The desk offers the opportunity to use the Extenders. It’s the lack of the HUI/EXT option on the Nuendo side that keeps me from using it. Same with MCU. There’s a MCU/EXT option as well that the desk needs to access to get tracks 9-16/17-24/25-32. It’s frustrating not being able to access it.
Gorgeous! It’s the difference between chicken salad and chicken sh#t (on the Artist Mix)!! But be warned, it is NOT an intuitive desk!! The learning curve on this thing is ridiculous!
I bought it specifically for the 33 faders (I would’ve purchased 2 Avid S3’s, if they could’ve been locked together. But Avid won’t allow that!), the CONNECTIVITY (32 analog inputs: 16 XLR and 16 TRS) and 16 direct outs for monitors, which will allow me to set up my 2 stereo and 5.1 surround monitors without “Y jacks” or patching!!! It sounds great. It feels great! It’s got a relatively small footprint. It’s got remote features that I can load into my tablets (originally purchased to try to make the Avid gear work). It’s packed with great features and, if I wanted to switch to Studio One (NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN), I could have a Nuage/Nuendo or S6/Pro Tools Ecosystem experience. But figuring out routing on this thing is severe!
I set up the 5.1 monitors yesterday and I have yet to get any sound out of them! Everything works; nothing wrong with the desk, cables or monitors. I can see the signal passing to the surround channels I assigned. But no sound comes out unless I run the master out through those ports, which is NOT how that’s supposed to work. Since it’s the weekend, I have to wait til tomorrow for someone to explain how to get the discrete outs to work.
Sadly, as with most products these days, the manual is all but useless and the tutorial videos are positively insidious!
You follow the instructions and by step 2 you’re already in trouble! They would neglect to tell you how they got to certain pages. Other times you couldn’t follow a step because your drop down menu didn’t match theirs. Even when you were on the same page, you weren’t sure because your page didn’t look like their page. After a while, I realized that they were using PROTOTYPES to demonstrate and that’s why my hardware wasn’t matching that in the video. It has been quite the journey.
In spite of all that, I am fighting tooth and nail to find a way to keep the desk. I can read all of the channels from a distance so, less eye strain and fatigue. I don’t have to consider latency issues at all because I can monitor right from the desk. I can actually track a 32 + 2 (stereo print) session directly inside of the desk on a SD Card!! That takes me back to the days of blissfully working on my Roland VS hard disk gear. It’s got tons of User Programmable features. So, between them and my X-Keys (for all of the Key Commands), I’m expecting to only keep my Artist Transport and put the other controllers on ebay.
This tribalism crap between companies has won me to shreds. I just want to be able to work the way I want to work without having the gear get in the way! I don’t want to be forced to use Pro Tools to have my controllers work. Nor do I want to be forced to use Studio One or any other DAW in order to get all the features I need to have a good work flow. That’s why I have always liked hardware better. It does what it does and that’s all that it does and, once you learn it well, you can fly on it! Once that happens productivity should follow without issue. So, I’m optimistic that this combination of gear should get me to a Nuage like experience on a budget that makes sense for the kind of billing I’m doing at present. When the budgets go up, I’ll have the perfect audio interface I need and I’ll go to a 32 fader Nuage System.