be recorded simultaneously into Reaper with me acting as engineer.

Previously attempts had been very difficult due to the latency, but this time I persevered and discovered a couple of offset settings that made life a LOT easier.

In Reaper Preferences as well as the Audio Device settings where you pick the ASIO StageScape M20d and the input range (I only used 1 to 12) I discovered the Recording settings where you can apply offsets for Output and Input audio driver latency. With these you can align the playback and recording so the Reaper aligns the tracks for you automatically. The process I followed was:

1) Record a click track, then play it while hitting the M key in time to what you can hear - this places markers on the timeline, then you measure a time selection between the click and the matching marker and enter this as the Output manual offset. This will align the displayed audio with what you hear - repeat to verify and tweak if required - I was able to get the click on the audio aligned with my markers using an offset of 830ms. [yes output latency really is that bad]

2) Now plug a microphone into an input channel and record the click track coming from your speakers into a new track. Measure the time delay between the two and enter that as Input manual offset. This will shift recorded tracks forward by this time and means that newly recorded audio is automatically in time with previously recorded audio. Again verify and tweak - I was able to get the recordings aligned to a single waveform using a 41ms offset [not great but not that bad]

Having made these changes there was still a huge delay between hitting play or record, or moving a fader or changing eq, and it affecting the audio you hear which means I couldn't use it as a studio interface for mixing, but at least any recorded audio was immediately aligned and we could simply listen back to the takes without any faffing around.

Line 6 - please give us a "Studio mode" where the mixer simply acts as a low latency 18/20 In and 6 Out USB Audio Interface...