Gimme the inputs...and more inputs!

[Greg_L]

I hate it too, but not as much as I'd hate to drill holes through my house and solder a ton of XLR ends. But to each his own.

I've also had little luck using the wireless remote Reaper control feature. It works, but it's kind of slow and clunky to me. I've only tried it on a tablet though. I didn't like the touch screen or control layout. Tad is way more savvy than me though. If anyone could make it work great, it's probably him.

[WhiskeyJack]

Hold on a minute...LOL....far be it from me to discourage an awesome home studio project like this....but you're talking about drilling a hole through a floor and ceiling, removing and replacing the ends of a snake, just so you don't have to wait the few minutes at most of transferring files from one computer to another? That seems a little excessive to me.

I'm going to second this. transferring a bunch of waves or even a sizeable reaper project folder shouldn't take any more than 2 or 3 mins. On a bad network even. For a group of people like us spending hours mucking around with micropohone placements and trying to mix the snare into it's sweet spot, transferring a bunch of waves seems the lesser of all those evils. I can't say i am totally favor of demolition mode unless you really need to save that 250 bucks really bad.

As far as Option 1 goes though. Here is another thought before you go hacking and slicing dicing. It will still be the same amount of manpower but far less destructive. Consider you heating duct network?! Assuming of course that the right intersections are available to you to make the connection. This method will likely drive you batshit crazy while trying to navigate a fish tape from a decent vent in your drum area back to headquarters with the brain in it. There is a small chance that it may not be possible if the ducting branches split right at your heating source, but in the off chance that they come off the same branch theoretically it would be doable. In my fantasy here you could modify a cheap plastic heating vent in your control room so that the cables can just always be exposed, but in your living room when not being used, depending on how much excess cable you have you could store it back inside the vent cavity when not in use. Away and out of sight. If the ducting is too deep you could fashion some sort of restraint using an earth magnet or something.

Cheater raceway.

This was entirely how i was going to set up my living room to record acoustics. I had it all planned out too except far more primitive. I was going to have the guys who cleaned my ducts run an old piece of cat 5 cable through my ducting system from point a to point b to

A: get an idea of how much XLR cable i'd need and
B: later on when i wanted to record in my living room i could just use the CAT 5 as a fish pull for the xlr.

They didn't really seem too on board with it but i told them i'd give them the extra money for their time. Unfortunately my two rooms came off different branches right at the furnace.

the only other caution i suppose if you were to try to tackle it this way is even if your two rooms were on the same branch depending on how close to the main furnace you are may also thwart this effort. not sure how hot the air is right out of the furnace but you wouldn't really want plastic or vinyl TOOOO close to that heat source. I'd wager you'd want that intersection no less that 15-20 feet away from the heat source.

The other variable here that i didn't consider back then that could quickly kill the whole exercise, it is if that length of cable sitting in a raceway made of aluminum or whatever metal the ducting is will introduce any interference into your signal. other than that and the logistics of getting set up would be the less destructive route.

Mind you, one of those fancy nickel plated grommets in a hole in the floor would be pretty inconspicuous in reality.

[Greg_L]

Right next to my main room is a dining room that gets used for little else than me building amps in there. I think we've eaten in there maybe 5 times in the 15 years we've lived here. It's separated from my main playroom by a run-of-the-mill interior wall. There was a time when I was gonna annex that room and combine it with my main room, like a live room/control room. I was gonna put a plate glass window and a door in the separating wall, so the rooms are connected but still separate.

I was gonna do something similar to what Tad is describing - run a snake through the wall and record remotely. The main computer would be in my main room, the noisy shit would be in what was the dining room. Or I was gonna install XLR wall plates like a real studio. Like this:


It's such a minor wall though, a snake could run through there easily.

Ultimately this idea got pushed aside by moving my drums upstairs to a much bigger room and now I just do the file transfer thing. It requires two separate recording rigs, but I wanted to do that anyway. It works fine for me.

[Tadpui]

The drilling through the floor isn't quite as bad as it seems. The hole would be in an unfinished part of the basement, so there is only 1 "layer" to go through. The hole would emerge in the living room, along one of the walls where one of our couches lives. There's already a coaxial cable going through right there, although we cut it off when we put the new floors in last year so there's no hole through the finished layer.

It'd be relatively easy to measure within a few inches of where I wanted to be, drill a test hole from the basement between the joists, and if it's in an acceptable spot, drill the final hole from above with a hole cutter. It'd just be going through 5/8 or 1/2" plywood and the Pergo fake wood flooring. I can even keep the plugs that the cutter removes and plug/fill them back in if I change my mind.

I'm not racing to go cutting holes in my house, but when the time comes this will still be what I'll likely try first. I would still have to clear it with the boss though

[liv_rong]

Greg, nice set up. I actually came to this section to start a thread about picking one of these up as they are $199 now and saw you already did this. I was debating getting a 2 channel preamp as well for overheads.

[Greg_L]

Greg, nice set up. I actually came to this section to start a thread about picking one of these up as they are $199 now and saw you already did this. I was debating getting a 2 channel preamp as well for overheads.

I still haven't had a good opportunity to blast through all this stuff yet.

[liv_rong]

Well I ordered the ADA8200 on Friday but it is back ordered. So since then was debating on getting a 2 channel mic pre for my overheads and using then using that with the line ins in the 8200 to free up what I assume are better pres on my Scarlet. That would have been pricey. So I instead am going with the Octopre which is also on back order lol. Anyways, I think a better and cheaper option.

[liv_rong]

Now I have all the inputs. Whenever this pandemic thing is eased up and I play music with real people again I’ll have ample inputs for things in life.

Ran a quick test and my newb ears do not notice any difference in sound between the two units.

[Lt. Bob]

you guys are all so young!

lol

I bought my Teac 3340AS 4-track reel to reel in 1970 and still have it.
been multi tracking ever since.

That 3340 was amazing because it had ( at that time a new feature) the ability to flip a switch on a channel and listen thru the record head so anything you recorded would be in sync upon playback.
It sounded muffled and shitty for playback but it allowed things to be in sync whereas if you didn't flip it, there was a distance between the playback head and the record head so it would be out of sync.

Amazing stuff at the time

[JD01]

Now I have all the inputs. Whenever this pandemic thing is eased up and I play music with real people again I’ll have ample inputs for things in life.

Ran a quick test and my newb ears do not notice any difference in sound between the two units.

The bottom one is just a patchbay right? You don't actually have 32 inputs? Just the two 18i20s?

[liv_rong]

Now I have all the inputs. Whenever this pandemic thing is eased up and I play music with real people again I’ll have ample inputs for things in life.

Ran a quick test and my newb ears do not notice any difference in sound between the two units.

The bottom one is just a patchbay right? You don't actually have 32 inputs? Just the two 18i20s?

Yeah, that’s just a xlr through to easier access the rear inputs and right now it’s only being used on 3-8 on the Octopre. And technically it’s an Octopre in the middle. It’s almost the same as the 18i20 except no usb connectivity to use as an interface, no headphone amps, no ADAT in(only out) and no “air” feature on the pre’s.