Best control surface for digital recording?

[ken]

I have been recording since the late '70's.

I have an extra WinPC with Win7 here, and more than enough computing power to make a medium size recording system.

I am looking for a control surface that will allow me to emulate an old Tascam cassette 8 track recorder as closely as possible for demo/recording
scratch track ideas. I want to be able to turn a physical knob and make the computer react the same way as the Tascam would have, I'm looking at a 4 track minimum I/O, and I have no problems with a used unit too.

I am not 'married' to a recording software program so I am willing to buy new if I have to.

thank you, ken

[Steve Conner]

I've tried a bunch of stuff over the years, and the most productive I've been has been using Reaper with an ordinary mouse and keyboard. IMO, the issue is that DAW software is written and tested by guys who drive it with mice and keyboards. The control surface is grafted on as an afterthought, and never feels quite right.

For a similar price to a control surface and audio interface, you can get a standalone multitrack recorder that records to SD card, the direct descendant of the old Tascam Portastudio. Some of these can also be used as a control surface and multi-channel audio interface for a DAW.

The Frontier Design Alphatrack is a cheap and cheerful controller that I used to use with my old recording rig: Pro Tools LE and a Delta 1010 interface. It worked well enough, except for the ribbon controller which I never got the hang of.

[warunasanjaya55]

Anyway,you can not marry a recording software even if you want to,besides I think following link will give you answer for your problems?.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_surface

[Steve A.]

I was composing a lengthy reply on Wednesday but Firefox crashed on me. Again.

Here's a quick summary:
Zoom R-8 $250. "Zoom takes the turbocharged design of the R24 and scales it down for an ultra-portable music production solution. Like its predecessor, the R8 combines four production tools in one versatile device. In addition to being an 8-track recorder that utilizes SD memory, the R8 is an audio interface, a DAW control surface and a sampler complete with drum pads and a rhythm machine."

R8 | ZOOM

The R-8 is very small and portable- it has two built-in mics that you might want to use for casual recording. (I wonder if they are anything like the mics in their H4 or H2 hand-held recorders.) You can record 2 tracks and play back 8 tracks simultaneously- if you need more than that they do have their R-16 and R-24 recorders for ~$400 and $500 respectively.

Behringer BCF2000 $175-200. Strictly a control surface that connects to your computer via USB. Has 8 motorized faders for automated mixes. Once you try automated mixes it is hard to go back to the plain variety. One thing about automated mixes is that when you return to the project everything is exactly as you had set it the last time you worked on it. I have projects with maybe 12 different lead guitar tracks and it would be a real hassle if I was to keep track of which of those tracks I was using and where they faded in and out- especially if I was to come back to the project a year later. With motorized faders they all snap to the saved settings. You could do that with a mouse but it is much more tedious.

Behringer: B-CONTROL FADER BCF2000

They also make a control surface with 32 rotary encoders- the BCR2000 which sells for $150-180

Behringer: B-CONTROL ROTARY BCR2000
KORG nanoKontrol2 $60 This would fit nicely in front of your computer keyboard. I was thinking that it would be great for some of the editing projects I do which do not involve any recording (I like to digitally remaster audience recordings of live shows- in some cases more of an audio restoration project.)

Amazon.com: Korg nanoKONTROL2 Slim-Line USB Control Surface, Black: Musical Instruments

HTH

Steve Ahola

[ken]

Thank you for the help!

One thing that bothers me about digital recording is the 'mouse/keyboard' interface.
I know that most recording programs use it, but I really miss reaching over, turning a knob and immediately getting a result.
IMO recording was more fun that way.

Anyways, about the Behringer units... how sturdy or dependable are they? I had a couple of their guitar amps, and they didn't last very long.
I actually took good care of them too - put them back in the factory boxes for transport, no drinks near them, but they still broke.

I'm looking at the Zoom unit you mentioned since you recommended it, there is one at a GC nearby so I'll be trying it out. If I can find the Korg, I'll try that too.

PS. Firefox crashes a lot on me too lately, I don't know why. I thought it was malware but all my antivirus comes up clean.

Thank you,
ken

[Steve A.]

I think that the Behringer BCR2000 would be more dependable since there are no motorized parts. At least that is my assumption. Each control has a ring of LEDs around it which I believe indicate the approximate setting of the control in your automated mix. With it being a continuous rotary control you don't run into the problem you get with a LOT of digital gear with real knobs: as soon as you move the knob just a little it jumps to the current setting of the control. With a rotary encoder I think that you'd turn it clockwise to increase the setting or ccw to decrease it.

I just bought a used Behringer amp from a Sam Ash in Virginia. $99 for the Blue Devil GX112 plus another $27 for sales tax and shipping to CA. It was recommended as a good alternate to the Peavey Nashville 112 ($600 new/$400 used) for steel guitar. I figured out why someone had gotten rid of it and why it was still on the salesfloor- when you hit a low note there was a buzz. Bad speaker? Nope. The screws securing the handle to the cabinet had loosened up a bit. Now you have me worried.

Steve Ahola

[Steve Conner]

PS. Firefox crashes a lot on me too lately, I don't know why. I thought it was malware but all my antivirus comes up clean.

You need an old-school analog web browser.

[ken]

Quote Originally Posted by ken View Post
PS. Firefox crashes a lot on me too lately, I don't know why. I thought it was malware but all my antivirus comes up clean.
You need an old-school analog web browser.

You mean like IE?

I think Firefox got corrupted somehow, so I'll have to reinstall a clean copy. But first, I have to save over 100 bookmarks

I refuse to use Chrome, I had some bad experiences with it when it first came out.

ken

[Steve A.]

You mean like IE?

I think Firefox got corrupted somehow, so I'll have to reinstall a clean copy. But first, I have to save over 100 bookmarks

I refuse to use Chrome, I had some bad experiences with it when it first came out.

ken

Kind sir, get thee to the Pale Moon site posthaste. It is an optimized version of Firefox than runs much smoother on my computer. And since it is still Firefox all of your bookmarks will be there.

I've had nothing but trouble with FF since version 10- it has to do with how it handles flash videos and Facebook. So on this computer I installed FF version 3.5.10 to get back some of my bandwidth and CPU usage. Firefox would nag me every time I loaded it telling me that my browser was out of date and that I needed to update to the latest, more secure version. Speaking of which whenever I would manually update FF it would change my settings from manual to automatic so all of a sudden- guess what- I am using the newer, even buggier version. Thanks a lot, Mr. Mozilla!

The Pale Moon Project homepage

The site tells you that if you want the latest bells and whistles stick with Firefox- they release updates only when they think that they are needed and only after making sure that they work right. None of this "Omigawd we HAVE to add this feature!" My kind of site, my kind of organization, my kind of browser. (Believe it or not Firefox was like that in the very beginning, back when the thought of seriously competing against Internet Explore never entered their minds.

Steve Ahola

P.S. You might want to consider getting a modern 21st Century digital audio interface. I'm not familiar with this particular product but I'd recommend Tascam sight unseen. MF is selling it for $99.99 so GC should be able to match that price (I like being able to bring shit back to GC if I don't like it.)

TASCAM US-144MKII USB 2.0 4-channel Audio/MIDI Interface | Musician's Friend

Here's a link to the manual so you can check out the features. When comparing it to other devices bear in mind that this one does support USB 2.0 (a lot of the highly rated ones only support USB 1.1 which is much slower.)

http://tascam.com/content/downloads/...s_Manual_E.pdf

[Steve Conner]

I used the Delta 66 and Delta 1010 for years, and they worked great for me. I used the 1010 in my recording rig with Pro Tools M-Powered, and the 66 was in a Linux machine that I used as a headless music player. (M-Audio were among the first to have Linux support.)

I eventually sold both of them (for a respectable price!) because I was upgrading to a computer that didn't have any PCI slots to stick them in.

I agree that if you're buying an audio interface today, USB 2.0 is the way to go. Firewire used to be preferred for serious work, but USB has come on a long way and many machines don't have a Firewire port nowadays.

Also, I've been using Chrome since I got tired of Firefox 10+ and it works fine for me.

Steve, the US-144Mk2 looks very nice, I'm actually tempted to get one myself

[Steve A.]

I used the Delta 66 and Delta 1010 for years, and they worked great for me. I used the 1010 in my recording rig with Pro Tools M-Powered, and the 66 was in a Linux machine that I used as a headless music player. (M-Audio were among the first to have Linux support.))

I guess you could call us country cousins- the Roland Studio Pack and Studio Package Pro both used the same basic PCI card as the M-Audio Delta series and I screwed around with those for a few years. Once Roland discontinued support we had to use the updated Delta 1010 drivers. The Roland RSP forum was very active with all of the people having problems configuring their systems to eliminate problems like random pops and clicks. Once you worked out all of the bugs the equipment ran great- as long as you avoided any updates to Windows since that could screw everything up.

My conclusion was that Windows is not a good OS for digital audio recording since it uses preemptive multitasking- if Windows has something to say it butts right in rather that waiting for a pause in the conversation, so to speak. The best strategy is to use a dedicated computer with only your DAW software and drivers loaded. WinXP might be a better platform that Win Vista/7 since it is less bloated (I haven't compared them yet.) It is good to have a graphics co-processor to take the load off your CPU. I would only connect to a network to transfers files to another computer (IMO the very strict requirements for recording audio are not necessary for mixing and editing audio files since a CPU "hiccup" is not normally converted into a pop or a click.)

I have often thought that it would be easiest to use a standalone digital recorder for recordings which would then be transferred to a computer for editing and mastering.

Once a computer is configured properly for the DAW hardware and software it will work really great- I would avoid all updates and upgrades unless absolutely necessary since they can throw a monkey wrench into the works. I guess you could make a disk image of your boot drive before trying an update or upgrade so that you could completely undo it if you didn't like the results. Speaking of which you want your operating system on one hard drive and your data files on another (separate drives not just separate partitions.)

Steve Ahola

P.S. I think that M-Audio is a top-notch company- unlike many mfgs it offers great support for its products. Updated drivers and honest-to-God technical support. With many companies they are too busy working on the products they will be releasing next to bother with the crap that they already sold.