Quote:
Originally Posted by peeder  First of all, everyone needs to realize that latency in air is not the same psychoacoustically as latency electronically.
Latency in air is something the brain analyzes along with early reflections etc. to place a source at a distance in space. This is not the same as latency in electronics. This is part of the "unreality" of listening to cue mixes in headphones. All the timings are effed up.
So what works and what doesn't is something you have to see for yourself, and some musicians might have greater or lesser tolerances to playing with latency. I try to take a zero-tolerance policy and get everyone in the pocket, and in phase.
There's no need for splitters when the console has direct outs, or if using external preamps, line ins. You take the external preamp into the line in or you use the internal ones. Then you use the direct outs/recording outs (on a 1640, these are pre-EQ and even pre-HPF, which is just flat wrong, and front end audio sells a "prefader mod" for $300 which fixes that) to go to your converters just as you would to go to a tape machine. Virtually every 16 channel+ console has these as a matter of course.
If you feel a need to avoid the console with your signal at all costs, you can just use Y-cables/mults on half-normalled patchbays etc to send the signal from the preamp to both the ADC and the console. Most modern preamps have bridging balanced outputs that can drive two inputs fine. Maybe a spec more distortion, but that's not a problem for a rock band.
For the cue mixes, you just build them with the aux sends on each channel, and go out into external headphone amps such as the ART HeadAmp. That way when the bassist wants more kick and the drummer wants less acoustic you can give everybody what they want with ease. |
peeder - thanks, I understand the concept. Having a console is not really an option for this application. By the time the console was purchased, the wiring and patchbays wired, my buddy could have bought a small HD system. To add to it, going into ANY of the consoles you listed is not an option - quality wise. As for the half normal, I'd prefer not to introduce the grounding issues that that will invariably introduce. Certainly it can be worked thru, but this is more of a "musicians" studio than a "engineers studio". I doubt there will even be a bay. Again, the added cost offsets the price difference between LE and HD.
I think Pachamama pretty much nailed my concerns. Now, the only thing left to do is book some time in an 003 studio and put my buddy behind a set of drums and see how it "feels" to him with 128 or 64 buffer settings. I agree with you about the psychoacoustic affect of headphones vs. distance. One is natural, the other disconcerting. I think booking a studio is the only way to know if it will work for this person or not.
Thanks everyone!
bp