Studio Issues

1) Repair and sell or return the Chinese SSL.

That's a given, I've asked for a replacement and it's getting sold soon as I receive it. Had enough..

2) DAW inserts. Use HDX, Reaper or Logic. You better like the sound of your conversion. If you don't have a rock solid PCI-E rig or HDX, don't use inserts on multi-miced stuff that might phase. Track through stuff and use inserts on isolated tracks and busses

Going down the Pro Tools Carbon / MTRX path is definitely an option and not a bad idea, although all of my interfaces are TB with extremely low latency. When tracking I won't be using inserts anyway, I have plenty of dedicated HW for that purpose. I use Logic by the way, its ping I/O feature seems pretty good but I've never used it in depth thus far.

3) Use something like a Dangerous Liason maybe? Could cut down on phasing.

I'll look into it.

3) Go ITB. You better like measuring every plug to find the sweet spot or if you can really push it and have at least an M1 mini. AT LEAST. You can push that to the limit fairly easily

Selling all that HW at a loss would be rough to say the least. At this stage it would only happen if there's no other solution, drbill seems to be rocking external pieces without a desk. It's like I'm a delayed shadow copycat..

Isn’t this the setup you’ve landed on after multiple attempts to get a new workflow? It seemed you were pretty darned happy with it.

So... let ssl make it right, swap it out for a new one and get to work. I highly doubt you’re going to wind up with another lemon.

puebloaudio.com/sidewinder.html
Fuck cheap mixers.
Go class A hybrid.

So, you say "You can gently touch the wires on the back and L / R volume changes will occur".. Just an honest question.. Do you mean cables you have plugged into the unit? Have you tried reseating the cables, cleaning the contacts and/or replacing the cables?

One of the biggest issues I ever had with tons of wiring for the mixer/outboard was that finger oils on some connectors would lead to iffy connections. I had to clean every connector with alcohol before I could get every single ELCO, XLR, TRS/TS, TT to maintain constant connection. I probably had 300 different connectors and I swear that more than 50% of them would get weird at some point over the years.

Yes.  No desk here.  Well, I have a couple rack mounted D&R Visions , but they only get used when I need an EXTREME amount of mic pre's (almost never) or want to submix my hardware synths all together.

I've worked OTB with traditional tape and consoles.  Tape and Digital tape sync'd together with consoles.  Tape and DAW's sync'd together with consoles.  DAW's alone - ITB.  And now working hybrid with large amounts of outboard and I/o (120) and PTHDX.  Pretty much any workflow you can think of - I've tried, and ultimately left behind once settling on HDX and the hybrid approach I'm currently using.  Working hybrid with my current setup is by far the best sounding, smoothest, and most efficient way of working for me.  I love consoles, and wouldn't mind having one, but not a cheap Chinese mixer, and not unless I had a bigger room that was primarily focused on tracking large ensembles.  Consoles are a huge commitment - money wise, wiring and interface wise, time and maintain wise, and space / reflection wise.  For me, today, they are just not needed and not worth it for me anymore.  Smaller "Mixers" are too compromised right out of the gate for me.

And for me, summing mixers are just an un-needed sideways distraction.  Get a real console and make the commitment, or get the good stuff, get it on your channel and mix buss inserts and get back to making music and quit worrying about the studio gear.  Studio's always take a good degree of troubleshooting and maintainance, but the more you can minimize that and focus on the music the better.

BTW - on the other note - your L/R problem sounds like wiring.  Or possibly the jacks on the mixer.

It's the jacks on the board (I replaced the cables entirely), also the PSU is making ticking noises and some of the buttons are sticking. 

I've not had it two months yet..

What's the context behind all this? Help us help you... Is this a for hire room? Not tracking bands... but attracting outside engineers & artists for overdubs & mixing? Personal use? What are the intended applications?

Right it seems like you've started 400 threads about this and now back at ground zero? I dunno. At some point the insanity has to end. You say things are booked... time is short and extremely valuable plus there's music to be made yes? 

Personally if I needed a desk, like a real desk I'd have been looking on the used market vs a new scaled down 4 channel China box. 

There's a D&R Triton in the classifieds now at $5000. My old Soundcraft is still here... 32 channels w/cabling & stand... saw a used Neotek Elan locally at I think $4000? Shortloaded to 20 channels. Anything like even if it had to be crated & shipped to the moon & back? Your still ahead of the game.

Ever look at Ferrofish stuff? Seems designed to bring outboard into a hybrid mix setup.

That SSL Big Six design is either too much or too little. The anti-Goldielocks.

SSL has always had some kind of issues of branding and/or marketing ever since their niche in large-format mixers died. They've also had spotty choices in parts sometimes too. 15 years ago I bought into their Mixpander/Alphalink setup which was great. Expensive, but great. DSP based plugs running on a hardware accelerated mixing matrix application? Awesome.

A few years later they stopped supporting it, but I didn't need to upgrade so I kept using it.

Finally, it was clear I needed to move to a new computer and move up to higher samplerates and such.

I bought into their new MX4 DSP card and MADI Alphalink setup. It was also great. It was a total mess trying to set it up though. There was a manual for the MX4. A manual for the Alphalink. A quickstart manual. A manual for the application/software. None of these used the same wording for identical features. Some of them used mismatched point of view for directionality of signal flows. None of them took into account that portions of one manual needed to be followed before you could do something with a piece of the system that was covered in a totally different manual. It was like 4 different teams wrote their own manuals and nobody was actually managing the whole product ecosystem.

It took like 3 days to get it all working well, but when it worked, it was flawless.

A couple years later I started having issues with random high level noise on a bank of 8 channels. It would burst and then go away, usually right in the middle of recording. One time it damn near deafened a singer who was really, really angry at me for it and I had to stop the session for the day.

it took me a few months to track the problem down to a cable inside the Alphalink. It was a ribbon cable where it seems some of the puncture-contacts were not making good contact. I would reseat the connector and it would work for a while and then start acting up again. I got to the point where I just left the lid of the device off and everytime it would do this, I would reach in and fiddle with the cable and it would be good for weeks/months. SSL wouldn't even talk about it with me.

So eventually I just removed the cable and connectors and soldered wires between the two PCBs and it fixed it for good.

But then SSL abruptly removed the MX4 and Alphalink from their website and dropped support without warning. I had an error one time and contacted support only to have them tell me that they don't support discontinued products.

The MX4 was only about 4 years old from release to discontinued. I used it for a few more years and moved to MOTU instead.

I went from paralyzed to releasing an ep TOMORROW in a just a few months as soon I hired out all the mixing. I am so much happier.