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Old 11-06-2018, 09:54 AM   #41
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Why then have TB interfaces usually better latency performance?
The key word is "usually". TB interfaces are the newest designs, so they should have good latency. Yet AVB/Dante perform even slightly better. And a USB2 device like the BF Pro is awfully close.

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Ok, I could get a Babyface and a second LaCie Rugged HDD, but the later are pretty expensive ... I alrady got one and exchanged the HDD for an SSD for my sample libraries.
personally, I'd never buy Lacie. I've a stack of dead Lacie cases reaching the ceiling. And in 99% of the cases, it's the controller that died, not the HD. Lacie used to be better. These days, your average Chines cheapo case is just as good. I'll admit that the rugged series is the only Lacie I might still look at though.

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Add a bit more money to the LaCie budget and I‘ll have a Focusrite 2 PRE for example.

The Focusrite would cost me around 380€ and the Babyface Pro plus LaCie TB HDD around 1000 bucks!

Nope ... TB interface seems to be the best bet.

Ok, that AVB and Dante stuff is interesting too, but I only have a Fritzbox based WiFi, so I think, I‘ll go the TB interface route.
Your MB Pro still has a gbit ethernet port that is AVB compliant and suitable for Dante. And since you don't use it for Internet, it's free for audio. No switch needed, as long as it is one MB Pro to one AVB/Dante box...

And with a cheap cable it goes upt to 75 meters...
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Old 11-06-2018, 10:03 AM   #42
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Your MB Pro still has a gbit ethernet port that is AVB compliant and suitable for Dante.
No, only WiFi ... for LAN an adapter is needed. It's an mid 2014 model with i7 quad, 16 GB RAM and 512GB SSD.

Nevertheless I find the Motu 624 AVB pretty tempting, because I could connect it by Thunderbolt and mix on the iPad Pro.

It also seems to be suitable for future surround sound stuff by using optical out into my SR headphone amp.

Only question remaining: How to add a future e-drum?

PS: For MIDI a cheap USB interface might be an idea, because I won't use an e-drum simultaneously with the keyboard. Maybe even my iRig would do the trick.
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Old 11-06-2018, 10:39 AM   #43
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No ethernet...

Might want to read this:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/view...hp?f=2&t=64009
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Old 11-06-2018, 11:31 AM   #44
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No ethernet...

Might want to read this:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/view...hp?f=2&t=64009
Thanks ... no problems with my MBP, because I can use thunderbolt to interface or thunderbolt to ethernet adapter.

My idea was thunderbolt directly and use AVB for later upgrades, if needed ... and the option to use the iPad as a mixer is also nice, which should work over WiFi nicely.

As far as I understand an AVB switch would only be needed, if I need more than 2 devices, because 2 can be connected by ethernet cable P2P.
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Old 11-06-2018, 02:33 PM   #45
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How to clean up RAM on iPad? Just closing all apps?

.

Hi,
No, you hold the power button down until you see the swipe screen, then let go and hold the home button until the home screen appears.
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Old 11-06-2018, 03:34 PM   #46
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No, you hold the power button down until you see the swipe screen, then let go and hold the home button until the home screen appears.
Thanks, didn‘t know this „trick“.

Btw ... I need to correct myself regarding the Motu 624:

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It also seems to be suitable for future surround sound stuff by using optical out into my SR headphone amp.
This was just wishful thinking ... SPDIF-out is only Stereo

PS: But wait ... ADAT (optical) offers up to 8 channels ... mmh ... my headphone amp has optical 5.1 input ... might that work?

PPS: No, doesn‘t work:

http://motu.com/techsupport/technote...motu-interface
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Old 11-07-2018, 05:20 AM   #47
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I use ADAT a lot to get in/out of the DAW. The BF Pro has ADAT...

One use is sending 8 channels to and from an old digital mixer, to have real faders to use.

Standalone ambi or surround playback is from an old Fostex digital recorder with an old Fostex 16 bit DA, coupled with ADAT.

And if I need more than the 8 channels my FF400 provides, again ADAT to a Behringer ADA8000.
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Old 11-10-2018, 01:01 AM   #48
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After a lot of further research, incl. demo audio in 24/96, I think my top candidate is now the Presonus Quantum 2 ... stackable due to 2 Thunderbolt ports, superb sound quality and latency, no software mixer, but DAW integration ... exactly what I wanted, except the needed external power supply.

Furthermore I feel tempted to try out the new Studio One 4 ... the new chord track feature will be pretty helpful for composing workflows as it seems.

And S1 doesn‘t look as ugly on macOS as Reaper
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Old 11-12-2018, 02:14 AM   #49
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Sometimes it has an advantage to be undecided

Currently the Presonus Quantum 2 is available on Amazon and Thomann for a huge discount ... the price dropped today, I guess temporarily, to 599€.

I directly ordered it.

Btw ... last Saturday I bought the new Apogee Jam Plus for my iPad. I use it for jamming with BIAS FX and as a headphone amp on my iPhone and Macbook ... all I can say is wow. What a huge improvement over my old iRig Pro, which was better than the old Jam interface back in the days. Only downside: No phantom power and a XLR connector needs to be bought separately.
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Old 11-12-2018, 06:15 AM   #50
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Congratulations, Chris. Looks like good stuff. I've never had problems with Presonus in the past.

OT.

I wonder who makes Apple's spellchecker brands list. An awful lot of brands are recognised. Presonus isn't. And, of course, Behringer isn't either.
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Old 11-12-2018, 07:23 AM   #51
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Congratulations, Chris. Looks like good stuff.
Thanks, yes, it seems the Quantum and Quantum 2 always got superb reviews, even by users in forums, and the drivers seem to be more stable than Studio One V4.1

I‘m currently demoing V4 Pro and yesterday it always crashed, when I removed NI Absynth Mono, because I replaced it with it‘s stereo version ... maybe I should update Komplete 10? Other than that, it works fine so far.

Quote:
I wonder who makes Apple's spellchecker brands list. An awful lot of brands are recognised. Presonus isn't. And, of course, Behringer isn't either.
Haha ... in Germany many people consider Behringer being cheap China crap, so I‘m not astonished here. Presonus though astonishes me a lot, especially because in Germany their stuff is much less popular than Focusrite ... and RME in the high end market.

We‘ll see, if the Quantum is as good as everybody says, it should be the perfect choice for me, ok, except not being bus powered And should I ever form a new band or have a need for surround sound mixes in the near future, I can just buy a second one and stack them by Thunderbolt cable.

I hope, Thomann will deliver latest tomorrow, so that I can test it out latest on Friday ... I‘m pretty curious.
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Old 11-12-2018, 02:14 PM   #52
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Thanks, yes, it seems the Quantum and Quantum 2 always got superb reviews, even by users in forums, and the drivers seem to be more stable than Studio One V4.1

I‘m currently demoing V4 Pro and yesterday it always crashed, when I removed NI Absynth Mono, because I replaced it with it‘s stereo version ... maybe I should update Komplete 10? Other than that, it works fine so far.
No idea, sorry. I've demoed Studio One a long time ago. Looked good, was stable.


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Haha ... in Germany many people consider Behringer being cheap China crap, so I‘m not astonished here. Presonus though astonishes me a lot, especially because in Germany their stuff is much less popular than Focusrite ... and RME in the high end market.
I don 't consider Behringer to be crap. The X32, AD8200 and some other devices are good. Better than some "great brand" stuff. And you could blame Behringer for not providing schematics, but a lot of other brands don't either. The only one that's completely open is Rane. And they've been taken over a while ago, so that could change.

Then there's the continuous whining about intellectual property. Like the ADA8000 being a copy of an RME design. It's not. But it was designed by someone who worked for Behringer at the time and now he's working for RME. The ADA8000 is a near copy of the application notes from the chip manufacturer, but so are most other interfaces.

But it's funny to see which brands are in that list. Apogee is, and so is MOTU and Yamaha. Tascam is not and neither is Teac. Go figure.

Quote:
We‘ll see, if the Quantum is as good as everybody says, it should be the perfect choice for me, ok, except not being bus powered And should I ever form a new band or have a need for surround sound mixes in the near future, I can just buy a second one and stack them by Thunderbolt cable.

I hope, Thomann will deliver latest tomorrow, so that I can test it out latest on Friday ... I‘m pretty curious.
I've never had trouble with Presonus. Not with the hardware and not with the software. They also support their hardware for a very long time. The only hassle sometimes is figuring out which driver version you need if you're installing on an older Mac. But again, that's true for most other brands.
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Old 11-12-2018, 02:40 PM   #53
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But it's funny to see which brands are in that list. Apogee is, and so is MOTU and Yamaha. Tascam is not and neither is Teac. Go figure.
Interesting ... well, we‘ll see, where these T brands will end, now that they are owned by Gibson, who urgently need to restructure as it seems. They already sold Cakewalk, so I‘m curious, if they‘ll keep the T‘s.

Quote:
I've never had trouble with Presonus.
Good to know ... except this Absynth phenomenon, which I guess has it‘s origin in the fact, that it‘s not the current version ... so far everything works as expected, but I didn‘t dig deep so far, only scratched the surface

I find this new Chord Track feature pretty interesting for composing ... can save a lot of time. And I was astonished to see, how easy it is to transfer VIs into audio and back to MIDI notes.

I think, in the future I will use two DAWs ... we‘ll see.
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Old 11-12-2018, 03:07 PM   #54
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TEAC isn't owned by Gibson. So that's a bit of a problem. They can sell their share, but not the entire company. I suppose that limits the number of buyers?
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Old 11-13-2018, 12:44 AM   #55
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TEAC isn't owned by Gibson.
Gibson has owned the majority of TEAC, but they plan to only sell consumer electronic „stuff“ and Tascam doesn‘t seem to be totally unsuccessful with their audio interfaces and such stuff.

So if they sell TEAC, they will also sell Tascam, because Tascam is just a brand name beloning to TEAC.

Time will tell.

https://www.whathifi.com/news/gibson...p-audio-brands

PS: Back to topic ... my Quantum 2 is on it‘s way ... with a bit of luck, I‘ll get it tomorrow, but latest on Thursday it should be here. I hate this waiting for delivery every time
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Old 11-14-2018, 12:57 PM   #56
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[QUOTE=Aymara;2056643]Btw ... last Saturday I bought the new Apogee Jam Plus

I'm surprised it took this long to mention Apogee. I swear by them and currently am using an iPad/Mac Duet which is perfect for my needs, you do need external power however.

If you have a Mac old enough that it has a FW 800 port, I have an Apogee Duet FW that can be powered by the bus, it works perfectly and I also have the breakout box for it (which turns the nest of cables into a box with the appropriate plugs, very handy.) Of course you will also get the nest of cables if that's what you prefer.

I'll sell it to you REALLY cheap considering it is a bit outdated. Same great Apogee sound though.
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Old 11-14-2018, 01:10 PM   #57
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I'm surprised it took this long to mention Apogee.
The reason is quite simple ... I wanted a Thunderbolt interface and the budget limit was 1000 bucks, not over 2000

Today I recieved my Quantum 2 and it‘s exactly, what I wanted. So far I only did a firmware update and quick functionality test ... further testing tomorrow.

I think the Quantum for serious recordings and the Jam Plus for quick listening and my iPad are a nice pair, that should serve nearly all my needs. And if I need field recordings, I still have the iRig Pro.
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Old 11-17-2018, 12:18 PM   #58
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any conclusions on your Quantum you want to share for anybody browsing this thread?

I had entry level Presonus gear and I liked highs and maybe lows on them. mids were scooped for my taste (and Focusrute cured it).

I've heard that Quantum has superb latency (even better than Clarett's), but don't know much details about other aspects.
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Old 11-17-2018, 01:58 PM   #59
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any conclusions on your Quantum you want to share for anybody browsing this thread?
Yeah, the reviews about the Quantum are correct, latencies are superb and the sound quality too.

I was so flashed having the lowest latency ever seen, that I have overseen, that this not always makes sense ... let me explain more about my tests with Studio One 4.1 and the Quantum 2 to better understand, what I mean:

First try ... a short mic voice recording without any plugins: input latency 0.75ms at 24 bit / 96kHz with 64 samples blocksize and audio listening latency 2.33ms. Wow!

Second test with the same settings and my Gretsch Penguin through BIAS FX ... man, though this is a bery low output guitar, I had to drop input and output levels drastically in BFX ... sound as good as never before.

Last test ... I imported the MIDI of a very old Reaper (Windows) industrial project in S1 and rebuilt it, this time with it‘s original 24/44.1, but still 64 samples. It has only 8 tracks but many pretty CPU hungry VSTs like Kontakt5, Absynth 5 Stereo, U-He Tyrell, several compressors and the S1 Impact XT drum sampler to replace 2 VSTs, that are not available on Mac ... still ultra low 1.63ms input latency and 3.27ms VST latency.

Though I had no issues, I noticed, that the fans started to blow at full speed. S1 showed only 20% CPU, but OSX showed over 70%. I did some research and found out, that it makes sense to switch on S1‘s new dropout protection feature ... BAM ... silent fans

But even after switching dropout protection from minimal to medium, which results in 512 samples blocksize, the VST latency is still 3.27ms and audio latency at 4.9ms ... stunning, isn‘t it.

As I said before, I use a mid2014 Macbook Pro 15“ with an 2.5 GHz i7 and 16 GB RAM, running OSX 10.11.6

Conclusion: Anybody in need of ultra low latency for large projects will love the Quantums.

Regarding sound quality ... absolutely no complaints ... I tested with an audiophile Beyerdynamic T90 headphone, which has a stunning resolution and is absolutely unforgiving ... I remember, that it shows sample noise with NI Africa at below 96kHz, which you can‘t hear with a DT-990.

The rest is a matter of taste ... I would rate the Quantum more neutral, than e.g. a Focusrite Scarlett PRE or an Apogee Ensemble. Oh btw ... Apogee ... here‘s a nice comparison test:

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/hom...dio-interfaces

Compare yourself ... there are 24 bit WAVs for download.

Though I also like the Apogee I find the Quantum‘s sound profile more neutral, less colored. In my opinion an advantage. But as the test shows, the opinions and tastes are mixed.

My personal conclusion: I would buy it again, though the fact, that Universal Control (Mixer) only has input gain control and not for Main and Phones, might not be everybody‘s taste, but users of S1 will love the DAW integration.

And as I said ... I absolutely love Studio One V4.1 (Artist version included) ... the chords and arrangement tracks alone are unbeatable to speed up the composing workflow. But ok ... I‘m more a song writer, than a mixing/mastering engineer
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Old 11-18-2018, 12:14 AM   #60
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Let me add a video about Presonus Universal Control, which also shows the integrated realtime analyzer, which I find pretty handy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9__42dWvSHc
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Old 11-18-2018, 05:45 AM   #61
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But even after switching dropout protection from minimal to medium, which results in 512 samples blocksize, the VST latency is still 3.27ms and audio latency at 4.9ms ... stunning, isn‘t it.
please note, there is also a 'Z' button in S1 mixer that would run the record-enabled tracks at minimal block size and all others at higher. it's on the master track.
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Old 11-18-2018, 06:13 AM   #62
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please note, there is also a 'Z' button in S1 mixer that would run the record-enabled tracks at minimal block size and all others at higher. it's on the master track.
Yes, that becomes available by setting the dropout protection at a higher level. But it needs to be activated for the master track. For VIs though it seems to get activated automatically.

And depending on the used interface, in other words, if it has direct monitoring or not, you can choose between blue versus green Z:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhmT9SWCTLw

The Quantums only have the green Z, because they don‘t have hardware monitoring. But at these low latencies, I don‘t miss that.
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Old 11-21-2018, 10:58 PM   #63
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Short side note:

Thanks to the „Black Friday“ offer this week, I could update Studio One Artist to Professional for a 50% discount

And it‘s worth noting, that Presonus support is pretty good. I opened a ticket, if it is possible to update the demo directly to Pro and got a detailled answer one day later.
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Old 11-22-2018, 04:33 AM   #64
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Short side note:

Thanks to the „Black Friday“ offer this week, I could update Studio One Artist to Professional for a 50% discount
I also took the chance to update my 3 pro to 4 pro.

now fighting with ARA2 bugs that Celemony and Presonus are promising to fix 'in next release'.

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And it‘s worth noting, that Presonus support is pretty good.
they are generally nice, but when you report a bug to them, the world changes. they take any chance to tell you: "this is not a bug, go away" (like full-screen mode on Mac is "not supported"). or may take your bug report and do nothing with it for years.
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Old 11-22-2018, 04:59 AM   #65
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now fighting with ARA2 bugs that Celemony and Presonus are promising to fix 'in next release'.
Didn‘t notice that so far as I‘m new to S1.

Quote:
they are generally nice, but when you report a bug to them, the world changes.
It‘s everywhere the same ... Native Instruments might be even worse. Just look at this Kontrol-S MkII keyboard disaster regarding transport control in DAWs. Totally embarrassing. Thankfully I didn‘t upgrade from MkI, which still works fine in Reaper and S1.
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