do i need a mixer at all?

[golden beers]

Hi I have a medium-large home set up and I'm downsizing.

I have 6 analogue synths, a few nice compressors and some older fx and bits and bobs

I have just recently sold my old sountracks quartz48 beast.
looking for a new quality alternative on a tight budget I had the thought that i could go for a UAD-2 QUAD, use the neve plugins and cubase soft mixer and not bother with a 'real' mixer at all. i have 24 A-D ins and outs and 2X 96way patch bays.

so my set up would be synths and outboard into patchbay-> patchbay to AD and vise versa. to be honest i can't remember if you can insert into the cubase mixer from the real world. my music computer has been mothballed since the birth of my son over a year ago!

anyone have a good method for inserting into cubase?
and what do you think of this whole no mixer idea? crazy? or crazy LIKE A FOX?

[stafs]

You need some preamps as well .

[golden beers]

hmmm maybe i could get away with the gain on the A-D?
double hmmm any pre-amp suggestions?

it's looking like i'll have to go for a cheap mixer. :( need at least 32 channels, good signal to noise, any suggestions?

[Jay-]

I went ahead and did the same thing...
Sold my 24 channel firewire mixer for a Rane SM82 line mixer.
You can stack it for 32 chnnels. (not sure whats balanced, perhapse just the outs)

Its like zero noise but you need XLR pre amps for a mic.
Also it has sends for computer and routing for efx loop.
RANE SM82 Stereo Mixer - eBay (item 220330019682 end time Dec-19-08 14:20:58 PST)

[stafs]

If You have gain knobs on Your AD, then You allready have preamps. If not, i'm afarid, You should try to find something that captures signal from synths, and 'feed' the AD with it.

[Beyersound]

You don't need a mixer, the Cubase mixer is excellent, possibly the best DAW mixer out there. If you have SX3 or C4 it does inserts and hardware effects incredibly well through the external effects buss (they show up as actual plugins on the mixer, it's as cool as it gets!), and with the usual auto delay compensation. You just need a proper interface with enough I/O to do what you want, and you're there. For example my SX3 rig has a control surface (just to have some faders and transport control), an Emu 1820m interface with an ADA8000 in the ADAT I/O that gives me a total of 18 inputs and 20 outputs. I use some outboard mic pres and lots of hardware effects and a master buss hardware insert comp. This makes the rig capable of just about anything I could want it to do, and it is pretty cost effective. I own a console, I just use it for the mic pres. This enables me to track 18 mic inputs at a time, and do about as complex of a mix as I could want. I also use a couple of UAD cards and some native plugins, they are amazing tools. If you want more Cubase insert advice feel free to PM me.

[vo1k1]

Originally Posted by Beyersound

...If you have SX3 or C4 it does inserts and hardware effects incredibly well through the external effects buss (they show up as actual plugins on the mixer, it's as cool as it gets!), and with the usual auto delay compensation. You just need a proper interface with enough I/O to do what you want, and you're there.

This is very interesting to me. In my hybrid setup, I was primarily using outboard gear as inserts on subgroups (drums, bg vocals, etc.; DA > Gear > AD). Eventually, most of my subgroups were going out to analog gear. So, now I'm trying analog line level mixing for summing the analog gear; running the outputs of the analog processed subgroups through a line mixer (I need the gain control) before one more A-to-D for the 2 channel mix. I've not come to any conclusion about this approach yet - I do miss the flexibility of the approach described above.

[vo1k1]

Originally Posted by Jay-

I went ahead and did the same thing...
Sold my 24 channel firewire mixer for a Rane SM82 line mixer.
You can stack it for 32 chnnels. (not sure whats balanced, perhapse just the outs)

Its like zero noise but you need XLR pre amps for a mic.
Also it has sends for computer and routing for efx loop.
RANE SM82 Stereo Mixer - eBay (item 220330019682 end time Dec-19-08 14:20:58 PST)

I wanted something similar - and got an Ashly LX-308B. The attractive characteristics for me were all balanced ins and outs; and pretty quiet and clean sounding. If I grow out of it - the speck x sum also looks attractive.

[golden beers]

Originally Posted by Jay-

I went ahead and did the same thing...
Sold my 24 channel firewire mixer for a Rane SM82 line mixer.

Also it has sends for computer and routing for efx loop.

I've just been looking at the Rane SM82. You say that it has sends for computer and routing. I can only see main outs (L+R) loop outs (L+R) and expand out (L+R). That is 6 outputs. Unless I'm missing something there aren't enough outs to feed the AD! If I’ve got (say)16 AD ins I would need a (line) mixer with 16 outs would I not?

basically I'm looking at doing the summing on cubase not at the pre AD stage.