Recomend Sound card and analogue mixer

Im thinkin of sacking off the old tascam US-122 and getting a new sound card with more outputs so i can mix my drums from cubase on an analogue mixer to give them that lovely overdrive sound, i could do with the new one having the direct monitor function cus my decks run through my soundcard and that lets you listen to them with no delay. any suggestions?
also if you know of any analogue mixers with sweepable mids to look out for second hand for around £100 probly will spend up to £200 on the soundcard. ??

what does sweepable mids mean? more than one knob for midrange?

I've got a Delta 1010LT and just bought a soundcraft m8 which is doing me good.

My only regret is that the 1010LT doesn't have balanced outs which I didn't think of when I bought it about 2 years ago but they do one that does but is a bit more pricey.

Get a MOTU if you've got more cash though

logikz said:

what does sweepable mids mean? more than one knob for midrange?

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its where u can choose the frequency your cutting/boosting with another knob that 'sweeps' through the spectrum, normally on the mids. so u can turn the eq to full boost then find the 'bad' sound by sweeping through the frequency range then cut out that bad bit of noise or whatever by changing the boost to cut.

nice one serum, ive had a look, prob gna get a Soundcraft Spirit Folio SX Mixer and the same soundcard as u, y do you need balanced outs? what u think of that mixer?

Patchie-C said:

nice one serum, ive had a look, prob gna get a Soundcraft Spirit Folio SX Mixer and the same soundcard as u, y do you need balanced outs? what u think of that mixer?

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Balanced cables give you less noise and better quality so it's a good idea to get them if you can. Plus you'll have to get phono to jack cables that are harder to get if you have this soundcard, I was very lucky and managed to find them but not everywhere had them.
If I were to go back in time I'd change the soundcard!
What you can do is buy more than one of them though which I might do in the future as I've used all 8 standard outputs for buses to send my group channels to but haven't got one left to just preview sounds on which is annoying, especially when you consider you can't touch the levels until you've finished the tune!

If you get a 1010LT then consider getting a small one with a balanced output so you can have a channel that you can keep flat.

Patchie-C said:

nice one serum, ive had a look, prob gna get a Soundcraft Spirit Folio SX Mixer and the same soundcard as u, y do you need balanced outs? what u think of that mixer?

Click to expand...

Balanced cables give you less noise and better quality so it's a good idea to get them if you can. Plus you'll have to get phono to jack cables that are harder to get if you have this soundcard, I was very lucky and managed to find them but not everywhere had them.
If I were to go back in time I'd change the soundcard!
What you can do is buy more than one of them though which I might do in the future as I've used all 8 standard outputs for buses to send my group channels to but haven't got one left to just preview sounds on which is annoying, especially when you consider you can't touch the levels until you've finished the tune!

If you get a 1010LT then consider getting a small one with a balanced output so you can have a channel that you can keep flat.

I've not used a Folio SX mixer but soundcraft ones seem good, how much is it?
I had a look on a few sites for it but couldn't seem to see one for sale.

i had a normal spirit folio for years and it was an excellent solid greta sounding mixer - survived many gigs, moving house up and down the country, was greta. Finally died, although i gave it away and they managed to fix it and got a new spirit E12, on the basis of the success ive had.

And the power supply died just after the warranty ended, had to pay top get it fixed, and when it came back one of the channels had died - grr !.

To be fair, soundcraft did pick it up, fix and send it back free (after a minor 'discussion'! ) but i was still without it for 3 weeks.

So overall, i owuld have heartfelt recommeded sc until recently. They are still excellnt, but i think the mass market of the last few years has driven the cost and possibly quality down a bit.

But TBH for the money i dont think youll get anything better at all, the sc do have a nice warm sound. I wouldnt touch behringer, phonic etc personally.

Try having a look on the sound on sound site for reviews, soundonsound.com

seems i cant speall great !

Turnkey are doing E series ones quite cheap though I've heard bad things about their customer service.
I won't be too stuffed if it goes wrong though thank god!

Serum said:

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" I've used all 8 standard outputs for buses to send my group channels to but haven't got one left to just preview sounds on which is annoying"

"If you get a 1010LT then consider getting a small one with a balanced output so you can have a channel that you can keep flat."

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What do you mean preview sounds? are your monitors plugged into your mixer? What do you mean a smaller 1010LT? seen the 1010LT on ebay for £160, and some 12 and 16 channel spirit mixers going for around £100, thinking of getting another machine with a 1010LT on each and using the digital outs to do sytem link with 2 versions of sx3, one for audio, one for effects or whatever! this way will have a total of 20 outs to the mixer, more than i will need, and twice the pc power! what u think?

Patchie-C said:

What do you mean preview sounds? are your monitors plugged into your mixer? What do you mean a smaller 1010LT? seen the 1010LT on ebay for £160, and some 12 and 16 channel spirit mixers going for around £100, thinking of getting another machine with a 1010LT on each and using the digital outs to do sytem link with 2 versions of sx3, one for audio, one for effects or whatever! this way will have a total of 20 outs to the mixer, more than i will need, and twice the pc power! what u think?

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Hard to explain, I use 8 buses on my tracks and only have 10 outputs so i've got no channels free for doing general shit like listening to mp3s and things like that.

Right now I have to switch the cabling round or I've got the left side coming out my drum mix channel and the right side for my percussion channel with different volume and eq settings.
When I want to preview a stereo sound it comes out these 2 channels as well so I could do with one extra stereo out which I plan to get soon.

Having said all this I didn't mention that I'm using Fruity so if you're confused then that may be why!

What you can always do is have 2 1010LTs in one machine, I've never use system link but the timing might end up a bit wierd, check with people that have done it before and make sure it'll work the way you need.