After over 30 days of nothing but shootouts, I have to say that it's nice to be back in audio recording action again. I can now see why the bad guy in Good Morning Vietnam was ticked when he got sent back to Guam. There is no action in Guam and there is no action in shootouts either. As fun as it may seem to have access to a thunderous array of studio recording equipment, I must admit that it becomes more a mindless, ditch digging experience of running through the motion take after take only the change in mics or preamps breaking up the monotony. The music is secondary with shootouts. Not only does this flaw inherently flaw the shootouts, it also takes all the fun out of it.

With that said, I learned a ton about recording equipment after conducting all these damn shootouts and now I have to decide what the hell I want to do with my own gear. At the moment I have a $14,000+ credit card bill so it looks like I'm going to be having an Ebay day very soon!

I'm always weighing the cost/reward ratios of all this gear. Should I shell out the $2,800 for a Great River MEQ-1NV (top notch preamp and EQ) or could I get by with an M-Audio Octane and maybe an Oxford EQ (maybe go-to EQ these days). It's a complicated decision. It guess it boils down to which is going to have a more adverse effect on me personally....the lack of sonic benefits of the Great River or a lack of $2,800. I really need a new recording computer....hmmm.

As painful as it is to leave the safety of my recording music status, I now need to venture back into equipment shootout land and discuss all the gear reviews and zillions of soundclips I have coming up.

The Recording Equipment

Microphones

• Peluso 251
• Cascade Fathead II
• Behringer C3
• Karma K6
• MXL V63M
• Royer R121
• Gefell M930
• Oktava MK219
• Groove Tubes AM51
• Groove Tubes GT57
• Karma K35
• AKG 414
• SM57
• Audix I5
• AT4050
• Shure SM27
• AT4040
• AT2020
• M-Audio Nova
• AT4033
• Studio Projects B3
• Shure SM7b
• Karma KP-80
• Neumann M147
• Peluso 47
• Karma K10

Preamps

• Martech MSS-10
• Manley TNT
• Truesystems P-Solo
• Great River MEQ-1NV
• Presonus ADL600
• Trident S20
• Vintech 1272
• Presonus Studio Channel
• RNP
• Firestudio
• Presonus Digimax D8
• M-Audio Octane

I guess that's all for now. I just wanted to say how great is feels to be recording music again and not just conducting pseudo-science experiments and explain what I have coming up.

Brandon

Today on the forum a dude asked how many simultaneous inputs the Alesis Multimix 16 Firewire mixer / audio interface could send to the computer at once. In other words, how many tracks can he record simultaneously?

I head over to Musicians Friend and read the description. Of course, it's all useless marketing hype with no clear indication of the features. (This is normal, UNFORTUNATELY!).

So, I head over to the Alesis website.

_Compact, affordable 16-channel analog mixer and Multi-channel FireWire Audio Computer

Compact? Really? WOW! (highest form of sarcasm possible). Thanks!

Affordable? Really? WOW! (like I can't see the damn price is $500 at Musiciansfriend) Thank!

16-channel analog mixer? Okay, that's useful. That means it probably has X amount of mic preamps and X amount of line level inputs, but that tells me something.

Here is the part that pissed me off so badly, that I actively refuse to EVER recommend another Alesis product again for the rest of my life. You have not only lost me as a customer for life, you have completely lost all of my recommendations.

“Multi-channel Firewire”

Let me say that again.

“Multi-channel Firewire”

On their own website they leave out the single most important piece of information possible for an audio interface. Are they out of their damn minds?????? How is it that a manufacturer of an audio interface can't see the worth in being clear enough to illustrate the most important feature in an audio interface? I'm positive that there are some extremely intelligent electrical engineer and software engineers have designed this audio interface. I surely can't do it! I tip my hat on my bald head to them.

However, what incompetent moron is in charge of writing the product descriptions for the Alesis website and Musiciansfriend? Fire them immediately! They are costing you money! Fire them. Go a step further. Put a hit out on them! This is so big of a mistake that it had to be on purpose. No one with any understanding of the product would possible leave out the number of simultaneous inputs. This has to be part of some bigger New World Order conspiracy or something. It makes no logical sense.

It's Not Just Alesis – It's M-Audio, Presonus, Mackie, Digidesign and Every Other Manufacturer Of Audio Interfaces
I've been planning on updating the Home Recording Soundcard Wizard to include the latest audio interfaces that have came out recently. Every time I start to go through each audio interface and deduce what features it has (yes, I have to use some kind of deductive reasoning to figure out the stupid features of a given product) I end angry. I'm angry because I want the information on my Soundcard Wizard to be accurate. I owe that to the visitors of RecordingReview.com. However, when they simply do not tell you ANYWHERE the number of simultaneous inputs and other features on the description of an audio interface, I don't know what to do!

I believe in capitalism. (Don't get started on another anti-socialist rant). I believe that the market caters to the demands of the customer. If a business does something in a strange way, it's probably due to the fact that customers want it that way. What possible customer would have any interest in pulling out their credit card for a product that they have absolutely zero idea even does what they think it does?
This blows my mind!

Misleading Input Figures
Another problem which is almost as huge as not stating the number of inputs at all is the problem of over-inflating the number of inputs. Digital inputs should not count as the number of inputs in an audio interface! Why can't the ad for the Presonus Firestudio (which I happily own) say “Featuring 8 analog inputs out of the box, but expandable to 26 simultaneous inputs with ADAT Lightpipe”. Instead, they just say “24 inputs”. Then they say “26 inputs”. (I guess they forgot to count S/PDIF the first time!) There is absolutely nothing on the Musiciansfriend Firestudio ad to suggest that without buying a bunch more stuff, you can only record 8 inputs at once. NOTHING! A beginner is completely screwed. You are going to pay $500-600 minimum for an 8 channel preamp / analog to digital converter with Lightpipe. Nowhere does the Firestudio say that it's going to cost an additional $1000 to get up to 24 simultaneous inputs. Why keep this a secret? Since no one is being up front and honest about their audio interface products, it seems that if there was one company who laid it all out there, the buying public would be shocked by the straight forward nature of the company and the company would explode with sales!

I remember when I first bought my M-Audio Delta 1010 back in 2001. I was shocked to see that it did not have 10 inputs. It had 8 analog inputs and 2 S/PDIF, but no one told me that I would need to buy more stuff to take advantage of the other 2 inputs. If this wasn't fraud, it was flat out intentional deception. (I think that is fraud!).

A Picture Is Worth A Million Trillion Words
I'm the kind of guy who likes to read. I LIKE books. (As long as they involve Nazis, the Cold War, or socialism.) I don't mind reading a description of an audio interface. However, because the ad for the typical audio interface is so disgustingly uninformative, I have to look at the damn picture! Why! Am I 4 years old? I can color in the lines now. I should not have to recourse to looking at the back of the unit to figure out what an audio interface can and can't do. The ad says “4,000 inputs made of gold for pristine fidelity” and the back of the unit has 8 holes for XLR mics and an ADAT input.

The bigger problem arises when the USB and Firewire mixers don't specify how many ins and outs their audio interface portion contains. There is no back of the unit to look at! Obviously, the text in the ad and the website is going to be useless. It's a guessing game as to whether the unit has 2 inputs or 16 inputs!

So, in this case a picture is not worth 1,000 words. Not when the words are useless! In fact, a picture is worth an infinite amount of words in this case, but I'd rather sound like a mafia dude who says "million trillion".

Make It Easy On Beginners!
I'm curious just how many people start to consider jumping into home recording and then get confused by the unnecessary complications of audio interface ad writers that they say “Screw it!”. I bet the audio interface world is losing millions of dollars each year because they don't accurately describe their products.

As I mentioned in the previous M-Audio Delta 1010 article, I need the following features:

• Stereo headphone mixes
• Portability
• Less cables
• More simultaneous inputs

On top of that I want to add:

• Don't want to spend a zillion dollars

Finding The Right Audio Interfaces
I put quite a bit of research into finding the right audio interface for me. It was very important that I had the ability to fire up as many headphone mixes as necessary. I'm not big on giving out headphone mixes to each and every band member, but in the end the customer / client is always right. If they want fancy headphone mixes, I'm all for it. If I can make them feel more comfortable when they play, they will probably play better. They will probably end up coming out of my studio feeling happier about the entire experience. As outlined in my previous blog, it was very important for me to setup a stereo headphone mix(s) as I think it makes it easier to hear what is really going on. So my first goal was to find an audio interface that had a powerful headphone mixing system with zero latency. (That's another thing. I feel very strange sending drummers a mix from Cubase even if it is only 2ms behind. Then again, no one seems to complain.)

I was delighted to see that many manufacturers have powerful solutions for the headphone mixing thing. RME, MOTU, Presonus, M-Audio, and probably many others all had solutions.

After that, I had to make sure I found a Firewire unit. This really didn't knock the selection down too much. Most of the audio interfaces that had the headphone routing system also had Firewire. I'm not exactly sure why. I guess Firewire is more popular than PCI these days. (Forgive me, while I've helped a million trillion people select audio interfaces on the recording forum, I haven't bought one for myself in almost 7 years. Most of the people I help are usually going for simpler setups than I require.)

So from there, it was just an issue of price. I immediately ruled out any sound quality differences. When it comes to the sound quality of an audio interface, the main factors are the built in preamps (if applicable), the analog to digital conversion when sending signal into the audio interface, and the digital to analog conversion when sending signal out of the audio interface. That's pretty much it. There are guys who are big on modding power supplies and things of that sort, but I usually don't dig that far. I'm more worried about the plywood I have nailed up all over the place in my live room. I have my Mytek converters which are extremely expensive and the difference between them and my M-Audio Delta 1010s was very subtle. I'm positive that dumping the extra cash on RME wouldn't result in an improvement that would justify it's expense to my clients and therefor it doesn't justify it's expense to me either. Maybe the RME would last longer and be more durable, but you never really know with this stuff. The way my luck has been, anything I use is going to break!

I ended up selecting the Presonus Firestudio. It has just about everything I need for $700. I really wish it had dual S/PDIF inputs so I could use all four channels of Mytek conversion. I guess my second Mytek AD96 is going to be taking a break for a while.

I like the fact that I can add 16 additional channels via ADAT Lightpipe. I really don't have any need for 26 simultaneous inputs today, you never know what the future will hold. I like the idea that I can borrow an 8 channel preamp with ADAT outputs and immediately expand my rig when necessary.

Now the hard part: Finding an 8 channel ADAT converter.
Brandon

I can go a zillion routes. First I want to talk about what I didn't like about the Delta 1010s.

Delta 1010 Is Not Portable
First of all, they were very unportable due to them being PCI cards instead of Firewire, which I would prefer. I have had to turn down a few “on location” gigs because it took such an outstanding amount of time to move my rig around. So, it's worth a few extra bucks for the ability to grab a laptop, a 6 space rack, and a few mics for a live recording.

No Fancy Headphone Monitoring Matrix
The Delta 1010s offered no headphone mixing matrix. I used my Mackie 1604 for the longest time for monitoring in a live band situation. I could get 4 mono and 1 stereo mix out of the Mackie, but I really hate mono headphone mixes. I think it's much more difficult to hear with a mono headphone mix and I think this effects recordings in a negative way. So, this time around I really want the ability to setup stereo headphone mixes.

I always felt a little weird when I knew the guitar players in the band really couldn't hear what was going on. While I could continue to wing it with the current mono setup, it would be preferred to have the ability to do anything I wanted in terms of headphone mixes.

Note: I will still be monitoring through Cubase when doing any overdubs. All of this headphone monitoring matrix stuff is there exclusively for the recording of live bands. I like adding compression, adding reverb, and controlling levels real time through Cubase in almost all cases. However, I'm limited to a single mix in Cubase. While theoretically, I could use aux sends within Cubase, these add significant latency to the signal.

It seems silly to pay $600 for an audio interface that does not have extensive headphone options.

No Built In Mic Preamps
The Delta 1010s had no mic preamps built in. This led me to buy external mic preamps and a mixer. I really don't need built in mic preamps these days, but I do have to admit that I like the idea of simplicity with the built in mic preamps. While I do have a few high end and middle of the road mic pres which always get used first, there were times when I would end up resorting to my Mackie pres if I ran out of channels. I would use built in mic pres in the the audio interface as a last resort as well. Going back to live recording and such, I like the idea of being able to plug in one single cable into an audio interface and being done with it.

TONS of Cables
I've had hell with cables since I started recording. I think this is common. When I have 16 mics in use, I have 16 mic cables that go to my preamps, 16 cables that go from my preamps, cables that go to the mixer for headphone mixes, cables that go from the preamps to my Mytek converters, cables that go from my Mytek converters to my audio interfaces. This may not sound too complicated, but my floor ends up looking like a scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I just happen to hate snakes, too! The problem is most of my cables are 8 feet long for various reasons and this means I have 8 feet of cable whether I need 1ft or 20ft. This really makes a huge mess, makes it hard to troubleshoot bad cables, and causes big problems with cables getting accidentally yanked out. I would much rather forgo this complexity, if possible.

If I'm recording 16 mics, there is no way of getting around those initial 16 XLR cables. However, I've got a feeling that if I can take the Mackie out of the equation entirely for monitoring, I will not only have a cleaner looking rack that is MUCH easier to deal with and troubleshoot, I'll also totally reduce the number of problems that occur in the first place. I can't think of a live session (or even a session where we were just recording drums) where every cable and connection worked perfectly. I'm always playing around with my rack. Note: Some of that is do to the fact that I have to hook/unhook my snake on my Neve preamps when I switch from tracking in the control room vs the live room. Way too much of this is due to some random cable causing problems. The fact that I have wasted the bands time dealing with my issues so much usually compels me to knock time off the recording bill. These hours add up!

It may seem like I'm putting too much emphasis on simplicity, but I find that when I'm trying to get great tones for a live band, I usually have anxiety x 2,000. Everything goes wrong. There are cables everywhere. The band is tripping over them. The guys in the band will start telling jokes and yelling and hollering. (This isn't a bad thing except when I'm trying to find a bad cable in a stack of 4 billion wires and cables). In the end, every little incremental improvement I could make for this sort of thing is an enormous blessing!

Not Enough Simultaneous Inputs With One Card
The M-Audio Delta 1010s allowed 8 analog inputs and then 2 more inputs via S/PDIF. This is a fairly normal configuration for a multi-channel audio interface. At least, it was a fairly normal configuration. I used 2 Delta 1010s to get enough inputs. While this wasn't a bad way of handling the situation, when you double the amount of components in a rig, you double the changes of something going wrong. So here I sit with a dead PCI card, but 2 breakout boxes that work fine. If the Delta 1010 had ADAT Lightpipe inputs, I could continued using my one audio interface and simply run a single cable into the back of the Delta 1010 for an additional 8 inputs.

Required features:

• Stereo headphone mixes
• Portability
• Less cables
• More simultaneous inputs

So, I'm looking for an audio interface that can take care of all these requirements. I have to admit. The Delta 1010s were very reliable. I got over 6 very reliable years out of the Delta 1010s and I even squeezed a few great recordings out of them here and there. However, the Delta 1010s were just little short on features. At $600, I'm of the opinion that the Delta 1010s can not compete with other model audio interfaces. I had thought at one time that the price was dropped down to $400. This seemed a bit more reasonable.

Some may wonder about the sound quality of the M-Audio Delta 1010. I'd say it's as good as anything else out there in home recording land. Of course, I upgraded my converters to the very expensive Mytek converters, but no client has been able to tell the difference.

Conclusion
This article isn't really meant to deter or encourage anyone to use a Delta 1010. I'm simply describing my own personal experiences and thoughts. If your needs are similar, you may save yourself a little bit a of trouble by learning from my mistakes when choosing an audio interface.