I recently picked up an A&H GL2400 mixing board and am moving from pedal and dedicated effects to rack mount. The traditionalist in me wants to pick up a few rack mounted multi-effect units (such as the T.C. Electronics M-One) but I’ve been told by some of these young whipper snappers that I should go the plug-in route.
Which of course means that I’ll need a Firewire or USB interface such as the Motu Ultralite or a Sapphire; I’m fine with that; I can send a pair of mix Group outs to the device.
But the question remains, am I ready for Plug-ins instead of hardware based effects. The advent of Sharc chips (fancy DSPs) make the latest round really really good and really really expensive (talking about Universal Audio gear).
Thoughts?
(and can somebody tell me why this $199 plug is from UA is better than the $7.99 Appstore version?) http://www.uaudio.com/store/special-processing/moog-multimode-filter.html. ($800 UA hardware not included!)
Shark chips? Sounds delicious. Man, can you return the mixer? A&H have a firewire mixer, or mackie makes one too. I have the onyx 1640i, 16 ins/outs, awesome for using plug ins as effects because the routing is unlimited. You can use 2 channels to bring back as many stereo FX returns as you want (just pan them in DAW) or bring back each return on a separate channel so you can EQ/insert each one. As far as the UA plugins, I have heard good things, and some of their processors like the Fatso and Distressor are identical to the original hardware. Not sure about the filtatron but the multimode filter sounds good, though for that price you can get the real thing used.
I have always wondered about the absurdity of outboard digital gear. The only advantage I can see is that there’s no latency, but there is usually only one stereo channel. Big studios like to use those Lexicon 480/960’s, but geez $15000 for a 2 channel processor? These “analog” studios usually have so many outboard reverbs and delays it takes hours to patch them all in and get settings. Lexicon has some awesome plugins that can be used as many times as you want for less than $1000, especially with an analog mixer/interface.