UA 4-710d, no stereo link work around?

[bacchus40]

hey y'all...

I purchased a UA 4-710d for my front end as I do drums a fair bit and require a nice set of pre-amps.. it was a total bonus to find one as sweet as the UA unit with its sweet tubes....

of course I will be working with some DJs as well and would like the option of tracking off white-label Vinyl records for use in our mixes.

now here is the issue.. the UA unit does not have "link for stereo" option available as far as i know, is there a work around within pro tools which would be able to help us in this situation? a full-wide stereo image is always nice here & there...

thanks for any suggestions...

[albee1952]

How is the UA piece connecting to Pro Tools? There's no logical reason that you can't assign a stereo input path with 2 mono sub-paths.

[bacchus40]

oh i know i can do that... not really the issue... i can go in via lightpipe...

reason i ask is i was talking to another mixer eng. while on holidays
and he was braggin' about his STEREO TUBE PRE and how much of a nice-full stereo
field it gives him...

I have seen a couple pro units that have this option on the hardware itself so i figured
there must be something to it...

little research reveals most dont seem to find much of an actual difference in sound quality as such so i guess it may just be an added
feature which pans the outs left & right... of course i can do this in protools so it shouldnt be an issue...

[albee1952]

Call me crazy but I was under the impression that any pair of identical mono preamps constitutes a stereo preamp

[YYR123]

Yeah I think Mr. BAC was actually looking for a unity gain by the stereo link which would control his left and his right since the UA is not a fixed step gain

I'm actually a couple of months out of getting one of these units for the exact same reason drums live tracking I need at least 12 inputs and it has 96K ADAT

I read a review online though that made me have some reservations about the game structure of those pre's !!!!

could you tell me if it's a linear curve on all the gain's pot - I had one review tell me that between the four preamps there was a point on the pots were you would actually be turning in it would have a very unlinear gain jump - (and they said they were different on all four)
so from one minute position to the next minute position it would actually be jumping gain in a non linear fashion

- thanks

[bacchus40]

thanks for the post.. i was beginning to think i was nutts for questioning this.. yes you're right YYR1223, thats exactly what i was looking into when tracking drums,
mostly on overheads, i'm all about matched mics in an X formation for drums and would like to build a nice solid, wide stereo field... i hear some local mixers work
and cringe at how buried, right down the middle the drum kits are... crappy use of reverb is a factor on this as well though but it all starts with your beds, imho

I do remember using a waves plug in a while back which adjusts your stereo field and i've used it on overheads nicely in the past.. i was hoping someone would have input in that regard.

I will be looking into this very closely at months end as we are tracking a blues band with all the new gear,

i've heard nothing but great things regarding the new UA 4-710d units... i know there were some issues with the early model so that may be what you read about...
either way i'll be watching levels closely.

but yeah as far as tracking off vinyl, "unity gain" is desirable, I guess i'll just have to get on it and see what i get.. hahaha... thanks for chiming in