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Post by locrain on Dec 27, 2021 16:33:02 GMT -6
So I find myself way over my head with my attempts at building a hybrid studio. The i/o, analog/digital, spdif/adat, all starting to be a bit much. I have Google and read about as much as I can find, and I'm still not grasping it. I thought I would post here, and hopefully someone who has done something similar will be kind enough to chime in.
Relevant gear:
DAW: Studio One running on win 10.
Dangerous d-box
RME UFX
RME Digiface USB
Hosa toslink spdif to aes/xlr converter
Rosetta 800
Rosetta 200
Creamware A16
Beringher ADA8200
Two 48 channel trs patchbays
I bought the UFX to take advantage of the summing inputs of the dbox. This works great overall except that I am not able to see the digiface in totalmix unless I switch to it, or vice versa, I haven't had any success using the UFX as an extension of the Digiface. Upon reading online, this seems to be normal behavior for the RME stuff?
So my next thought was to buy a toslink to aes/xlr adapter, change one of the output sets of the Digiface to spdif, and run that to the dbox to monitor through it's d/a, and use the Rosetta 800 to feed the summing input of the dbox. I thought this might be a better setup, as the signal has to go through the (apparently inferior) a/d/a of the UFX in my original setup. This worked fine, except I cannot get the Hosa converter to send the digital/aes signal back to the dbox from the digiface.
I dont know if there is some user error here, as I have seen this device recommended for this situation before. If I switch one of the i/o sets of the digiface to spdif it did not seem to change anything in totalmix...and I could not find anything in the i/o settings of studio one to send any signal through the spdif output.
I run into some trouble here: if I want to use both the Rosetta 800 for summing and the 200 to recieve the summing mix and send the spdif signal back into the dbox it works great and sounds phenomenal...but I am not really sending the digital out from the DAW, but from the 200 instead, and I couldn't get it to function correctly as far as plugins on the input, and mixdown was horrific. So I am clearly not understanding some things. Let's start with a dumb one:
Do I need to connect both adat i/o for each device? Can I run adat output 1 to the 800 and adat input 1 to the apogee 200? This seemed to work ok,, but was still causing issues. Do I need to have the 200 hooked up via adat at all? I was kind of using it to get around my inability to send aes out of the Digiface, it worked well for that, but I was unable to configure the i/o as I would like.
The reason I ask is because I am still running into limited i/o if I occupy 2 sets of adat i/o with the rosettas. The other 2 will run to my creamware, giving me 16 mono or 8 stereo devices...which is less than I was hoping. I can obviously get by via a patchbay and bouncing different tracks at different times, but I currently have 24 channels of hardware that I would like to integrate, so it would really be nice to free up another set of the adat i/o for an 8 channel a/d/a. However, if I van get the Rosettas working correctly, I would be fine with the 16.
Do I even need the 200? It seems that if I could somehow send spdif out from the digiface, then the 800 for summing, I could use 2 of the inputs of the creamware a16 to recieve the summing send from the dbox. I would lose 2 inputs, and be printing through the creamware d/a instead of the Rosett, but it would free up that set of adat i/o.
Is there a way to utilize the ufx that I am not aware of? I've read about standalone mode. It seems like it might work, would that work for me as long as I control my gain and phantom power with my outboard preamps? Would I need to hook it up via adat, taking up an adat slot? Would it's adat i/o be able to be used if so?
I will stop there; if you made it this far, the may God bless you. I am open to selling any of my interfaces/converters if something else would provide a better solution. Thanks for reading, and a huge thanks for any advice offered.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 21:05:40 GMT -6
First things first, what's your master in this chain of many AD/DA's? Everything needs to be clocked from a central source / routed through a hub unit. You can do this over ADAT or S/Pdif (usually).. However this seems overcomplicated, if you need a lot of I/O it's generally easier, tidier and neater to stick with a specific manufacturer made to provide en mass chaining of devices. MOTU (16A, 24AI, 24AO etc.) with AVB is a good example (you can network devices over an MOTU audio hub).. If 96 I/O is required for example you'd need six (16A) devices and two MOTU hubs. ADAT is limited in terms of channel count (and induces latency) so RME introduced a similar system (not quite the same but mimic's the end result) called MADI: rme-audio.de/files/downloads/Media-Material/RME-MADI-Solutions-A4-EN.pdfI know you asked a lot of specifics but let's take this one step at a time, there's a lot going on and you wouldn't usually do it this way. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Dec 28, 2021 4:57:00 GMT -6
Good advice.
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Post by BenjaminAshlin on Dec 29, 2021 0:38:57 GMT -6
So I find myself way over my head with my attempts at building a hybrid studio. The i/o, analog/digital, spdif/adat, all starting to be a bit much. I have Google and read about as much as I can find, and I'm still not grasping it. I thought I would post here, and hopefully someone who has done something similar will be kind enough to chime in. Relevant gear: DAW: Studio One running on win 10. Dangerous d-box RME UFX RME Digiface USB Hosa toslink spdif to aes/xlr converter Rosetta 800 Rosetta 200 Creamware A16 Beringher ADA8200 Two 48 channel trs patchbays I bought the UFX to take advantage of the summing inputs of the dbox. This works great overall except that I am not able to see the digiface in totalmix unless I switch to it, or vice versa, I haven't had any success using the UFX as an extension of the Digiface. Upon reading online, this seems to be normal behavior for the RME stuff? So my next thought was to buy a toslink to aes/xlr adapter, change one of the output sets of the Digiface to spdif, and run that to the dbox to monitor through it's d/a, and use the Rosetta 800 to feed the summing input of the dbox. I thought this might be a better setup, as the signal has to go through the (apparently inferior) a/d/a of the UFX in my original setup. This worked fine, except I cannot get the Hosa converter to send the digital/aes signal back to the dbox from the digiface. I dont know if there is some user error here, as I have seen this device recommended for this situation before. If I switch one of the i/o sets of the digiface to spdif it did not seem to change anything in totalmix...and I could not find anything in the i/o settings of studio one to send any signal through the spdif output. I run into some trouble here: if I want to use both the Rosetta 800 for summing and the 200 to recieve the summing mix and send the spdif signal back into the dbox it works great and sounds phenomenal...but I am not really sending the digital out from the DAW, but from the 200 instead, and I couldn't get it to function correctly as far as plugins on the input, and mixdown was horrific. So I am clearly not understanding some things. Let's start with a dumb one: Do I need to connect both adat i/o for each device? Can I run adat output 1 to the 800 and adat input 1 to the apogee 200? This seemed to work ok,, but was still causing issues. Do I need to have the 200 hooked up via adat at all? I was kind of using it to get around my inability to send aes out of the Digiface, it worked well for that, but I was unable to configure the i/o as I would like. The reason I ask is because I am still running into limited i/o if I occupy 2 sets of adat i/o with the rosettas. The other 2 will run to my creamware, giving me 16 mono or 8 stereo devices...which is less than I was hoping. I can obviously get by via a patchbay and bouncing different tracks at different times, but I currently have 24 channels of hardware that I would like to integrate, so it would really be nice to free up another set of the adat i/o for an 8 channel a/d/a. However, if I van get the Rosettas working correctly, I would be fine with the 16. Do I even need the 200? It seems that if I could somehow send spdif out from the digiface, then the 800 for summing, I could use 2 of the inputs of the creamware a16 to recieve the summing send from the dbox. I would lose 2 inputs, and be printing through the creamware d/a instead of the Rosett, but it would free up that set of adat i/o. Is there a way to utilize the ufx that I am not aware of? I've read about standalone mode. It seems like it might work, would that work for me as long as I control my gain and phantom power with my outboard preamps? Would I need to hook it up via adat, taking up an adat slot? Would it's adat i/o be able to be used if so? I will stop there; if you made it this far, the may God bless you. I am open to selling any of my interfaces/converters if something else would provide a better solution. Thanks for reading, and a huge thanks for any advice offered. I an RME guy, but in this case your should sell all those interfaces/converters and replace them with a MOTU or Antelope Orion setup. |
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Post by Guitar on Dec 29, 2021 12:54:38 GMT -6
The RME converters won't aggregate into the same TotalMix mixer, they operate separately. But can be combined in the DAW I think?
I would want a single interface, either the UFX, or the Digiface, whichever you choose. Start by choosing one of the two.
Then try to make everything else slave to your master interface (clocking.)
You've got too much going on here, need to start whittling things down.
Yes, I would try to make all the interfaces run in standalone modes, when slaving to the Digiface USB if that's what you're using as a master interface. (It would seem to offer the most channels.)
If you have several interfaces with Coaxial word clock I/O, you can start learning how to set up this chain. Basically you start with a master, and daisy chain down the slaves, then end in a 75 ohm termination plug. You'd have to buy these connectors and things.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,059 
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Post by ericn on Dec 29, 2021 19:11:22 GMT -6
So I find myself way over my head with my attempts at building a hybrid studio. The i/o, analog/digital, spdif/adat, all starting to be a bit much. I have Google and read about as much as I can find, and I'm still not grasping it. I thought I would post here, and hopefully someone who has done something similar will be kind enough to chime in. Relevant gear: DAW: Studio One running on win 10. Dangerous d-box RME UFX RME Digiface USB Hosa toslink spdif to aes/xlr converter Rosetta 800 Rosetta 200 Creamware A16 Beringher ADA8200 Two 48 channel trs patchbays I bought the UFX to take advantage of the summing inputs of the dbox. This works great overall except that I am not able to see the digiface in totalmix unless I switch to it, or vice versa, I haven't had any success using the UFX as an extension of the Digiface. Upon reading online, this seems to be normal behavior for the RME stuff? So my next thought was to buy a toslink to aes/xlr adapter, change one of the output sets of the Digiface to spdif, and run that to the dbox to monitor through it's d/a, and use the Rosetta 800 to feed the summing input of the dbox. I thought this might be a better setup, as the signal has to go through the (apparently inferior) a/d/a of the UFX in my original setup. This worked fine, except I cannot get the Hosa converter to send the digital/aes signal back to the dbox from the digiface. I dont know if there is some user error here, as I have seen this device recommended for this situation before. If I switch one of the i/o sets of the digiface to spdif it did not seem to change anything in totalmix...and I could not find anything in the i/o settings of studio one to send any signal through the spdif output. I run into some trouble here: if I want to use both the Rosetta 800 for summing and the 200 to recieve the summing mix and send the spdif signal back into the dbox it works great and sounds phenomenal...but I am not really sending the digital out from the DAW, but from the 200 instead, and I couldn't get it to function correctly as far as plugins on the input, and mixdown was horrific. So I am clearly not understanding some things. Let's start with a dumb one: Do I need to connect both adat i/o for each device? Can I run adat output 1 to the 800 and adat input 1 to the apogee 200? This seemed to work ok,, but was still causing issues. Do I need to have the 200 hooked up via adat at all? I was kind of using it to get around my inability to send aes out of the Digiface, it worked well for that, but I was unable to configure the i/o as I would like. The reason I ask is because I am still running into limited i/o if I occupy 2 sets of adat i/o with the rosettas. The other 2 will run to my creamware, giving me 16 mono or 8 stereo devices...which is less than I was hoping. I can obviously get by via a patchbay and bouncing different tracks at different times, but I currently have 24 channels of hardware that I would like to integrate, so it would really be nice to free up another set of the adat i/o for an 8 channel a/d/a. However, if I van get the Rosettas working correctly, I would be fine with the 16. Do I even need the 200? It seems that if I could somehow send spdif out from the digiface, then the 800 for summing, I could use 2 of the inputs of the creamware a16 to recieve the summing send from the dbox. I would lose 2 inputs, and be printing through the creamware d/a instead of the Rosett, but it would free up that set of adat i/o. Is there a way to utilize the ufx that I am not aware of? I've read about standalone mode. It seems like it might work, would that work for me as long as I control my gain and phantom power with my outboard preamps? Would I need to hook it up via adat, taking up an adat slot? Would it's adat i/o be able to be used if so? I will stop there; if you made it this far, the may God bless you. I am open to selling any of my interfaces/converters if something else would provide a better solution. Thanks for reading, and a huge thanks for any advice offered. I an RME guy, but in this case your should sell all those interfaces/converters and replace them with a MOTU or Antelope Orion setup. I was thinking the exact same thing! |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2022 1:25:53 GMT -6
This is way too complex and how the hell are you going to compensate for the differnet latencies of every converter while clocking everything together?
Why not simply your life?
Lynx Aurora N 32 or 24. I love Lynx.
RME solution with a crapton of channels. MADI even to a bunch of Ferrofish/SPL/RME whatever converters you want.
Apogee Symphony II with a lot of channels. I love Apogee sound. Drivers and support and repair can be iffy but they sound great.
UAD Apollos daisy chained together. Expensive for sound quality but hey they work when they work.
Focusrite Rednet or MOTU AVB. Ethernet is the future man. Only thing is the one MOTU thing can't compensate for the latency of other interface hooked up to it or the other interface hooked up to the hub. Ethernet stuff solves your clocking issue. Hell maybe you should even get an Audinate card and guinea pig that new Prism Dante thing.
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Post by locrain on Feb 12, 2022 22:56:40 GMT -6
Thanks a lot to everyone so far for the replies. I'm sorry to not have responded sooner, but this project is nothing if not slow-moving. That said, I think I've found some clarity and have simplified things...somewhat. I've gotten rid of the Rosetta 800, and have no plans to integrate the 200, but I will hang onto it for a bit to make sure before I let it go. Since I can't run the interfaces as an aggregate (and I'm not sure that would even qork for tracking), I basically have the option to use either A. The Digiface and two to four 8-16 channel converters, or B. The UFX and a single 16 channel converter. I'm not looking at other interfaces, because I don't believe (since at this time I'm not using madi or dante) they offer an advantage. Motu 828es i/o is specifically about like th ufx, the 16a gets me another 8 i/o, but that's not worth giving up rme drivers to me. The is no way I'm running orion drivers. Now, to run it as an extension of an RME, I get that. Anyway, I think option B is how I'm going to go. I will use my creamware a16 for now, and seriously look to upgrade to something a little newer when I can, probably a ferrofish Pulse 16. Maybe a aurora or orion. I traded the Rosetta 800 for a Dangerous 2-bus LT. Between that and the dbox I have 24 channels of analog summing. I also have 24 physical outs between the ufx and creamware. I have been running each of my outputs into outboard from my ufx before it hits the dbox, I plan to use the creamware the same way, I have enough outboard to cover all my summing channels. So as far as converters, it will just be the UFX and one other converter clocked to the UFX. I will be running all my outputs into hardware, then into my summing boxes. I will utilize my patchbays to switch pathways between tracking and mixing needs. I admit I'm in over my head here; anyone see an issue with the above? I like that I will be able to use my hardware on a large amount of channels without having to mess with hardware as a software insert, everything will go put and back it. I may have to compensate for latency differences between the rme and the converter I use? Still, the setup I describe is one of the dbox diagrams, so it must work. Would anyone make a case for the orion or aurora 16 over the ferrofish? Dues to the 16 adat channel limitations of the RME, I don't think the 32 channel versions will be of use to me. Am I wrong in this? This is way too complex and how the hell are you going to compensate for the differnet latencies of every converter while clocking everything together? Why not simply your life? Lynx Aurora N 32 or 24. I love Lynx. RME solution with a crapton of channels. MADI even to a bunch of Ferrofish/SPL/RME whatever converters you want. Apogee Symphony II with a lot of channels. I love Apogee sound. Drivers and support and repair can be iffy but they sound great. UAD Apollos daisy chained together. Expensive for sound quality but hey they work when they work. Focusrite Rednet or MOTU AVB. Ethernet is the future man. Only thing is the one MOTU thing can't compensate for the latency of other interface hooked up to it or the other interface hooked up to the hub. Ethernet stuff solves your clocking issue. Hell maybe you should even get an Audinate card and guinea pig that new Prism Dante thing. Thanks a lot for this post, I do want to simplify things, and that's why I made this post; I obviously need a little guidance, so I appreciate it. My current solution; ufx with one 16 channel converter, using these channels to run out of my daw/converter into individual bus hardware, summed back to 2 channels put of the dbox, monitored through the aes out of the ufx. Does this sound better to you, or am I further complicating it somehow? This "feels" simpler to me, running everything out and back in, like I am right now with the dbox, but on a larger scale with the 2-bus lt. No messing with pipeline or other hardware insert latency compensation plugins. I've read that my creamware isn't exactly top of the line anymore. I'm sure it's still a nice piece, but I've been looking at the ferrofish as I mentioned. Is there another sub $2k (used) 16 channel converter you'd recommend over the Pulse 16 (or 2 8 channel ones, not ideal, but would be ok)? Thanks to everyone for their input. |
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Post by locrain on May 9, 2022 10:31:53 GMT -6
Does anyone have any further input?
I am running cable for the 2 bus lt, and was unsure of how to do it. Can I run it like I do with the dbox and ufx for mixing, ie, just use the outputs of the creamware A16, and continue to run the summmed stereo mix to the ufx, leaving the inputs of the creamware unused?
I do plan to integrate my patchbay,for running units in series, as well as quickly switching things back and forth without having to climb behind everything. I don't have all the necessary cabling, I will see what I have, and what I need to buy.
Does everyone prefer snakes when possible? They tidy things up a bit, but sometimes can put a lot of weight on some connections.
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Post by johneppstein on May 12, 2022 10:50:18 GMT -6
I an RME guy, but in this case your should sell all those interfaces/converters and replace them with a MOTU or Antelope Orion setup. I have an Antelope Orion 32 and it's been great. One thing - when you injstall, follow the factory instructions TO THE LETTER and things will be fine. However if you don't you will probably bork your installation and need factory help. DO NOT ASSUME that just because you've intalled a lot of other interfaces that you know how to do this one.
I was forerwarned and we had ZERO problems with installation. However I've seen a number of posts by know-it-all idiots who screwed up.
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