Does this exist? Live mixer / interface / control surface...

IanSavage

Right, I've got a few festivals and things coming up in the summer which may be worth me updating / adding to my live sound rig for; at the same time I'm thinking of trying to re-build my home studio since I'll have a few weeks off work to hopefully get all creative.

For years the two have been pretty much mutually exclusive apart from microphones - live rig is all-analogue for ease of quick tweaking, recording rig is almost entirely digital for convenience and compactness.

What I'm wondering is whether anyone's aware of an all-in-one solution before I go spending money on separate live outboard (I'm happy with my Mackie 1604 desk if I remain analogue live, but could do with some more processing 'umph') as well as a bigger interface? The requirements are:

- at least eight analogue inputs, with decent mic preamps,

- be able to control Logic 9 on a Mac, with motorized faders,

- be able to work 'standalone' for live shows,

- ideally connect to the host computer via Firewire rather than USB (I've never had a problem getting a Firewire device to talk to my MacBook Pro, I've been, um, frustrated in the past by USB ones ).

I've been mooching around and can't find anything that TOTALLY fits the bill - M-Audio Projectmix doesn't work as a standalone mixer, Presonus Studiolive won't control Logic, apparently even the Behringer X32 won't do the job without a £200-odd quid Firewire card and even then it seems it won't 'properly' run as a controller. Allen & Heath QU16 seems to get pretty close...but is over £1500...

Happy to spank the credit card a bit as if I can get one unit to do the job of a whole bunch of hardware I've got knocking around I'd hopefully be able to get a chunk of the expenditure back - but that's IF there's anything that'll do the job! Any ideas?

Danny1969

Tascam DM3200 with IF/FW firewire card we have 2 of the bigger brother DM4800 with firewire cards and have done many gigs on them 

32 ASIO streams straight into a laptop with one firewire cable very good Hui control as well

IanSavage

That seems to be a good option, thanks Danny! Now just need to try and find one secondhand or B-stock; over two grand with the Firewire card might be a bit difficult to claw back on selling the analogue stuff  

Danny1969

IanSavage said:

That seems to be a good option, thanks Danny! Now just need to try and find one secondhand or B-stock; over two grand with the Firewire card might be a bit difficult to claw back on selling the analogue stuff  

I recently brought a DM4800 with fire card and optional 8 in 8 extra analog card hard cased for £1800 so I suspect you could score a dm3200 for a grand 

IanSavage

Danny1969 said:

IanSavage said:

That seems to be a good option, thanks Danny! Now just need to try and find one secondhand or B-stock; over two grand with the Firewire card might be a bit difficult to claw back on selling the analogue stuff  

I recently brought a DM4800 with fire card and optional 8 in 8 extra analog card hard cased for £1800 so I suspect you could score a dm3200 for a grand 

That's justifiable, I should be able to get a fair few hundred back getting rid of the 1604 and the outboard, and save a few hundred more not needing to buy a separate audio interface/controller for the Mac...

mike257

I've tracked (amongst other things) 3 hour long theatre shows with 24 channels into Reaper over usb on an x32, no issues at all. If fire wire is really a deal breaker, the early ones shipped with a dual usb/fire wire card so you might be able to get a deal on a second hand one, but I've never had an issue with the usb interface or the desk in general. I'd use with confidence. You're limited to using the 8 faders in the output section for remote control, but I'm sure I read about someone finding a way around that with additional software - I don't use one in a studio situation so haven't investigated further.

EDIT: You can also use the assignable controle for midi/remote control functions. On the full size x32, that's four knobs and eight buttons and you can have three pages of assignments, so that's 12/24 in total. The Compact and Producer don't have as many assignables (possibly just a bank of buttons, can't remember off the top of my head) but still give you some options.

Axe_meister

Zoom R16?