When you guys set up your monitors for 5.1 surround, do you have your feed go all 5 outputs on every channel or 5 separate outputs to your speakers?
To make the question clearer, my DA-7 Desk is equipped with a 5.1 monitoring matrix. The default setting is all 5 ports + LFE are open on ALL 6 channels/faders (see channel view).
You can see output from all 6 ports on this one channel view in the manual. Now when I send signals from Nuendo (from mono to 5.1) to any single surround channel on the DA-7 with the default setting, it sounds like mono in 5 speakers, regardless of where I pan the source. But if I turn off all but one port (L open all others closed on fader one, R open all others closed on fader 2, C open all others closed on fader 3, etc.) on each of the faders, then the output monitoring SOUNDS LIKE DISCREET 5.1.
So, my question is do you guys have all 6 ports open on each of your 6 audio interface/desks outputs or are you sending only discreet feeds to your speakers?
My VST connections has a 5.1 monitor path, and in that path each channel (L/R/C/LFE/LS/RS) maps directly to my interface (Lynx TWO-B) outputs (1/2/3/4/5/6), and those outputs then map correspondingly to the actual speakers in my room in the same order as the channels…
Your interface is doing automatically what I’m having to do manually on my desk. Each of your outputs is going directly to a speaker. On my desk each fader is going to all 5 outputs in it’s default setting. So, by shutting down the duplicate outs on each fader, I am now sending 1 out per channel.
Edit as the formulation of my question was indeed not very nice at all, sorry about that. I’ll rephrase.
Why are you still using the DA7 mixer. Personally I never ever liked it.
In my experience it had low quality faders with hopeless resolution, eq sounded ok but was not very fast to use, input pots where not good. I/O options was quite good though. It Wasn’t great when it was brand new, and now almost 20 years later I personally can’t see a reason why anyone would prefer to use it.
Please enlighten me.
Hi Eric
Hmmm, I doubt he can hear much of a difference using those Equator D5 monitors.
Somehow doesn’t fit right to the RAYdat and a high performance PC.
Sure, budget thingy, was there, too, years ago.
In the 5.1 Studio we chain from PC to a RME ADI-8 DS Mk III into a SPL SMC 2489 Monitor controller
into Genelec 5.1 midfield monitors. The SMC has proved to be a safe convenient way of analog and
easy to use control of 5.1 speakers and volume.
Why on earth ar you being SO RUDE? You could’ve easily looked down your nose at me and kept this thought all to yourself. But since you lacked that impulse control, I’ll answer your question with a question. Why does anybody use anything? Answer: Because it works!
In the almost 2 decades that I’ve been using it, I’ve actually been able to use it. It is THE ONLY GEAR I own that has kept working. I have never had it crash, never lost a project because apple changed a driver in iTunes and didn’t tell anybody and, as a result, had Nuendo stop working. I never had to fight new bugs or had compatability issues with other gear. I never lost my MIDI capability, like I did with Midex 8 because SB stopped supporting it, thus turning my investment into a total loss. In fact, to this very day, the only pieces in my studio that have worked without fail are that desk, my Roland HDRs, my outboard gear and my HR824 monitors. EVERYTHING ELSE (nuendo, these controllers, plug-ins etc) has been a giant PITA at one time or another and, in some cases, many times! Furthermore, I have never had a single complaint from any client about any of my deliverables!!
In a market where every client is trying to get you to work for free, throwing money away on each new fad or iteration of anything just doesn’t make sense. That desk paid for my house, it’s worked faithfully for almost 2 decades and I’m supposed to get rid of it because you don’t like it?!!? Well I’m sorry, I’m just getting that memo.
Now that I’ve answered your question, allow me to make a request of you. If you don’t have anything constructive to add to any of my threads, just ignore them altogether! I’ll thank you for that courtesy in advance.
Bass, Transients, for example. If you don’t need low bass control, mix critical music material or
produce cinema trailers I guess they are usable… for active speakers in the 200 € range.
I only heard them once at a friends private place. They worked for him …
I do not want to sound snooty. I nearly orientate on music studio requirements towards equipment.
And the DA7 is no POS, but it is outdated and not really good either. I’d safe the electricity costs for it…
But I am not in other persons shoes.
Also: this is not a girls lyceum. Erik is a seasoned, longstanding audio engineer, too.
He will have his reasons to think badly of it. No need to get so excited about it.
Everybody: enjoy all your gear, as we do …
Peace, Big K
I agree they’re shy on bass, not to mention tend to begin to perform poorly non-linearly pretty quickly if you push the low end (by turning up the volume), but you can get around that by either monitoring on a lower volume or using a sub (which you’d do anyway in a 5.1 non-full-range setup).
Transients I haven’t really found to be much of a problem on them. I know some people get weirded out by the coax design and also the mid range being prominent, but a poor transient response isn’t really something I’ve heard people complain about. I actually did a shoot out between a Genelec 4-inch 5.1 system and a D5 system, and to me there were clear tradeoffs between the two. At the end of the day there was no way I felt the Gennies were worth the extra money.
I think that not only were these a complete steal when they came out, but in and by themselves they’re quite good. Obviously there are plenty of speakers that are better in a number of ways…
No need to feel offended, it wasn’t personal, just some amusing strong opinion which I do like. But I also like the fact that you are still using and find usefull your DA7.
All gear we have today (except mics) will be junk sometime in the future. That’s the nature of the thing. I my studio I used to have a big junk room, full of crap 30 years old, like Atari computers, Yellowtec vca automation, Sound Workshop console, Steinberg SMP24 synchronizer, Simmons drums and so on. But when I look at it, I’m grateful because it served me well for so many years. But it is still crap, my dear crap.
Sorry about my previous post, and yes I can indeed see why you didn’t appreciate my choice of words in it. Sorry about that. I have re-edited it above.
And yes, thanks for your answer. While I indeed do feel that the DA7 was hopelessly inadequate for what we used it for, I am happy it works well for you.
And come to think o it, no ours never failed even once in the almost ten years we used it. So in that way it was a decent unit.
But to me those input knobs were hopeless, and the fader resolution inadequate. But then I used it to do transfers and routing (where minute level changes where needed to get the individual levels 100% correct). For that type of fine tweaking it just wasn’t very good. OTOH at that time I couldn’t find anything else that had the I/O and features we needed, so we stuck with it despite its limitations.
Again sorry about the poor choice of words in the previous post.
I try not to be a unpleasant person online, this time I failed.
Apology accepted. I’m only using the desk now as an audio interface. The 24 digital returns are flat at unity and all of the mixing is done in Nuendo. To replace all the things it handles for me, I’d have to buy 16 mic pres, a 24 channel converter and a serious monitor management system!
I just upgraded the PC, purchased a bunch of new VSTi’s, several expensive plug-ins and new hardware. A new desk is not high on my list right now.
How far in the future are you talking? I can think of several "vintage API, SSL, shoot, even Audient desks that I would love to take out of somebody’s “junk yard (LOL).”
So, now can we get back to the subject? All of you guys feed one speaker per output from your 5.1 audio interface set-ups, right? I edited the original post and added a photo of the channel (from the manual) view to help clarify my question.
The reason I’m asking is because I was talking to someone who said I should leave all of the ports open on all of the channels. But, as I said, that only sounded like 1 mono channel coming out of 5 speakers. So, that doesn’t make sense to me,
Yes. I don’t see any other way to properly go about it.
The only exception would be if for some reason you’d need the ability to double up the physical connections to do logical switching, for lack of better nomenclature. So if you have a setup where you’re not using Nuendo’s control room to its fullest I suppose I could see how someone would route D/A outputs 1-6 to speakers 1-6, and then 7-8 to speakers 1-2. The doubling up, if speakers 1/2 are L/R would then allow the person to route stereo through 7/8 and 5.1 through 1-6. But that seems cumbersome and unnecessary since we have control room.
Makes no sense to me either, assuming I understand what “port” refers to here. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding?
