Very practical, for sure. If your workflow really need everything powered up and run in realtime in a mix all the time.I’d skip the patch bay and get more ADAT (etc). No mixers, no patch bays - the goal is to never touch a cable (so hell no to modular! Hehe).
I only have 7 outboard fx and 4 hardware synths. One Pulse 16 is plenty for that for me, since not everything needs its on set of ins and outs. If I wanted that I’d have gone with the A32.
Pulse16 is $1300 or so, which is more than SSL Pure Drive Quad which is about $1100.
I rendered some tracks from Sequential REV2 as I installed it
- wow, never knew the low end was there in REV2
- the clarity of it all, still being line input stuff
- just doing the clean mode
- and did the same with a piano track from Kawai MP7SE, and wow again
I still had the Audient ASP 800 before, and the SSL beats it many notches.
And I use a patch bay as well to quickly take two cables over from external gear as needed and record audio on it to daw once done.
- takes 4s to move two cables on front patch bay
- and not all external gear need to be powered up all the time
So another approach may be to go for fewer channels and higher quality preamps.
- one would think AD conversions is just that, not much of a difference
- now I know better, electronics before AD has a big influence
Every render from external gear just that little bit better makes a huge difference for a full mix.
Enclose a flow chart of SSL Quad, and you see line input attenuated 5 dB and run through the same circuits and mic preamps does.
- wow, really worth the investment
- your external gear notches up in quality into daw
They did so many clever things in SSL Quad, like using the 4 first inputs on DB25 connectcor which are line inputs and can have XLR cables in place on those mic inputs.
- a push of a button on front panel and you switch to DB25 inputs
- one issue I had with ASP 800, XLR blocks line inputs
But workflows are different, I guess, what you need....
Statistics: Posted by lfm — Fri Jan 24, 2025 4:48 am