cranesong - spider

[new engineer]

Does anyone have any experience with this mixer? My experienced engineer friend said if it was anything like the other Cranesong products it should be the best frontend for the buck.

[etherize]

the gearslutz.com forum is a good place to ask this question.
As far as I know you are pretty much getting a hedd and a flamingo pre (x8 channels)

Good Luck!

[new engineer]

Anyone...?
[img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

[rpowell]

Originally posted by new engineer:
Anyone...?
[img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I haven't used the Spider. Have used the HEDD and Flamingo. A combination of the two units would indeed be superb; however, I suspect this is not exactly the case.

You can do a search at the Music Player forum http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi
There's a guy named S_Gould who has a Spider and who has offered his comments.

RP

[Jules]

.

[etherize]

thanks for the info! Dave Hill (the designer) gave me a demo of it at AES. Wouldnt have been cool if Digi had developed the 192 based on this? They could have probably helped the price go way down on this... oh well...

"I don't use it for mixdown"

Well just so everyone knows I believe this has an 8 to 2 summing buss for those who want to sum outside protools so this could also take the place of one of those Dangerous 8 buss dealios

Now the poo part... I have Hd 3 also... what do you do if you want to do a 96k session? I spoke to Dave Hill at the time and he said Digi wouldn't let him connect to the oh so secret Digi port... I believe the unit can go up to 192 but if you can use it with HD3 at that rate that kinda sux...unless he figured out how to reverse engineer the digiport...

[Digi-Slime-NYC]

You can still use the preamps and the mixbus at a higher sample rate... you just have to use the 192 i/o converters... which sound GREAT, too.

All you do is take the outputs from the insert and plug them into converters.

Also, one of the coolest things you can do is have the mixbus of the cranesong switched to a different sample rate. So if you did a session at 192, you can mix on the spider and resample at whatever rate you want (96k or less) in the spider. In other words, the stereo bus a/d can be running at a different sample rate than the 8 individual channels a/d.

You won't be able to get the "tape emulation" unless you use the converters in the spider, but fat switch works before a/d.

[Fletcher]

The latest version has a "pre/post" switch... so you can go directly from the pre's to the individual digital outs without hitting the 'fader'... while accessing the "2 buss"...

So, if you had 3 mics on a guitar cabinet... and wanted to record the 3 individually as well as a mix of the three, now you can.

[etherize]

Hey Fletcher! Nice to see you out of purgatory

When I spoke to David Hill he said that the pres were the same as the flamingo is this true? Are we really getting 8 flamingo pre's and 8 Hedd quality converters? I know he mentioned that there was one function missing (iron mode maybe?)
But if so... this is really a bargin when you add it up... but I still wish it was more like $4500. Do you see the price of this unit coming down anytime soon?

[Digi-Slime-NYC]

I have a spider. I got one of the first ones. It is great. I have to agree that it is one of the best bargains going... and one of the best "productivity" improvements. When you're tracking a band you don't have to dash all over the studio tweaking preamps, compressors, A/D levels, etc. It's all here on the face. It's nice to be able to push a button and switch them to line inputs from synths, di, etc. Also, you can drastically vary the character of the preamps by pushing the fat switch and goosing the tape emulation fuzz knob.

If you have any specific questions.. I'll answer them. The quality of the preamps & converters is good. I had some fancy outboard preamps and converters which I sold on ebay after comparing them to this.

I had a little trouble wiring in some outboard stuff(with transformers) into the inserts (unbalanced) but a tech showed me how to do it and it sounds great now.

I don't use it for mixdown. I tried and there wasn't much improvement and it was a pain in the ass to setup. I never really had much of a problem with the mix bus in protools and I'm using an HD3 system.

BTW, I use the spider in WC mode so whatever sample rate the session is set to...spider syncs up.

I don't know what else to say... other than I don't think I could do without this piece now because I'm so used to having it as a front end.

Things I don't like:
1. power cable from ps to spider is too short.
2. it gets DAMN HOT... need space above and below the unit.
3. overload & limit warning lights are too small.
4. easy to overdrive the input gain... not a nice overdrive... a non-musical scraping sound arises on overload... good for punk rock maybe?