Moving Up, 10 ins/outs Options

[Andrew Cockburn]

I recently upgraded my studio by buying one of these babies:



Its an 8in/8out AtoD/DtoA converter. It takes standard optical toslinks in and out and breaks out 8 outputs and 8 inputs. Since my audio card (EMU 1212m) has toslink input and outputs, this allows me to add to my previous 2 ins and outs on the card itself to get a total of 10 inputs and outputs.

Now Behringer is a cheap and cheerful make, good valkue for money but not always the best quality, but I wanted to explain some of the benefits of doing this. In particular, in cheap gear such as this, the A/D converters and also the microphone amplifiers always cause quality concerns, but with some care you can get a lot of benefits without compromising overall recording quality.

You may be asking why do I need more than 2 inputs, or ouputs? Well here are some of the things I can now do. Bear in mind that my original 2 outputs are dedicated to my monitor amp and speakers so I can't free them up to do anything else.

1. If needed I can now record up to 10 channels simultaneously - this means I can record jam sessions with buddies if necessary. Recording a drum kit would be a bit of a stretch as you can easily use 10 mics just for this (although you can get away with 2) - but if I added another 8 outputs I would be in that territory. (To do this I would need to dump my original card as it is now maxed out, but I could buy something like a Motu mkIII for $800, and reuse the behringer, along with another behringer for a total of 24 ins and outs). When recording my 10 simultaneous tracks, I would dedicate my high quality 1212m inputs and higher end microphone amps (I have a Focusrite Twintrak Pro) to the most important stuff, such as vocals and acoustic instruments. Electric instruments often have effects slathered on them so are less critical, and don't use the mic inputs anyway so can work fine with the behringer

2. Monitor mix routing. In the old days of real recording desks, you were able to use one or more of the busses to setup monitor mixes for musicians who were recording vocals or lead. Again, for an alectric instrument this isn't much of a concern, as these are typically recorded in the control room, using the main speakers to play against. When recording anything acoustic, you need headphones and a quiet room (I am building a vocal booth as well). When recording a vocalist, they often have preferences over what they hear - more piano for pitching, less drum as it is distracting. Meanwhile, the engineer needs to hear the whole mix to make sure it all fits together. For this reaosn, the vocalist gets his own mix specifically to his headphones - not possible with only one pair of outputs. What I can now do in reaper is make a monitor channel, route its output to 2 of the behringers new outputs (so its stereo) and make up a dedicated mix for the vocalist, while I still listen to the master mix through my headphones. To do this I added a headphone amplifier and connected it up to 2 of the behringers outputs. This is an important thing to have when moving from a basic home studio to a more capable semi-pro setup. Again, this is only a monitor mix, so using the lower quality behringer outputs makes no difference to the recorded quality, as I am actually recording the vocal through my tube mic, into the twintrak and then on to the high quality 1212m inputs.

3. Reamping. In the digital world, when recoriding lead, I record the lead dry (with no effects) and put the effects in afterwards, usually using Line 6's Gearbox plugin. This is a very convenient way of working since I can tweak effects afterwards. When I am woirking with my tube amp however, this isn't possible, as I mic up the sound and record it with the specific settings I had on that day. Wait a minute though, I can use the old practice of reamping now I have more outputs! When I record the guitar the first time, I can split the signal before the amp input and record a dry version, as well as the miced up version. If I don't like the settings, I can re-amp. To do this, I take the dry signal I recorded, and send it to one of the behringer outputs, and feed it from there into the guitar amplifier, and record it again with altered settings through the twintrak/1212m - a great way of getting the tube amp sound without the disadvantages of recording with effects on.

4. Finally, back with recording vocalists. Again, in the old days, people used big recording desks, and one feature they had was "talkback". This enabled the engineer to talk to the performer through a mic built into the desk - you know, "That sucked sing it louder", "wow great take, next time try to sing it in tune" etc ... the talkback mic needs to be routed to the vocalists headphones but not appear on the recording. Now I am building a vocal room, my singer won't be able to hear me make those pithy comments. Enter the Behringer! I dedicated one of its inputs to talkback. I hooked up an old microphone, and added a channel in reaper to monitor that specific input and route it to the monitor mix I described earlier. It also goes to the master mix so I can hear it in my own phones. Next I added a noise gate so that in normal operation it is completely quiet (since I am working with phones in the control room). However, if I need to speak, I do so, the noise gate automatically cuts out, and the vocalist can hear my motivational comments and take the appropriate action. Once again, the fact that I am using cheap mic amps and A/D in no way impacts the recording quality as I am using it just for talkback, and once again the vocalist is using the better quality twintrak/1212m inputs.

Ok, that's it - there are many other uses for additional ins and outs, these are a few that I thought I'd share - these kinds of facilities are the difference between a home setup and a more serious setup, and the behringer cost very little considering all the things it can do (less than $250). Bear in mind that not every soundcard can take one of these - you need toslink ins and outs (often called ADAT light pipes), but I hope this has given you a flavor of my excitement at getting one of these !

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