advice on my sp1200 to DAW signal chain

[goldenmean]

id be interested in some suggestions on this....ive been making all my beats in the sp1200 sampler and basically they sound pretty good in the box.. i figured id try to track them straight outta the mix out instead of doing individual outputs for each sound....its been getting tiresome setting up all the 8 outs.... im pretty happy with how the sampler sounds in its raw form and want to keep it as transparent as possible going to DAW.
i have alot of things to run through, but im a little newjack on this.......ive tried some different combos with this stuff but dont really know what im doing...i dont want to overdo compression on this but it seems like a little bit does help make the overall beat bigger.....it seems like a direct line to the DAW is a simple answer but it sounds like it loses some of the punch and harmonics that way without any tube pre or compression/limting.
what ive got to mess with:
mackie 1202 mixer
blue tubes mic pre-ehh..not terrible..
art tube pre-pretty clean..doesnt colorize the signal much..these seem pretty good for me to stick with
art pro vla limiter/compressor-i like this but it really seems to add too much brightness to the higher end of the signal...plus it needs to have a preamp in front of it so thats 1 more thing to change the signal
alesis 3630 (tape op mod)-this seems ok, not too extreme or punchy but i am scared to use it because everyone disses them all the time
electroharmonix black finger-i really like this compressor but its super noisy and maybe isnt quite right for fully mixed beats to run through
i also wondered if setting the output of the sampler to +6 instead of 0 would help any
my instincts say i should stick with the art pre's and vla but im interested in what other people think....i dont know what a good basic compressor rule would be for mixes to D.A.T./DAW so i usally just use the limter.

[Lowas]

alesis 3630 (tape op mod)-this seems ok, not too extreme or punchy but i am scared to use it because everyone disses them all the time

Trust your own ears, try parallell processing and you are more free to experiment.
Good AD converters is probably your best bet for recording the SP1200.
I would experiment with compressing pre SP1200 instead of post too.

[chris carter]

I would run the line level out into the ART PRO VLA with the threshold really high so that there is no compression going on. From the VLA to your DAW. Set your final level with the outputs on the VLA (careful, the output trims are not linked in stereo mode). It won't be like tracking through a BG Brick or a GR pre, but probably better than just going in straight.

I wouldn't compress going in and I probably wouldn't want to go through any of the other gear you have on the way in.

EDIT: Seems odd that your VLA would be brightening things. The older US made ones (hex heads) tended to make things a little darker. The newer Chinese made ones (philips heads on front) are cleaner and very balanced frequency-wise. Sometimes with sparce beats if you over compress it can give the impression of more high end because you might be knocking your kick down and pulling up hats between drum hits so it SEEMS brighter even though it isn't. The VLA shouldn't need a preamp. And it's got another 10dB on the output if your sp1200 is giving you too low of an output (don't have one so I don't know how "line-level" the line-level outputs are).

[Stitch333]

Originally Posted by Lowas

Good D/A converters is probably your best bet for recording the SP1200.

Im thinkin AD would be more important than the monitoring chain.
And, unless its on the mix or yer splitting the record signal and treating each path differently, I wouldn't mess with 'parallel processing'. Get a solid sound up front and dont rely on effects or tricks at the beginning of production. But that electro-harmonix piece could be real cool later on in the mix...

A good AD converter would probably be the first place Id look at uping the quality of what you got going on thar. Tho with what you have (even without quality conversion) Id go straight in and reamp later when you have access to a good selection of outboard and a bank of quality ADDA. All the Alesis, Art and presonus crap can really undefine your sounds which will be next to impossible to add later.

[Lowas]

Im thinkin AD would be more important than the monitoring chain.

Yes of course, spelling mistake :P

[Lowas]

My "limited" experience with sampling drums into the emax which is similar to the SP1200 is that if I applied compression(dbx 160A) to the drums after it would accentuate the "grit" beyond what I wanted(noise/brightness), compressing before the emax gave me more clarity and punch and less noise, a lot of things matters like the rest of your gear, signal chain, levels, which soundsource you sample but my guess is that the "brightness" might be something similar to what I experienced and not the ART unit in itself.

I think it's worth it to play around and bend the rules a bit when working with pieces of gear like the SP1200 etc.

My emax is not top notch tho and most likely more "noisy" than goldenmean's SP1200, getting another one soon :P

[goldenmean]

thanks for the input everyone. all those old school samplers with 8 outputs are great because there are alot of different old and new mixing methods you can apply to them. im getting tired of tracking all the channels seperate and mixing the same song twice and having the end sound different. sometimes you get so used to how it sounds in the sampler, its really dissappointing when the recording process alters it.

i think the VLA is still pretty good and so im gonna mess with that more and use little or no compression. the modded alesis is nice for really squashing signals hard but i dont really want to squash my beat. in some ways i think i could use Ozone or Waves to do the more fine tuned compression if i need it.

a better secret weapon than just compressing the drums pre 12 bit sampler is to first run them through one of those sansamp bass driver di pedals. it really punches the low end hard and sounds more like a very dope gritty channel strip than a guitar pedal.

[rokuez]

i have an emu sp 1200, and i use a mogami 8-channel snake and record the sp's 8 outs into the 8 ins of the rme fireface 800.

Putfile - sp1200 here is a link where i recorded some demo sequence from a roland tr 808 sample kit
Putfile - sample 12 66 Here is a sample my friend looped. he got the sample from another tune i had sent him. i only used the arturia arp 2600 vst, and the sp 1200 for drums. i'm happy w/ the sound i get from recording the sp1200 directly into the rme ff800

[Lowas]

a better secret weapon than just compressing the drums pre 12 bit sampler is to first run them through one of those sansamp bass driver di pedals