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That's not true. At least for the older iPad with the dock connector, you can connect any MIDI device through the Camera Connection Kit and then play very nice synthesizers like the Moog Animoog or Korg iMS-20. And if the internal headphone out isn't enough, you can connect USB class compliant audio interfaces to get super pristine audio output, too.

I'm sorry, but no professional produces music on an iPad unless it's some Apple promotional thing or a hobby project. The "Animoog" and the "iMS-20" are pale simulations of the real things and cannot touch a VSTi version.

As far as the "USB class complaint audio interfaces" available for the iPad, even the best of them are consumer grade. And there is absolutely no DAW software available for iOS that any professional would use.

The closest you will come to using an iPad in music production is pro-sumer gear, something like this, where you can use your iPad as a remote control for a real mixer:

http://www.mackie.com/products...

But even those have lost a lot of popularity, since people have figured out that the iPad just adds a huge failure point, since the mixer doesn't have any real faders of its own and adds an absolutely unnecessary level of complexity.

If you're an Apple fan, understand that I love Macs for music production. I've bought a new Mac Pro every three years since the G4. They're wonderful professional music production computers. iOS just isn't there for serious work yet, and I doubt Apple has any intention of making it so any time soon. They are consumption devices, not production devices.

USB and Firewire both hook to real audio interface units well enough, although, if you want to go high end, you might still want to use a PCI interface card.

I have scored several films ,produced and engineered quite a few albums and cut several radio and podcast spots using Presonus Firepods http://www.presonus.com/. It has just about all the IO you could ask for in an 8 (10 if you count spdif) channel box. You can also daisy chain 3 of them for a 24 channel stack. Also, it is rack mountable so you can readily take it on the road. Overall things just work and I, and my customers, have been very pleased with the sound quality. Not to mention, you get balanced and unbalanced capabilities. To keep things quiet I don't run anything unbalanced if there is more that 3 feet of cable.

If the firepod is a bit much they also offer cut down versions. The firebox, which is a 2 channel unit, and the inspire which has 4 channels.

Digidesign http://www.digidesign.com/, Echo http://www.echoaudio.com/ and Mackie http://www.mackie.com/ also have some really nice gear but can be a bit pricy. I do agree with staying away from m-audio. Their MIDI stuff is phenominal but the audio gear is lacking. I would say the same for lower level Alesis and anything from Behringer.

I also must echo earlier posts in saying that you shouldn't skimp on mics. Your end product is only as good as your source. I would recommend a good condenser from AudioTechnica or MXL for price/quality.

Also, your monitors (for you non-audio folks these are the speakers, not the video display) are also critical to getting a mix that translates well to other systems. You will find that if you use standard stereo speakers or, God forbid, computer speakers what you put out will sound extremely different from stereo to stereo as you listen in different environments.

I personally use Event TR8Ns with a KRK Rockit 10 subwoofer but these babies ain't cheap at $1000.00US per pair. I would recommend looking into KRK http://www.krksys.com/. I did some post work on the latest Stereofuge album with Mark Slaughter producing and we did the entire mix on them and it sounded fat-tastic. In any case, you will want a good near-field monitor that is self powered to eliminate transients.

Finally, clean up your power. You'll be amazed at the difference a $60.00US power conditioner can make to the quality of the sound you get. I use Furman http://www.furmansound.com/ conditioners. This is a good tip for anyone who has a home-theater or high-end gaming system as well.

A good set of reference books for audio newbs is a series of books by Bobby Owsinski. Starting with the recording engineers handbook (available at amazon) they will give you enough info to be extremely dangerous.

I didn't mean to be so verbose but I hope some of this is useful.

I would not recommend any solution that involves Behringer equipment. Behringer is infamous for stealing designs, using cheap parts, and making all around terrible products. I've bought several things from them; most did not last for more than a year, and all of them were dismal quality. I would recommend the Mackie 800R. The Onyx preamps are very solid, and it comes with a very nice firewire interface and software. It puts out exactly what you put in (as accurate as a mic preamp at that price point can be, anyway), no EQ, effects, etc.

Mackie ONYX 800R
Perfect sounding. Has 8 variable impedance mic preamp channels at 24/192 kHz, includes a Mid-Side decoder which can come handy.
http://www.mackie.com/products/800r/index.html
€ 1229 (sorry too lazy to check for US price)

PreSonus Firepod
Good sounding, 8 channels @ 24bits/96 kHz.
$ 800

Behringer BCA2000 (or any soundcard with 8-channel ADAT input support) + second hand ADAT converter
ADAT converter examples : PreSonus DigiMax @ $200 on eBay, PreSonus DigiMax LT
Ok, this one is in two parts, but the BCA2000 (which I own) is a very nice portable 4in 8out 24/96 + 3xMIDI soundcard, and it works with USB2. I used to avoid USB interfaces, but this one works perfectly and can be used on computers without FireWire, such as older notebooks.
around € 220 + starting at $ 200 on eBay, usually around € 450

A lot of the various sound cards come with an adat interface (or multiple) that you can use, what you need to do is get a preamp, the first one that comes to mind is http://mackie.com/products/800r/index.html this, you can get them cheaper, but with audio gear a lot of times you get what you pay for, and mackie is good stuff, so you get a soundcard (your choice of interface) with many adat inputs, and add preamps as needed

The new firewire line from Mackie is also very promising (didn't get my hands in one of these yet). Check them out at http://www.mackie.com/products/onyxfirewire/ the analog audio section from Mackie is excellent. Wolf

Getting a little off topic, but I was looking at buying either a Mackie SDR2496 or the Alesis mentioned, and went with the Mackie mainly because it uses standard IDE drives in Lian-Li compatible caddies with FAT32 file systems. I've built my own firewire caddy and now have the same kind of features as the Alesis. OK, the Mackie doesn't have a ethernet or an FTP server (it has USB instead), but 10mbit is largely pointless for transferring multitrack 24/96 data.

$50k is not required for very high quality sound. Do something like this:

~$700 for Lynx L22 sound card (24 bit/192kHz fully balanced analog IO):

http://www.lynxstudio.com/lynxl22.html

~$1300 for a pair of Mackie HR824 powered monitors (flat response, amazing low end for "small" speakers):

http://www.mackie.com/products/hr824/index.html

So there you have a $2000 very high quality audio setup. (Assumes you already have a PC to plug the sound card into.) I run WinAMP with the MAD full precision MP3 decoder plugin and the low-latency ASIO output plugin with the above noted sound card and powered speakers.

Recently I have been experimenting with LAME encoding and the Foobar2000 player. I like the fact that this combination will preserve the segues on album oriented music (so called "gapless" playback)

I have been doing the encoding on my Powerbook using the Blacktree LAME encoder plugin for iTunes (I swapped out the provided LAME executable for one of the new beta builds so I could try out the "VBR new" settings.)

Traction2 is built using JUCE. JUCE is an all-encompassing C++ class library for developing cross-platform applications. Both of which were built by Jules of Raw Material Software. On April, 25th 2005 JUCE was released with Linux support.

There is talk that this powerful, unique, and user-friendly audio application could be ported to Linux. If anyone else wants to support such an idea, e-mail Mackie or see this thread on KVR.

Well, pro audio is about the "maker" side (as opposed to the "user" side), which creates equipment that allows you to judge whether a recording "translates" well to a wider range of different usage scenarios, like home hifis, car stereos, radio clocks etc.

These studio monitors basically show as many flaws of your music as possible. It's quite funny to listen to your favorite recordings on such things only to sometimes hear all kinds of badly mixed elements etc. :-)

The predominant brand here is Genelec. Get some 1030A,1031A or 1032A (only depending on room size) and have some fun. Or go with the Mackie HR824, which can be found in virtually every big studio just because they always sound the same, are not as expensive, easier on the ears, and it's just a standard on their own.

Cheers!

Yes, MIDI works until you try to describe it with XML in realtime. Try out Tracktion http://www.mackie.com/products/tracktion/ and watch it lag when you have much data going on. :)

Where's a $100 flying fader panel with Linux drivers?

Audio and Linux don't mix. Or do they? Anyone who knows, please respond.

You're unlikely to find flying-fader anything for less than a thousand USD. The celebrated Mackie HUI is no longer with us, but Mackie Universal Control is cool, and talks to everything.

It works pretty well. We use Adobe audition for the audio editing, and we have a near-pro setup for well under 6K total. Quite a bit cheaper than the old days!

a rotary pot (sliders haven't been used on real hardware for 20 years!)

what?!

what?!

what?!

First, solder is quite adequate to hold a headphone jack in place.

Evidently a lot of ipod mini owners would disagree with you.

If it cracks, it means it's either a bad solder joint (possibly aggravated by an improperly designed PCB or case) or a badly designed jack.

And pretty much all 1/8" headphone jacks are badly designed because they rely on ONLY solder and typically do not disconnect themselves when stressed.

If you want to see properly designed audio connections look at pretty much any Mackie mixer. You note that ALL connectors are soldily attached to a METAL case.

Unfortunately, pretty much nobody makes consumer, portable audio equpiment whose headphone jacks are attached to anything but a PCB. It IS a crappy design, but it's pretty much the de-facto standard.

Still, it's a bad design. It's a routine point of failure for just about any portable audio device (read the other responses in this thread).

Personally, I have a set of Sennheiser HD-495 headphones whose cord will disconnect at the earpiece when subjected to sufficient force. This saves a significant amount of wear on my portable devices.

If the ipods are failing this soon, I would guess that's they have an especially crappy design.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it......I would shell out a LOT of money for a Mackie version of the iriver ihp-120.
It would probably weight 5X as much, but it would have killer sound quality and good resale value.

"People who really want to hear good stereo sound should spend their effort on the two things that will make a lot of difference: (1) getting good speakers, and (2) working on the acoustics of the room"

You forgot (3) an amp with more power than you need.

I got bored with my home stereo system a year ago and decided to put together more of a studio monitor system instead. I now have a pair of Tannoy Reveal studio monitors hooked up to a Hafler TA 1100 power amp, all for less than $1,000, and I'm really enjoying being able to hear things I've never heard before, with a clarity that gives that "being there" feeling.

In my past life I spent quite a while in recording studios and always marvelled at how awesome the music sounded. Then I'd hear it on a regular hi-fi and it would turn into everything else out there, a watered down version. I used to blame this on the many and varied processes the master had to go through to end up on a retail CD, but since setting up more of a studio monitor type enviroment in my home I'm realizing a lot has to do with having a big fat amp powering a set of big fat speakers.

I also decided to use a Mackie 1202-VLZ Pro mixer to route the audio here and there, instead of the usual hi-fi type amp.

The whole things is mounted in a rack mount cabinet.

Oh yeah, another thing about audio: we like the Mackie D8 a lot. Really good board for the price.

Mackie, Alesis, M-audio, Roland, and MOTU (among others) also make professional audio interface equipment for recording and monitoring/listening.

There are a couple of Creative-licensed OEM products (Some of the Alesis stuff looks awfully familiar...) but most of these companies provide far better hardware and software for "real" sound applications. A nice audio interface w/ a pair of active studio monitors will sound worlds better than some cheap consumer surround sound system. The prices are pretty much comparable with Creative's "good" stuff.

Mackie (sound reinforcement and processing) is another company who puts some humor in their manuals - the manual for their 1604VLZ mixer, for example is full of material that, while not being laugh-out-loud funny, is also not man-this-is-so-boring-I-want-to-die. The effect of this is that I have actually read the whole thing, cover to cover, and learned a whole lot more about the product than I would have if they had just gone with the standard technical writing standard.

• Obviously you'll need a good sound card, Creative's Sound Blaster Live! is comparitvely cheap for the value you get.
• You'll need good microphones, also (it's amazing the difference quality makes). Nice mikes will let you record any instrument, electric or not. I would suggest the company Shure.
• Next on your list would be a mixer, I would highly suggest Mackie boards, and for slightly cheaper tastes the Behringer line.
• Another key component is good cabling. It's tempting to just run over to Radio Shack and buy what you need... but I've found those cables to have crappy shielding, almost no jacket, and die after about 2 years. I would suggest Hosa cables, or, if you have extra cash, Monster cables.
• Lastly you might think of getting a headphone matrix. This is mainly useful if you want to record a band/mutiple people at once. It allows you to amplify the sound a person is making back to them.Also it will allow you to have 6+ headphones w/o splitting the signal.

They both sound like crap compared to my old reel-to-reel tapes played on my Studer A77, thru my Mackie HR824's. Regardless, with any decent digital hi-fi system if you play a mp3 or other compressed format, versus the CD you will notice a difference in sound quality. I don't care what anyone says.

This on top of the fact that the 16 bit 41 khz signal you get from a CD is lowsy compared to the analog/24 bit digital your music was probably originally recorded in. I can't see why anyone would continue to slaughter the signal even more by applying one of these lossy compression formats (other than to disseminate your music over the internet or something, that's worth the compromise I think.) Especially if you've got a 100 gig harddrive.

That depends on how much power you're using. If you're only throwing out a hundred or two watts per channel, dissipating that is not so difficult. And including the amplifier as part of the speakers means they can be tuned to each other - as is done in most active studio monitors (say, the Mackie HR824's)

Unless you have a very large space or very power-hungry speakers, or are deaf, I can't see why you'd need much more power than that.

Mackie LM3204.

16 stereo inputs, rack mountable, built-in headphone amp.

Mackie 1202 is nice too, but you'd be wasting the wonderful mic preamps, and it has fewer stereo channels.

Can't beat that. :)

hehe. Not cheap, but not overpriced either.

Mackie LM3204.

16 stereo inputs, rack mountable, built-in headphone amp.

Mackie 1202 is nice too, but you'd be wasting the wonderful mic preamps, and it has fewer stereo channels.

Can't beat that. :)

hehe. Not cheap, but not overpriced either.

Mackie

http://www.mackie.com
Heh, didn't even need google to find it.