X32 Discussion

Re: Power supply prob, kudos, a suggestion and a question

Karl Lies said:
John,

I do have the buss's set up as pre-fader...I understand what you're describing....on the same question, same setup, (linked buss's, sending to them pre-fader) but using the mix pad app on a tablet....if I select the "sends on fader's" button on the mix-pad, there are no pan controls shown on the fader chan's on the tablet...I can go to an individual chan's detail screen (I'm pretty sure) and adj the panning from there...question becomes; so long as I stay in the "sends on fader's" mode, is this the way I would adjust the panning of a chan to the selected pair of buss's without affecting the panning to the house mains?
Click to expand...

Dear Karl,
Are you talking about our X32-Mix iPad app? It currently does not support channel panning for sends to mix buses. If you setup panning ahead of time on the console or in the X32-Edit app, the stereo field for your mix bus will be maintained when adjusting volumes in X32-Mix. You can also use the X32-Q iPhone app on an iPad to control that mix bus, and this app does have the ability to pan the channel sends. Hope it helps!
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Robert Lofgren said:
Unlike analoge consoles you must never let the clip-light turn on. This will get you into nasty digital distortion territory! I have seen many analog guys drive digital desk into clipping and say this is fine. It isn't! Only on some consoles (midas) where the clip light represents analog preamp distortion long before digital distortion. The x32 analog preamp never distorts before the digital distortion...
Click to expand...
Ouch, I know my Phonic Summit has the pre's set to clip "musically" before the A/D converters and I'm 90%(?) sure my Mackie DL1608 also does. I do know that Yamaha desks don't and I seem to remember my DDX3216 didn't either. Somewhat unfortunate that Behringer decided to not go with "nice" clipping but IME it really isn't a big deal in actual use if you know about it.
 
Re: Power supply prob, kudos, a suggestion and a question

Karl,

Phantom power acuatually is no big deal for any desk. It is actually the one thing most they don't care about. I either work, sor not. Thankfull it is a ver forgiving thing.
 
Re: X-UF card problem

Thanks Han and Antoon,

But i carefully pin pointed the problem. Still Han many thanks for offering me that and Antoonfor making clear what is obvious. Two days agoo met this guys who wanted to understand what i was doing. I was mixing so that is fast. Today i met him again and he is buying the x32 Rack for his living room....
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Ron Kimball said:
Ouch, I know my Phonic Summit has the pre's set to clip "musically" before the A/D converters and I'm 90%(?) sure my Mackie DL1608 also does. I do know that Yamaha desks don't and I seem to remember my DDX3216 didn't either. Somewhat unfortunate that Behringer decided to not go with "nice" clipping but IME it really isn't a big deal in actual use if you know about it.
Click to expand...
I preferer clean preamps into the ad-converters. This means that I can connect external preamps and be sure that I don't color the sound of the external device and removes the concern about bypassing the preamps that many are having.

If one want 'analog warmth' the fx-rack have tools to be inserted for this very purpose. Also, by changing the peq to vintage (veq) it gives you a much smoother/brittish sound. I think that veq should be the default setting and not the current one.
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Robert Lofgren said:
I preferer clean preamps into the ad-converters.
Click to expand...

Me too, but in the past I did found out how a ADA8000 sounds when the AD converter is just overdriven a little. It just sounds some old bad designed microphone pre amps who have fase inversion at clipping point. (I assume it was the A to D who was overdriven) :x~:-x~:mad: After that I did only use these ADA inputs on known more "steady" signals.

If you have a good analog clipping just before the AD converter, I won't have a problem to give a few dB headroom away. (But a good design can do with less)
I haven't noticed this on the X32, so I think they did a far beter job.

In a live situation it just happens that an input will be overdriven, especial at festival sort of events. I had guitar players or even worse keyboards following each other who had more that 20dB level difference, in the case you don't have time to sound check you are glad they clip a bit more musically...
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Sorry if this has been answered already. I have the full X32 and have been using my older laptop that has a mini fire wire port on it to do my studio recording with. The port on the computer is about shot and it was time for an upgrade anyways, so I just purchased a new laptop. Problem is, no fire wire.

I was wondering if using the USB port on the X32 would accomplish the same tasks as the fire wire port? The only thing I use the DAW for is to record the tracks and play them back through the X32. I do all of my mixing and everything on the X32 as it is being fed from the DAW. So basically I'm wondering if the USB has all the capabilities as fire wire, or if not what are the limitations?

Finally, are there any plans to introduce a USB 3.0 card for the X32? That seems to be the one Windows computers are running with now, dropping support for fire wire and overlooking Thunderbolt. That would be nice.

Thanks guys!
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Marcus Neal said:
Sorry if this has been answered already. I have the full X32 and have been using my older laptop that has a mini fire wire port on it to do my studio recording with. The port on the computer is about shot and it was time for an upgrade anyways, so I just purchased a new laptop. Problem is, no fire wire.

I was wondering if using the USB port on the X32 would accomplish the same tasks as the fire wire port? The only thing I use the DAW for is to record the tracks and play them back through the X32. I do all of my mixing and everything on the X32 as it is being fed from the DAW. So basically I'm wondering if the USB has all the capabilities as fire wire, or if not what are the limitations?

Finally, are there any plans to introduce a USB 3.0 card for the X32? That seems to be the one Windows computers are running with now, dropping support for fire wire and overlooking Thunderbolt. That would be nice.

Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

Marcus, the USB will work fine, the reason why there is both on the x32 card is to accommodate both mac, and PC users...
From what I understand the preference to firewire is it bypasses a usb "controller", or crossing guard / traffic cop if you will... that sometimes gets out of sync causing the system to stop/crash. Firewire heads right to the harddrive and reads and writes... that's the simple version as I understand it...
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Shane Presley said:
Marcus, the USB will work fine, the reason why there is both on the x32 card is to accommodate both mac, and PC users...
From what I understand the preference to firewire is it bypasses a usb "controller", or crossing guard / traffic cop if you will... that sometimes gets out of sync causing the system to stop/crash. Firewire heads right to the harddrive and reads and writes... that's the simple version as I understand it...
Click to expand...

Thanks Shane. That's good to know. Reason I was confused is my Motif will not allow audio signal to be fed back into it via USB, so I didn't know if that was a universal rule of thumb or not.

Would there be any advantages of having a USB 3.0 card in the future, or is that even on the table?
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Marcus Neal said:
Would there be any advantages of having a USB 3.0 card in the future, or is that even on the table?
Click to expand...

I would have know what the difference between USB 2.0 and 3.0 is....
I would recommend (and this is only my opinion - and I'll get flamed for it... lol), use USB if you are "fooling around" with recording, don't care if it comes out no money riding on it etc...

If you are charging for the service of recording and are the don't F@#$ around type... go firewire. A used mac is like $400 bucks or less...
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Marcus Neal said:
Thanks Shane. That's good to know. Reason I was confused is my Motif will not allow audio signal to be fed back into it via USB, so I didn't know if that was a universal rule of thumb or not.

Would there be any advantages of having a USB 3.0 card in the future, or is that even on the table?
Click to expand...

You can already do the full 32x32 IO of the card over USB 2, so I don't see what reason there would be to need USB3? The extra bandwidth just isn't necessary unless they intend to improve the card's features.

FYI, advantages of USB 3 are speed (up to 10X faster), IO allocation (simultaneous read/write between devices, whereas 2.0 had to "take turns"), and lower power consumption.

For the record, I normally use the firewire output for recording, but have had no issues using the USB either.
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Jeff Babcock said:
You can already do the full 32x32 IO of the card over USB 2, so I don't see what reason there would be to need USB3? The extra bandwidth just isn't necessary unless they intend to improve the card's features.

FYI, advantages of USB 3 are speed (up to 10X faster), IO allocation (simultaneous read/write between devices, whereas 2.0 had to "take turns"), and lower power consumption.

For the record, I normally use the firewire output for recording, but have had no issues using the USB either.
Click to expand...

That's the only thing I was thinking of, if an extra bandwidth or transfer rate would be of benefit. I don't see why the USB is being frowned upon then if fire wire only yields minimal advantages. Looks like I'll be using USB on the new computer then.
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Jeff Babcock said:
You can already do the full 32x32 IO of the card over USB 2, so I don't see what reason there would be to need USB3? The extra bandwidth just isn't necessary unless they intend to improve the card's features.

FYI, advantages of USB 3 are speed (up to 10X faster), IO allocation (simultaneous read/write between devices, whereas 2.0 had to "take turns"), and lower power consumption.

For the record, I normally use the firewire output for recording, but have had no issues using the USB either.
Click to expand...

This +1 Firewire has the advantage here because it doesn't cost computer wer.
 
Re: Power supply prob, kudos, a suggestion and a question

John DiNicola said:
Dear Karl,
Are you talking about our X32-Mix iPad app? It currently does not support channel panning for sends to mix buses. If you setup panning ahead of time on the console or in the X32-Edit app, the stereo field for your mix bus will be maintained when adjusting volumes in X32-Mix. You can also use the X32-Q iPhone app on an iPad to control that mix bus, and this app does have the ability to pan the channel sends. Hope it helps!
Click to expand...

Hi John,

Yes, I was referring to the X32-Mix iPad app...interesting that I can use the iPhone app on the iPad. I'll give that a try. Basically, the problem is that I'm trying to use a linked pair of buss' to build a mix for an overflow room so I need to be able to stand in the room and use a remote device (iPad) to tweak it. I'll give the iPhone app a try.

Thanks again for the quick response! I appreciate it.

Karl
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Shane Presley said:
Marcus, the USB will work fine, the reason why there is both on the x32 card is to accommodate both mac, and PC users...
From what I understand the preference to firewire is it bypasses a usb "controller", or crossing guard / traffic cop if you will... that sometimes gets out of sync causing the system to stop/crash. Firewire heads right to the harddrive and reads and writes... that's the simple version as I understand it...
Click to expand...

My understanding has been that the reason people favored Firewire over USB for audio recording is that USB suffers from the lack of a "traffic cop"/controller...essentially operating something like an ethernet hub (not a router). In a hub operation, all attached devices vie for access to the hub. When 2 devices try to access at the same time, they detect the "data collision" and both shut up for some time period then re-attempt to access the hub. It's these collisions and "reset" times (I dont know the actual technical term) that make USB slower than Firewire which does have an active traffic cop type controller.

I think I'd also read somewhere that USB has to access hardware level stuff (real memory, disk drives etc...) via a pci interface layer whereas Firewire could do direct memory access and directly read/write to hard drives. Not sure about this though.

I use a laptop that has USB 2.0 and a Firewire adapter card slot. The Firewire link is exceptionally fast (I use this to run an RME Digiface that talks to 24 chan's of higher end mic pre's via ADAT....this setup will get me absolute minimum buffer settings and round trip latencies down in the 3ms range). The firewire adapter card is, however, something of an extra hassle. Since getting the x32 I've been using the USB connection, with moderate/middle of the road buffer settings, and it's worked perfectly.

I'm not using this setup in a situation where I have to both record AND return audio to the console via USB so I cant comment on how solid the USB connection would be if you tried doing this with large numbers of chan's being recorded.

Lastly, Apple's dropped Firewire, many PC's come with built in firewire adapters but lots of them use non TI (Texas Instruments) chipsets and many audio app's/drivers apparently do not like the non TI chipset's. Also, on many PC's, if it runs Win 7 there apparently was some problem with the WIN7 Firewire driver (lot's of user forum hit's on this) and many audio app's recommend you switch to the Windows "Legacy" firewire driver.

Sorry for the lengthy post but, though it's been a few years since I had to get deep into these things, I went through massive amounts of this stuff when I built my studio DAW tower (Quad Core Intel I5, Win7 64 bit, 16 gig ram, RME multiface/Digiface audio adapter, 180 gig SSD C drive, 6 hard drives organized as 3 Raid 0 array's (one array is a pair of Raptor 10k rpm drives used for project files/audio, the other two are for streaming sample storage..NI Komplete, BFD2 , Omnisphere, Trillian....lots of stuff, dual 26" monitors on fan-less (silent) video cards (can accommodate up to 4 monitors if I ever had need for that???)
 
Re: X32 Discussion

Latency - That's the big difference (in a practical sense) - For you guys doing live recording, it doesn't matter. For those trying to overdub using a DAW it's critical. That's why the firewire port in indispensable in the x32.

Pauly

Karl Lies said:
My understanding has been that the reason people favored Firewire over USB for audio recording is that USB suffers....
Click to expand...
 
Re: X32 Discussion

I do mainly live recording on location so I thought I would share my recording setup which has worked perfectly. I bought a used Macbook Pro (which is about 5 years old) on eBay for about $450 and installed Reaper ($60). I can record 32 tracks from x32 via firewire to MB Pro...no problems. Then I bring the MB Pro back to the studio and export the tracks to wave files and transfer them to a flash drive (fat32 only) and bring that over to the desktop and do the mixing there on DAW (Protools or Cubase).

Mike
 
Top Bottom