Mixers, Interfaces and Overbridge - Best Solution for Tracking and Performance

The Lounge General Discussion
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My music partner and I work together a couple times a week. We jam live (at home) working out parts, sort of like an old-school band practice. Once we’ve got something we like, we fire up Logic Pro and track it. Occasionally we play out.

We’ve collectively got the following: AR MKII, A4 MKII, Digitone, Digitakt, 2 poly synths and 2 mono synths. There’s every reason to believe we’ll get more eventually. We run them, some chained, into a Roland MX-1 for jamming. I’ve got a Logic Pro template going that allows simultaneous individual track recording of all the Elektron gear through Overbridge. The non-Elektron gear gets tracked through the MX-1.

This works OK, but feels really hacked together. Overbridge is sort of magical, but also occasionally unpredictable. And, the MX-1 is limited in inputs and I’m not overwhelmed by the sound quality of what it tracks.

What I want is two things:

  1. A decent-to-good mixer that lets us tweak on levels, eq, etc for jamming. I’d like to run the A4 and AR individual outs into it as well, so we’re looking at 20+ channels.
  2. An audio interface with pre-amps for proper gain-staging and audio quality at least better than the MX-1 and comparable (or better) to what I get through Overbridge.

I’m struggling a bit because I don’t really understand enough about audio interfaces to know if I’d actually gain anything with any of them over the quality I get through Overbridge. And if so, at what price? Also, being able to track w/o a DAW sounds awesome, though isn’t a primary driver.

The options seem to be 1) mixer with multitracking or 2) split the duties with an analog mixer and a Focusrite or something.

Based on all this, seems like my choices are something like this:

  1. Tascam Model 24 or Zoom Livetrack I-20 ($1000). They seem great for mixers, but will I be disappointed by zero quality improvement?
  2. A&H Qu-24 ($2,300). Looks incredible, but that’s a LOT of cash, even used. Is it overkill?
  3. Focusrite Clarett 8Pre ($900) and some mixer I eventually find on craigslist or a pawn shop or something.

What’s my budget? It’s all about time. 1 or 3 could happen now-ish. 2 would push me out quite a bit.

Any experience you guys have with any of this would be great to hear about. Help me figure out whether what I’m chasing is just too expensive and I need to chill out and appreciate what I’ve already cobbled together.

And of course, apologies for the length and likely overlap with other topics.

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Did you check the Soundcraft 22 MTK?

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So I’ve had a lot of different setups over the years.
Everything from a large AudioArts 32ch console with 32 channels of AD/DA via 2x Metric Halo 2882 and a Lynx Aurora 16 - to an A&H Qu system - to what I have now, a MOTU based system with 18 ins and outs.

My current system is a MOTU Ultralite MK4 (8 analog I/o), paired with an old MIDIman stereo a/d/a (2 analog I/o) over SPDIF, and a MOTU Traveler MK1 (8 analog I/o) over ADAT. Enough I/o that I don’t have to lean on Overbridge (but still occasionally do out of convenience.)

The reason I’ve settled on what I have now is mostly because it offers me the best “realtime” sound possible, with the least amount of noticeable latency through a DAW, for an affordable price, and with fantastic a/d/a conversion
The MK1 Travelers run about $100 ea and sound phenomenal when clocked from the newer MOTU, with the A/D on par with the newer MOTU.

The ultra low latency and highly stable MOTU driver gives me 3.9ms round trip latency with Ableton at 64 samples, where I am careful to use 0 latency or very low latency inducing plug-ins (Kush Omega, Audio Damage) to really juice up my sound whilst jamming. The result is a sound that is 90% the sound of a finished record, but in realtime, and entirely multi-track. This makes going into “record mode” effortless.
Ableton is my mixer. (Logic for you)
I only use the higher latency inducing plug-ins once I’ve finished recording live.

If these are the kinds of qualities that appeal to you, to meet your needs I’d recommend a MOTU 828-ES (10 analog in + another 16 over adat), and 2x MOTU Traveler MK1 to use over the pair of ADAT I/o.
That’s 26 analog I/o in 3U, for about $1200 USD.

Add a MIDI surface controller such as the Novation Launch Control XL for the tactile mixer experience, again, with Logic as your mixer.

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I have. Been suspect of the build and audio quality at that price point. Seems doubtful it’s enough of an improvement over my current setup, but I could be totally be wrong.

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Thanks Adam, this is super helpful.

I should say that using my DAW as a mixer is a non-starter. We really want to stay out of the box as long as possible, so for performance/jamming purposes, a hardware mixer is a must.

That said, sounds like you’ve landed on the site of a hardware interface over Overbridge (most of the time). Is there a notable sound quality difference? Or is your choice mostly do to latency?

I consider yours a vote for option #3 (interface + mixer) as two separate tools.

Am I understanding right?

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Yea it’s noticeable but not a dealbreaker in terms of quality. Both routes are usable for good results.

Lower latency is the biggest advantage.

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Just a thought. You have enough OB enabled Elektrons to use the inputs of each one of them for your synths to track them all through Overbridge. You might not even need a mixer in this case. But you said you want to add more gear, which would be a reason to get a multitrack mixer in your setup too. Anyway, just an idea in case it helps you keep costs down and still track everything through OB.

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Yes, for sure. OB gets it done for everything if I just sell out to it. It just feels hacky to do that and isn’t quite as set-and-forget as I’d like.

I guess what I’m still unclear on is, at what point does a discreet audio interface (or fancy mixer like a Qu) actually improve on sound quality? Is OB really best case scenario for audio quality without spending several thousand dollars? Would something like the Tascam actually be worse for OB devices? If so, I should probably just stick with what I’m doing for tracking and get a cheapest mixer just for jamming/performance.

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On that I’m not too sure to be honest. Just wanted to point out that you can track everything in pristine digital quality with what you already (collectively) have. I’m sure high end mixers/sound cards do improve things. It’s just a matter of bearing in mind the phenomenon of diminishing returns. I.e., the amount of money spent versus how much discernible quality improvement you see. For that, I’ll let the others answer :slightly_smiling_face:

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Honestly, interfaces try to be as transparent as possible, and so should basically be identical to Overbridge. If you are looking for something to color your sound in a pleasing way so it isn’t so digitally pristine, look for an analog sound processor to run on your mains, like an Analog Heat, an analog compressor, or possibly something rackmount. Would be a pretty cheap way to get what I think you want.

Otherwise, you could go quite expensive and go for a fully analog, non-passive mixer (like an Solid State Logic) followed by an interface with a lot of I/O options. I don’t know if the difference would be that different for the cost though.

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I went back and forth between a mixer or interface , finally went with the MOTU 828es just got it this past Friday
The Tascam Model series mixers were also consideration. but no ADAT (esaiest way I see to route multiple inputs to interface)
Maybe that might work for you if physical midi ports are not important to you ?

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Not the same as I prefer a tactile experience but the MOTU devices have Touch Console which allows you to control the DSP based mixer via tablet or smart phone, routing, channel eq, dynamics and reverb control etc .

**** requires an Apple® Airport™ or other Wi-Fi router with a standard Ethernet cable for wireless control of device settings, powerful 48-channel mixing and DSP effects. *****

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Overbridge just pipes a digital signal into your computer, so in theory it should be a perfect copy, right? Converting to analog and back again to run through a patch cable shouldn’t be any better.

That’s how I understand it anyway.

The other point is that mixers with preamps usually only use the preamps on mic inputs, so your line-level inputs won’t go through them.

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I have a Motu Ultralite 4 as well and have been looking to expand the i/o. The traveler looks awesome. I run a PC based cpu, so does it matter that the traveler is firewire if I’m just plugging it into the Ultralite?

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The most recent Ricky Tinez video might be worth a look.

He uses a Soundcraft FX 16 mk2 which has individual outs for every channel that are switchable pre or post fader, and just has that running into a Focusrite interface with an ADAT expander.

Hands on analogue mixing with multitracking into a computer. Not massively different to using a mixer with a USB interface like an MTK or the Tascam Model 24 (but appeals to me as I know and trust my old FireWire Saffire and Octopre and I like the sound of my EFX12).

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Man, Ricky Tinez once again reads my mind. That’s really the experience I want. I completely forgot about the option of a patchbay. Because only a crazy person actually wants to track 20+ instruments at a time.

Thinking my approach could be to buy these incrementally.

  1. MOTU 828ES - prioritize better quality for non-OB devices and keep OB going for a while.
  2. 1 MOTU Traveler
  3. Patchbay
  4. Mixer of some kind (possibly that Soundcraft).
  5. A second Traveler if I still think I need it.
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No. Traveler has a stand-alone mode.

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I have a MOTU Ultralite mk4 as well, but would like more routing options… What would adding an analog mixer benefit if I can use it with Ableton and a RYTM? Or should I go a different route?

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I send Overbridge audio tracks out through my many UAD Apollo system balanced audio outputs and into the Octatrack four balanced inputs for printing stems into the Octatrack. It should work the same recording/sampling into the AR’s audio inputs. This setup allows me to pick and choose which tracks from the AR, A4, or DN I want to Overbridge and which I want to use the Apollo analog inputs. It’s like having a DN with separate analog outputs aside from the Main Out. It’s worth checking out a used Apollo 16 for the analog 16 inputs/16 outputs in which you can route as many Overbridge tracks as you like to anyplace without having to constantly swap inputs - or a used Apollo 8p with 8 preamps inputs/outputs. Not to mention that the external effects processing from the Apollo will takes a massive CPU load off of older computers.

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The Qu mixers are great from AH.
The QuPac might work out ok, or the X32 from Behringer.