This weekend we resumed recording vocals, but this time we improved the quality of the signal chain by recording at Revolution Audio. We got to try out the M-Audio Project Mix I/O and the M-Audio Sputnik tube microphone. To describe them briefly, they are awesome.
The Sputnik has a natural way of compressing vocals that we really liked. Its very warm and close sounding with very low noise. It sounds really nice and its really not that expensive, a huge step in quality above my Audio-Technica 2020 which is quite harsh and dirty in comparison. I highly recommend this mic, and this is my favorite mic of the moment.
The Project Mix I/O was pretty cool, its very much like a 002 or 003, but its got 8 preamps instead of 4. It only has 4 outputs instead of 8 though, but thats a good trade off. The only problems we had was this device is very picky about which firewire port you use. Otherwise we got clicks and pops in the recording, didn’t happen on playback, and only when there was a significant level coming in. It was annoying but now I know about it and its easy to take care of. The faders and transport controls were a welcome change from using the mouse all the time. One thing I don’t like about the machine is the headphone and master volume controls are endless rotary encoders rather than potentiometers. That probably makes it a cleaner signal path, but there is no visual guide to how high or low the level is. You can’t quickly turn the levels down if it is way too loud, but they did seem to have a fine resolution, so I’m still undecided on that I guess.
Oh yeah, Protools M-Powered works just like LE, so if you are looking to get into protools M-powered has my stamp of approval now.
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