Guitar Gear Forum

Hey guys, anyone using any outboard effects patched into their interface? I was looking at some units, but I don't know if I would be gaining any benefit by using outboard effects vs VST plugins...

The TC Electronic M-One caught my eye... It supports 24-bit 48 kHz sound...

What do you all think???

Cole

maybe if I attended the drum jams this next statement wouldn't be true, but I haven't heard many of your clips to really know what might benefit you.

I'd definitely like to get a hardware EQ and a hardware compressor down the line for mixing.

Markdude wrote:I'd definitely like to get a hardware EQ and a hardware compressor down the line for mixing.

My new interface has built in compression and reverb that I can assign to all 8 inputs, but I would still like to get an ART Pro VLA II at some point. The idea is to run the output of my incoming ART Pro MPA II into the VLA II then into my interface... I figured that would be a good setup for bass, acoustic, and drum overheads (when that time comes).

I don't know what eq would be good... maybe a Rane parametric eq

I am curious about multi-effects units that can be used in place of VST plugins. The TC Electronic I mentioned does modulation, but has a de-esser, expander, and a noise gate. Seems like a cool unit.

Cole

Modest wrote:maybe if I attended the drum jams this next statement wouldn't be true, but I haven't heard many of your clips to really know what might benefit you.

I have a hard time with drum jams... I am not a creative guitarist. I like reverbs, delay, compression, gates, de-essers when I record stuff. I thought that having outboard effects would reduce CPU load, but it might increase latency due to extra AD/DA conversion.

Cole

i think you could benefit from outboard gear.. but ultimately, probably less so than by filling your box with ram and judiciously using stuff in the box.

a pair of good pres would be a great endpoint for mixing. verbs are digital domain anyhow.. so not sure how much that'd help matters.. a pair of really nice comps would probably be awesome for mixing.

i dunno-- everyone has different workflow. personally, i never really use anything going in, save for very infrequently on vocals using a little comp and i've never even broken the packing grease on my insert channels in the 5-6 years i've owned it and i HAVE outboard gear i could use. maybe once i get a second wa12 for mixdown.

have you tried putting that stuff in your vst chains? if your track counts are relatively low, i wouldn't even sweat the latency. turn off f/x on as many channels as you can to get the picture and lighten the load, or if you need them for feel for an add on solo or something-- just render down and work off a 2 track mix and mute everything else and pile 'em up. i honestly never seem to bog down my cpu until track numbers get up around 12-15 full of vsts for tracking with vsts out front (learned this doing WAY late overdubs on a project this summer-- the record was mostly done and mixed, and they wanted more guitars for thickening.. so i hadda track over the entire mix full of vsts. i largely just turned off extraneous stuff. worked fine to keep latency manageable and the guitarist didn't seem to mind).

I love outboard effects assuming they sound great I think old Roland stuff is good for the money.

BroSlinger wrote:I love outboard effects assuming they sound great I think old Roland stuff is good for the money.

I think that I want something that can handle at least 24-bit 48 kHz... That way it will be more in line with my Steinberg MR816csx recording ability. Do you know if the Roland stuff supports that bit rate?

Cole

colejustesen wrote:

BroSlinger wrote:I love outboard effects assuming they sound great I think old Roland stuff is good for the money.

I think that I want something that can handle at least 24-bit 48 kHz... That way it will be more in line with my Steinberg MR816csx recording ability. Do you know if the Roland stuff supports that bit rate?

Cole

I've never cared about stuff like that. I have no idea.

what does it matter what comes out after the AD/DA conversion inside of the hardware. It makes a sound that either sounds good or it doesn't. I could see your point if you were staying in the digital realm with some kind of SPDIF or binary connection, but in the OLD hardware world, you're going to be making some analog connections that make conversion irrelevant IMO. just sayin'.

I use to have some vintage dbx compressors that were amazing. As a compressor, there's really no software emulation that could do what they did. They had a certain warmth to them that definitely brought some analog feel to my mixes. But you are basically re-recording your trax to use outboard gear. And i think the degradation of the audio from the modest ad/da converters of my soundcard IS apparent. Especially if i used those comps on a number of tracks. In a high end studio with top of the line converters i think they can run a ton of outboard processors and not have much an issue.

For more spatial fx like reverb, delay, chorus, etc, i think since those are altering the audio anyway, it's not such a big deal.

Or you could do like i ended up doing which was tracking with my dbx comps. This way i got to use them, but i didnt have to set up all kinds of routing, then re-recording bsck in the audio with the effect added. It's fun to work in the all hardware realm, but when it came to mixing it all down digitally, it certainly is mirw time consuming..