Single-Handedly Trying to Keep the Economy Afloat
A post or two back I was agonizing over the choice of audio interfaces. I’d ruled out the Metric Halo stuff because it was too expensive and I was ticked off that they’d put in a DSP card that was basically mandatory and caused their prices to jump.
Then I did some reading and research.
Yeah, I bought one. A ULN-2 should be arriving at my door next week. I had to do some budgetary re-arranging, wait a few extra paychecks, and put off a few other studio purchases (my Oktava 219 remains unmodded, alas) but I think this will seriously be worth it.
It’s going to be different for me, since the MH workflow is different from what I’m used to. My 828 has been fire-and-forget in a lot of ways – since it’s basically just ins-and-outs there’s not much to really do other than plug it in. The ULN, however, has internal routing to be set up, mixing busses, firewire sends and returns, and channel strips. It has half as many inputs and outputs as I’m used to having, too, but then again, I’ve never used more than two at a time for anything so this shouldn’t be a problem for me. It has 18 more internal send busses than I’ve ever used, so that will be different. If I want to use the DSP I need to start realtime bouncing instead of offline (I can live with that, I think).
But my god – I’m getting a pair of preamps that every review has classed up far beyond the dedicated preamp I currently own. It’s got circuit emulation for getting that vintage console sound (if I want it). It’s got an 80-bit internal mixing path so I could conceivably use it as a summing mixer. It’s got digital converters that make my current set of ADCs/DACs look like crap.
This is turning into a much bigger upgrade than I’d expected, but it should make a HUGE difference in my abilites to record. Having 2 high quality, low-noise matched mic pres will improve my ability to record acoustic instruments in stereo – I can do it now, but at least one of the channels is going to suck comapred to the other. The character/circuit emulation stuff is awesome for enriching the sound. I can set up internally routed monitor mixes, meaning I can send stuff back to a set of headphones that has a nice loud and slightly-reverbed mix without having to put the effect on an input channel in logic.
Of course, I will also need to spend a lot of time deep in consultation of the manual to figure this all out. But I haven’t been this excited by a new piece of audio hardware in quite a while.
Ironically, the Caustic CD will probably be the first to benefit from all this, since I’ll be mastering that sucker next week.
Squee!
