Direct Hardware Monitoring

[jamesjunior]

To begin, I’ve searched for “direct monitoring,” “hardware monitoring,” “latency,” in various orders. I have found no answer to this question on DUC, yt, google, the manual, etc.

Does the Mbox Studio have direct, analog hardware monitoring of any of the inputs, or does all monitoring come post AD conversion? I found one post intimating that the latency for HW monitoring isn’t available.

I’m not concerned with loopback, delay compensation, DAW monitoring, etc.

If someone knows for sure, I would love to know. Thanks!

[Darryl Ramm]

The Mbox Studio has a rich set of hardware mixer/monitoring capabilities. To do all that snazzle it is working digitally inside the interface. Any time you see hardware motioning in low-cost consumer interfaces with advanced mixing capabilities you can be pretty sure it's digital.

There is no common agreement on terminology here, use of names like "direct monitoring", "hardware motioning" etc. does not tell you if those systems are analog or digital.

Latency due to ADC/DAC conversion usually works out as pretty irreverent in practice. The reason this stuff is not talked about is most folks just don't care. OTOH I'd like to see interface specs include this just to make sure vendors have not really screwed up. If you want to know what that hardware monitoring latency is you can always measure it. Folks who want to work with a pure analog monitoring system with 'real' capabilities are often working with an analog mixer/console at much higher price points than an Mbox Studio.

The issue for many users with the MBox Studio is not the mixer being digital, it's the unclearly explained limit of only 8 DAW outputs going to the mixer, and then the reliance on the mixer to map those to the many more physical I/O outputs. That to me would make this box a non-starter.

[jamesjunior]

Thank you. I figured as much. I can’t handle any vocal monitoring that goes through conversion. For instruments, it’s fine. Unnoticeable. But for vocals, I can tell right away. Having all those snazzy monitoring options and needing external hardware to monitor would kind of defeat the purpose for me.

I appreciate the prompt response!

[Darryl Ramm]

Gotcha. It's good that you know this is a problem for you.

If you have not already I would try out different headphones, one headphone cup only on one ear, playing with adding some reverb to the monitor path.

Otherwise if you know this is a problem, then I'd be looking for low- to mid-cost analog mixers. Many of those don't sound great, often the preamps. If you have say a nice vocal mic and a outboard preamp then you can split the signal there into an line level interface, and for monitoring into a line level input in the mixer and avoid any not great sounding analog mixer preamps. Try to find somewhere you can play with gear/audition stuff.

At the serious extreme say a Neve BCM10 10-channel mixer/mini console is beautiful and only ~$50K. High-end brand name/fashionable analog is expensive.

Many better low-end and above interfaces are going to have digital mixers/hardware monitoring in them, you can ignore that in use, but I'd probably not go out of my way trying to find an interface without a digital mixer/hardware monitoring.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by jamesjunior

Thank you. I figured as much. I can’t handle any vocal monitoring that goes through conversion. For instruments, it’s fine. Unnoticeable. But for vocals, I can tell right away. Having all those snazzy monitoring options and needing external hardware to monitor would kind of defeat the purpose for me.

I appreciate the prompt response!

What buffer setting are you using? What plugins are in use in the sessions? Curious as I have never heard a peep from singers when recording at the 64 buffer setting while keeping plugin latency under 10 samples.

[kuene]

I monitor all vocal recording sessions with the Avid MBox control app sending the signal to the singer's cans - and the protools inputs muted. I will often use the MBox built in reverb/delay as well. I'm not sure what the latency - but it's near zero if not zero and the reverb is helpful in most cases.

i find the MBox Control software to be very easy to use and to route things. Much better than the Audient iD mixer software that I used for years with my old setup.