The Logic Off Topic list

(some stuff I sent to someone, any help is greatly recieved and a few more 
Q's at the bottom)

Ah, now I understand futher.....thanks for that very much....I guess it was 
something I already knew but in amongst all this confusion I'd forgotten 
certain things.

Yes I'm what I'd call a nu-school producer, where as a lot of producers have 
problems with computers and using them on their own preferring the studio 
because thats how they have been brought up....i'm the other way 
round....I've been brought up on computers and are now trying to learn the 
studio as i'll be entering it a lot more now.

I'm doin well with my computer only setup and am in the process of releasing 
an EP...but if I start getting in some nice jobs to do I'm gonna splash out 
more and more on real studio kit so I don't have to do 95% of the track at 
home then take all my samples and everything on CD to the labels studio to 
finish it off.

I'm also trying to pride myself on doing every single part of the studio 
process. I know Roger Sanchez does most, the arranging, writing, recording, 
producing all on his own....he claims that to be very good....but then says 
that he gets an engineer in to do the final mixdown for him.....well i'm 
hoping to be able to master that bit too (and I must admit at the minute 
I've managed to make my EP sound great on all the speakers i've tried it on)

Because of this its kinda weird what I have to learn. I know exactly how 
synths work, the history behind them, and how to program them, I've got a 
good idea of samplers...although slightly patchy with hardward versions, I 
understand exactly what all the FX are for...how to use them effectivly, all 
the secrets of my sound, how to program MY drums (and most importantly the 
ideas for the tracks) so all i'm trying to do is work out how all the things 
link together into the mixer and how the studio generally works 
together.....but at least when I know that I can get straight to work.....I 
look forward to reading much more on this cos i'm finding it fasinating, the 
only thing that has let me down a bit so far is when I got told, say for 
instance you have a delay unit and you have two tracks in your song and you 
want to apply a different delay setting for both...you couldn't actually do 
this without bouncing down one of the tracks...cos an outboard fx unit 
cannot be applyed to do different things to more than 1 track....which I 
would say is very time consuming and also you couldn't undo your decision. 
Though I imagine if you route some kind of masterout put of your mixer into 
the computer to logic you could record the track as audio in Logic and apply 
FX from there (is that a legit pro method of doing things?)

As far as I can see the setup would be something like this....

You've got say an AKAI S6000 sampler, Roland Sound Module, and a few 
synths....the AKAI has 8 outputs...so you use all 8 and put them into your 
mixer....say the Roland has 4 (i'm just improvising now for an example) 
route them in too, and you have 2 synths each with 2 outputs each...that 
makes another 4....so 16 in total.....all into your 16 channel Yamaha 02r 
(for example :) ) then you have a few FX like the Mutronics filter, a couple 
of special outboard fx, a nice delay and expensive compressor. You insert 
this into the bus inserts (right???) where you can assign other tracks to go 
through the busses, or assign the busses to various tracks (i think....a 
little hazy on this section) then you'd have all the audio out and ins 
connected up to Logic via a midi breakout box, you'd have at least 1 stereo 
output from logic going into your mixer (ok I know we ran out of 
inputs..lets pretend we have 17 for ease of example) which makes me 
think....say I have 5 tracks or more of audio playing in logic is fine to 
have them coming out of 1 stereo (or digial spdif) output???...and then 
you'd have an ouput from the mixer routed into Logic so you could record 
tracks for further editing, plug in use, (to free up polyphony from 
machines...or so you could solve the problem of having say a sound module 
coming in on 1 input...but having it play both a bass and strings through 
the same input and you wanting to have more control over the seperate 
instruments...or would this be fine cos you could edit them on the 
soundmodule itself?) basically that would be your entire studio set up, 
right? I don't think I missed anything....other than the fact that it really 
does look like you need a lot of inputs, am I right in thinking that 
producers would actually change the inputs in the back of their mixer for 
each project (say because for one project they needed all 8 stereo outputs 
from their sampler....but usually they need them extra channels the sampler 
takes up for the sound modules/synths so they swap thouse inputs for 
them.....if your with me) or would they have 1 setup and usually leave it 
exactly as it is? cos I imagine it would be quite fiddly changing in's and 
outs on the back of your mixer for each project.

thanks in advance....and thanks for any additional info....it is grealy 
recieved :)
- Dan

NEW QUESTIONS!!

I've been reading up some things on modules, synths and samplers. I see that 
they actually have built in FX themselves, and EQ's and stuff so you can 
usually get the sound spot on before it even enters the mixer....which makes 
me wonder why use the EQ on the mixer? infact why spend so much on a mixer 
when your only gonna use it to control the volume of a channel? The 
automation on a mixer again obvisoly isn't as comprehensive as Logics 
automation.....but say you had something playing from a sampler and you 
wanted to filter it in overtime...would you have to do this live on the 
mixdown, could you do it with the sampler, what if you were using a seperate 
piece of kit like the mutronics filter how would you do it then, would the 
best option to record it into Logic and then apply plug-in automation to it?
I see a lot of house producers have SL1200 decks in their setup, how would 
they connect them up (or 1 up) would they put it staight into a sampler to 
record....I doubt it cos samplers wouldn't have phono input would they? 
would they put it into the mixing desk and then record through the mixing 
desk into either the sampler or logic or something, or would they connect it 
straight up to the computer and record into logic then play it out of logic 
through the mixing desk (and perhaps sample into the sampler then if need 
be....but it would seem unless our cutting the sample up to be easier to 
leave it in Logic for automation reasons....I suppose you could transfer it 
to the sampler via SCSI or whatever connection you use though) not sure if I 
asked this...would it be better to say use 8 analog stereo outputs from your 
sampler into your mixing desk, or use the 1 (or 2) digital outputs, meaning 
you have less control....but supposidly higher quialty (wouldn't some 
problems occur if playing 32 instruments down 1 digital output though?) do 
most mixers have more than 1 stereo output? and if so would plug one of the 
outputs into an input on the computer (so you could record, or ever do the 
whole mixdown into Logic) 1 for the speakers/monitors, and 1 perhaps to a 
dat? are the mixing desk FX mainly used for mastering or is mastering 
performed after the mixdown. I'm getting a bit lost in all this....there 
appears to be literally hundreds of ways to do 1 thing. If anyone has 
examples of how their studio is setup/connected up I'd love to know, and 
again any further information is greatly recieved!

- Dan


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