Tons and Tons of Outboard Gear

[GTBannah]

Or Sonar or Nuendo or Logic forums.

Thanx, Sean. I guess that makes me a pro, being a Sonar man ....

[brandymania1]

Good advice he would be wise to take it


brandy

[Naagzh]

I'll admit I haven't heard some of the gear you've mentioned, but the only piece I'd use as an insert would be the Eventide H4000. That's a heavy-duty effects unit capable of craziness. Otherwise, I'd stay in the box while mixing. The plugs you mentioned are high-quality.

The compressors, however, you might just want to use them while tracking, say, vocals, acoustic guitar, bass, piano, etc. So, having external preamps with insert jacks makes sense here. Presonus Digimax, maybe? Then, when you want to track with a compressor, you'd just have to connect it to the insert jacks. Without insert jacks, you'd connect them (obviously) to the line-output of the mic pre and in line-input of the 001. Not as quick as a patchbay, but not bad, considering you'll only be changing things when it's time to record a different source.

Patchbays and insert jacks aside, you could just simply set it up for your most often-used signal chains. For example, 001 inputs 1 and 2 could have the Avalon in the chain, 3 thru 5 have no hardware connected, 6 could have the Manley, and 7 and 8 could have the Eventide (which could also be connected to 001 outputs 7 and 8). Also, the Avalon compressor has a built-in bypass, so it's just a button-push away.

By the way, why do you need all 18 inputs at once? Set up as above, if you had external mic pres for all available inputs, you'd have 16 inputs always available. Are you multi-tracking live bands quite regularly?

[TommyComa]

Thanks for the help guys...Iv got it all set up and sounding great! Setting up the patchbay was alot easier than expected...yes i do agree the eventide is awesome. Thanks again for all of the advice, And yes I do alot of multi tracking...lots of live bands. and I never mix outside of the box, I just wanted to explore some new routes with external effects. Thanks again guys.

-Tom

[sean shannon]

I never mix outside of the box.

-Tom

With that list of outboard gear, I certainly would.