Yamaha 01X still viable?

[homestudioguy]

Is the Yamaha 01X still a viable firewire-control surface/mixer these days if it can be purchased for less than $500?
It's been around awhile and was geared primarily for Windows XP and OSX.

[Mikem]

I have an 01x that I use as a live mixer, and I feed a multitrack recording to my laptop running Cubase via firewire. It works well for this. I had problems getting the 01x to play nicely with my UAD-1's and dual core processors when I first bought it as my main studio interface. I ended up getting the FF800 instead for the studio and just use the 01x live now. I think for $500 or less, you can't go wrong if you'd ever need a great live mixer--built-in effects, decent pre amps, total recall of settings, etc.

For a studio interface, it's a bit more hit and miss. You'll need to wrap your brain around mLan, which is all about digital routing. I think the newer drivers have hopefully resolved a lot of the issues that I originally had, but I haven't tried it in that capacity since newer drivers were released.

As for the controller aspect, I was initially attracted to this, as well. But the reality is, I'm so used to using the mouse at this point, I could never get used to using the control surface instead. I think this would be true of any control surface for me now, not just the 01x.

Be sure to visit the 01x forums to get a sense of the users' issues and overall mood/satisfaction:

Welcome to 01xRay.com

Hope that helps,

Mike

[homestudioguy]

Thanks, Mike!
B

Originally Posted by Mikem

I have an 01x that I use as a live mixer, and I feed a multitrack recording to my laptop running Cubase via firewire. It works well for this. I had problems getting the 01x to play nicely with my UAD-1's and dual core processors when I first bought it as my main studio interface. I ended up getting the FF800 instead for the studio and just use the 01x live now. I think for $500 or less, you can't go wrong if you'd ever need a great live mixer--built-in effects, decent pre amps, total recall of settings, etc.

For a studio interface, it's a bit more hit and miss. You'll need to wrap your brain around mLan, which is all about digital routing. I think the newer drivers have hopefully resolved a lot of the issues that I originally had, but I haven't tried it in that capacity since newer drivers were released.

As for the controller aspect, I was initially attracted to this, as well. But the reality is, I'm so used to using the mouse at this point, I could never get used to using the control surface instead. I think this would be true of any control surface for me now, not just the 01x.

Be sure to visit the 01x forums to get a sense of the users' issues and overall mood/satisfaction:

Welcome to 01xRay.com

Hope that helps,

Mike

[Mikem]

You're welcome.

At the risk of the appearance of self promotion , here are links to a couple of threads where I'd posted live recordings I'd made on the 01x. The nice thing about the 01x is that you can completely bypass the onboard effects and record the dry signal straight from the inputs, which is what I did here. So the effects you're hearing are NOT the 01x. I prefer to be able to tweak to taste later, as you can imagine. These tracks were recorded to my laptop via Cubase 3, and then transferred to my desktop PC for mixing/editing, etc. Having said that, the 01x onboard effects are quite nice, and you can tweak them in software on your computer (where you can see EQ and comp curves) and then save the settings to the 01x.

I'm really sad that Yamaha didn't see mLan through more, to be honest. It's a really cool idea, and when it works, it's great. I've actually recorded a couple of bigger band sessions to my laptop using the i88x for additional inputs (and slightly higher quality pre's). You can probably find an i88x used for relatively cheap, which is a great complement to the 01x.

Here are those song links:

Paranoid Android (acoustic)

Run

[homestudioguy]

Android wouldnt come up but Run did.
You and group have done a wonderful job on this!
Sound and performance is great.
Would my Focusrite Saffire Pro 10 (10 channel firewire unit) be compatible with the 01X?

Originally Posted by Mikem

You're welcome.

At the risk of the appearance of self promotion , here are links to a couple of threads where I'd posted live recordings I'd made on the 01x. The nice thing about the 01x is that you can completely bypass the onboard effects and record the dry signal straight from the inputs, which is what I did here. So the effects you're hearing are NOT the 01x. I prefer to be able to tweak to taste later, as you can imagine. These tracks were recorded to my laptop via Cubase 3, and then transferred to my desktop PC for mixing/editing, etc. Having said that, the 01x onboard effects are quite nice, and you can tweak them in software on your computer (where you can see EQ and comp curves) and then save the settings to the 01x.

I'm really sad that Yamaha didn't see mLan through more, to be honest. It's a really cool idea, and when it works, it's great. I've actually recorded a couple of bigger band sessions to my laptop using the i88x for additional inputs (and slightly higher quality pre's). You can probably find an i88x used for relatively cheap, which is a great complement to the 01x.

Here are those song links:

Paranoid Android (acoustic)

Run

[Mikem]

Originally Posted by homestudioguy

Android wouldnt come up but Run did.
You and group have done a wonderful job on this!
Sound and performance is great.
Would my Focusrite Saffire Pro 10 (10 channel firewire unit) be compatible with the 01X?

I fixed that Paranoid Android link. It should work now. If your browser tries to stream it, try pausing it for awhile until the download finishes so it won't start and stop during buffering/playback. I use Firefox as my browser, which allows me to set mp3 files always as downloads, so it actually downloads the file instead of trying to open it.

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by compatibility, exactly. If you're on a PC, I don't believe you can use more than one ASIO driver at a time, so you'd have to toggle between them. So you couldn't use them at the same time, since they'd both be serving the same purpose.

I actually do NOT know if you could use another sound interface's audio drivers and just use the 01x as a controller. You'd be using it's midi in/out for communication, rather than it's sound driver, so there's a possibility, but I'm not certain.

But generally speaking, using multiple firewire devices can lead to trouble, so I wouldn't be too optimistic about using them simultaneously.

[homestudioguy]

I was wondering if I could run the Saffire via firewire into the 01X to give it 8-10 more inputs.
Saffire uses ASIO.
Android sounds excellent as well!
I am listening as I type.
B

Originally Posted by Mikem

I fixed that Paranoid Android link. It should work now. If your browser tries to stream it, try pausing it for awhile until the download finishes so it won't start and stop during buffering/playback. I use Firefox as my browser, which allows me to set mp3 files always as downloads, so it actually downloads the file instead of trying to open it.

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by compatibility, exactly. If you're on a PC, I don't believe you can use more than one ASIO driver at a time, so you'd have to toggle between them. So you couldn't use them at the same time, since they'd both be serving the same purpose.

I actually do NOT know if you could use another sound interface's audio drivers and just use the 01x as a controller. You'd be using it's midi in/out for communication, rather than it's sound driver, so there's a possibility, but I'm not certain.

But generally speaking, using multiple firewire devices can lead to trouble, so I wouldn't be too optimistic about using them simultaneously.

[dcwave]

Originally Posted by homestudioguy

I was wondering if I could run the Saffire via firewire into the 01X to give it 8-10 more inputs.
Saffire uses ASIO.
Android sounds excellent as well!
I am listening as I type.
B

No you cannot connect the Saffire this way unless it uses mLAN, which allows you to network devices over firewire.

I use an 01x with an i88x. I use it as a controller. I use the two mic pres in the i88x (derived from the DM2000). This combination has 28 inputs. 16 analog, 12 digital (8 ADAT and 4 SPDIF) I have zero problems with this setup and can run down to about 8ms latency. When tracking singers I send some verb from the 01x's built in FX to a aux bus into the headphones.