hi, havent posted in a while and its nice to be back
and yes i am sitting in a control room at quarter to 2 pondering this question

does my control room need a console?

so basically its a home project studio with 2 live rooms and the control room, i run logic and reaper as recording mediums from a focusrite saffire pro and a berhinger ada 8000 on the adat.

as far as mixing i love this setup as long as i have liquid mix i am happy.

but when i go to record stuff its a nightmare, trying to set up moniter feeds as i can't place reverb for vocals, i can't have seperate mixes for each performer and for me in the control room cos saffire control pro is a bit limited like that.

so would it help greatly having proper auxes to send monitor feeds and channels to mix in overdubs, or can i make logic behave like a proper console with low latecty and easy enough for inexperienced users to operate?

so does anyone know if

i need a big ass analogue console?
can logic work the same?
are there any other options?

thanks help is appeciated.

Whilst I'm perfectly happy mixing in the box, I still like a hands on approach to setting up monitor feeds for clients. It's intuitive and virtually instant. In my home studio I have a simple set up using an Alesis 12R mixer from which I can generate one send (along with comfort reverb) easily.

For bands, I'll use a desk that can give me four sends, and I send these to individual headphone amps (cheap Samsons).

Bob

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www.bickerton.co.nz

If the problem is just monitor mixes when tracking you don't need a big console. A very small cheap console with two aux sends will get you home.

Turn software monitoring off in Logic preferences. Play your existing tracks out into the console on say channels 1 and 2. Use channel 3 (say) to track your overdub into Logic through the Saffire.

Use Aux 1 on channels 1, 2 and 3 to send a (mono) mix to headphones varying the mix between the backing track and the overdub performance. You may need a separate headphone amp and a splitter cable to feed both sides of it from the mixer's Aux 1 out.

Use Aux 2 to send reverb to an outboard reverb unit (£100 on eBay will get you something very decent - n.b. this is only for monitoring, not going to tape). Take the reverb return (mono will do) to say channel 4 on the mixer. Aux 1 on channel 4 will set the amount of reverb going to headphones.

A sub-£100 Tapco/Alesis/Behringer mixer or something will do the job. There will be zero latency.

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Dynamite with a laser beam...

You could dedicate the outputs of the ADA8000 as foldback sends.

I'm not sure what facilities your audio interface includes, but I tend to arrange all my foldback from my AI's mixer, rather than my DAW. It helps me to keep it separate - I keep an old reverb attached to my ADA8000 for adding a splash to vocal foldback.

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote The Elf:

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You could dedicate the outputs of the ADA8000 as foldback sends.

I'm not sure what facilities your audio interface includes, but I tend to arrange all my foldback from my AI's mixer, rather than my DAW. It helps me to keep it separate - I keep an old reverb attached to my ADA8000 for adding a splash to vocal foldback.

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nice idea but sadly the saffire can only supply one monitor mix to a stereo pair

so my idea at the moment is to have 2 16 channel mic splitters and a cheap 16 mic in berhinger to feed the moniters and send out to the hardware verbs i happen to have for occasional use.

thanks for the ideas, i'm trying steves idea next week if i can "borrow" some friends to play for me.