#243

Double check how small it is. I saw a video recently and either the musician had tiny hands ir that thing is bigger than it looks in the promo photos

#244

Thanks! You just saved me $75 and a bunch of hassle…

#245

Like others here, I own an unreasonable, indefensible number of effects pedals. As I use an Apogee Duet, I’m without a solid solution for sending tracks out of the DAW to be processed externally. I’m finally ready to make that jump. What would you fine folks recommend by way of interface and reamp box? Or do you have other workflow suggestions? I think I’m missing out on a whole world of sounds at the moment and would love your help cracking this nut.

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#246

I don’t have one yet but the Little Labs Redeye seems to be a great workflow for dealing with reamping If you are also playing guitar. Curious if anyone has experience with one. Maintaining the raw signal of your guitar allows it to be comped and otherwise warped/effects tweaked to find the sweet spot.

If you are running things out and back into the interface make sure you are lining things up. In my experience, sending a transient and manually lining it all back up (like the movie thing they snap down and say “take 1” or whatever for movies) is easier than wrestling with the automagical compensation stuff built into DAWs. Know that if you start doing complex routing in and out of returns (w some latency included tracks some not) it might be hard to make the phase perfect.

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#247

Radial makes a range of reamp devices, from $100 passive devices to rackmounted multichannel monsters. How many tracks do you want to send out simultaneously? And will the pedals you want to use truly benefit from reamping?

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#248

One more suggestion: I built and use one of these. Extremely easy build and inexpensive at $50. I purchased the bundle of these boxes including the line attenuator, summing box, and direct box (with Cinemag transformer option). All are nice quality and well documented. The radial boxes may be a little more robust and heavier duty just as far as the enclosure is concerned. These are sturdy and a bit lighter-weight.

An additional thought: the line attenuator is handy for taking a direct modular output (no output module needed) and running straight to the soundcard/mic preamp.

3 Likes
#249

Great questions. I would only send out one track. And, if I understand your second question correctly, the answer is “yes”. A number of the pedals I want to reamp through generated sounds that are difficult if not impossible to get otherwise (Infinite Jets, Shallow Water, Tensor, Count to Five, etc). Others, like El Capistan and Dark World have workflows or characteristics that I want to use to add additional character to Una Corda and other software instruments.

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#250

@bradfromraleigh Ah, I will check this out! Always looking for a good therapeutic soldering project.

@jlmitch5 the Redeye thing looks legit!

#251

What I mean is, most pedals don’t require a reamp to work properly with line level: it’s only really important when dealing with circuits that expect a high impedance in the input, like fuzz pedals.

#252

Ah, I see! I will say this- my original post came because I’ve tried (more times than I can count) unsuccessfully to do this with my current setup, and it always sounds like a big pile of hot audio garbage. Undoubtedly there’s some user error involved, but I figured it’d be worth exploring a proper setup since I’m on the hunt for an interface with a bit more I/O than I’ve got at the moment.

#253

I’ve definitely run into gain staging issues with CT5 and Shallow Water. I can run line out from my audio interface into them, I just have to keep the volume pretty low. Reamping would likely help with that aspect if simply turning down doesn’t fix the problems. EDIT: Also, when using my pedals as an effects loop, I try to bring them back into the interface through Hi-Z inputs, though I don’t think it’s that necessary. I just like to have more trim control.
I built a Klein Bottle DIY, and in the instructions Peter said that if all the components are rated for more than 12v, you can use a 12v supply instead of a 9v One Spot which will increase the headroom of the pedal, allowing for use with synths. I’m uncomfortable with overvolting things I haven’t built because I don’t know their ratings, but does this make sense to anyone who has more experience than me? Maybe a question for another thread…

#254

You might want to check if your pedals have switches or jumpers for line level, i believe the shallow water does.

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#255

It does indeed (one more reason that I love that thing) but many of them do not. It’s inside the enclosure.

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#256

i really like the analog mixer\soundcard combo.

like others in this thread i use a motu ultralite mk3 hybrid (before i owned a mk1).
i couple it with my trusty allen & heath gs3 24 channels inline studio mixer, its 8 bus outs plugged into the 8 analog ins of the motu. given that i have multiple copies (3) of the bus outs i have another set of 8 outs going into a fostex r8 8 channels reel to reel recorder on 1/4" tape. so i can record simultaneously to tape and 96/24 on hard disk. or print to tape, mix and then record again multitrack on computer for further refinements, or directly mixdown to 2 tracks on the computer.
in the near future i’ll add a 2 tracks on 1/4" master stereo recorder to have a full analog option as well.

6 Likes
#257

I’m also going to chime in and recommend anything from MOTU, especially in their current AVB product line. I’m currently using an UltraLite mk4, which I bought for use while traveling based on my very positive experience with the MOTU 16A in my home studio. Both are super low latency, super clear AD/DA conversion, and the whole series has an excellent internal mixer and routing matrix. I personally only use the mixer to do gain balancing on analog inputs, but one place I think they both shine is that they can operate standalone without a PC, are freely routable, and can be networked to each other and pass channels between units. I actually don’t even need Soundflower anymore because I can just assign a sub mix to return to a couple virtual input channels and I have a freely available loopback device inputs for resampling or capturing various playback sources. I was also able to sell my large analog mixer, get rid of a nest of cables, free up a bunch of desk space, and stop being uncomfortably warm in my studio in the summer.

The latency and reliability of both interfaces also have a quality I find truly valuable: they make me forget they’re there.

Another nice feature is that you can also save different configurations for each section of the device (from global input trims and routing, down to individual mixer channel settings), or overall configurations for various use cases. My only complaint is that they boot slow, but I guess I can handle that given everything else they do exceptionally well.

Oh and for what it’s worth, I don’t find them nearly as ugly as most of the interfaces on the market. Nice blue LCD and black powder coated metal enclosure that feels like you could drop it off a moving vehicle and it would be just fine. Also comes with a rack mount kit.

4 Likes
#258

Does anyone have a recommendation for an interface that would have ~4 inputs and work nicely on an iPad running AUM? I’m looking for a multichannel device that is “plug and play” with iPad.

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#259

I used a Steinberg UR44 with AUM/iPad for a time. The combo worked very well.

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#260

may i ask you if you had an ultralite mk3 or something comparable in terms of drivers and if so if the latency is significantly lower with the ultralite 4?
also, mac or win?
thank you!

#262

I’ve had a few other interfaces before, but not MOTU. They were an Edirol FA-101, an M-Audio NRV-10, and a Mackie Onyx 1220i (all Firewire). I have both the 16A (Thunderbolt) and the UltraLite mk4 (USB) now and they are both noticeably lower latency, better performance overall, (and much clearer A/D conversion) than any of my previous interfaces. However, it’s a little hard to compare apples to apples because they’re different protocols. This is all on macOS. The main things I like about the MOTU line are the flexibility/functionality and audio quality. I think most newer interfaces these days will have pretty low latency.

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#263

I think it’s finally time to invest in a decent interface, and I’m quite tempted by the Motu Ultralite MK4 based on feedback here. I’d be new to more advanced input/output routing, so I’m wondering: could I set up a pair of outputs to send to Norns, and then route any combination of my inputs (say, modular, cocoquantus, microhpones) to that output pair?