BR800 as an interface?

[galestermusic]

I have been immersed in Sonar LE, Plugins, and BR 800 while I have had this nasty flu.

I would like to know what people's preferences are as far as using the BR 800 as an interface with DAW, using it as a stand alone, or recording tracks exporting and mixing in DAW.

I have been playing with plug-ins (the free VST's). I have not been able to find an amp sim or distortion and other effects where the original signal is not heard. I mean I play through some the Sims and effects and I can hear too much of the original signal underneath the effect. Is this because it's DAW and I need to tweek something or is it because the plugins are free?

I'm starting to feel better no that there is no fever and I found some songs that I may remix and revisit in Sonar.

If anyone at all has some beginner tips for DAW I would appreciate them all or any direction you can send me.

Thanks
Greg

 

[Blooby]

Feel better, brother.  I'm curious what you'll find out.  I'm not a technophobe, but I am super nervous about entering the DAW world.  Don't really no why as I know I'll take to it like a fish to water.  Perhaps I see a whole new level of G.A.S. that my immature psyche can't handle.

Peace.

Blooby

[banjaxed]

Hi Greg,
I'm sure there is a thread somewhere about this subject but I can't find it 
If I remember correctly the general concensus was that most people recorded
on their stand alone recorders and used the DAW to do the mixing. As someone
who is not very technical it has been a long road for me to come to this conclusion as
several months ago I started using Mixcraft as my DAW and spent weeks going
from one problem to another, mainly with latency problems. I recently bought a
Boss Br900CD which is a great improvement for me as it can do everything, but
still have the option of using Mixcraft to polish any recordings without any latency problems.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Maurice.

[galestermusic]

I'm thinking that using the BR800 as a stand alone and then interface for mixing and mastering is best for me. I will still experiment and maybe add some external boxes through the line inputs. The plug ins and their signals have really stumped me.

I would like to learn all the filter passes and limiters and exciters. The vids I've been watching show a really great finished products in their examples.

I know that when OHR sent me his wave files for the vocals of "sparkles," It sounded really good when I mixed it sonar le. One technique I used was taking the two tracks panning them appropriately and backing one of about 3ms.
 I will continue on, I'm finding DAW challenging and interesting

[Mach]

I'm familiar with DAW's, but never worked with a control surface for them.  I would also like to hear your experience with the BR 800 working as an Interface/Control Surface unit.

Mach

[Auroran]

I'm familiar with DAW's, but never worked with a control surface for them.  I would also like to hear your experience with the BR 800 working as an Interface/Control Surface unit.

Mach

I just tried it as a control surface: works great, does everything they say it will.

I've tried several "low level" control surfaces. For me, I don't have much use for them because of their limitations. I would need long-throw faders, solo/mute buttons (the BR can do mute), pots for pan, eq, sends, the whole works. Let's face it, one can press the "play" button on a BR or the Space bar on the keyboard, same thing. But I digress- the BR 800 works very well and does everything it says on page 120 of the manual. I have Sonar 8.5 (not the LE, the normal one) and it saw it right away after I installed the drivers. I can even set it as controller only and still use my M-Audio interface.

At the bottom of Sonar, there will be a purple strip that shows you 1,2,3 etc. i.e. which fader is assigned to which track. It doesn't seem able to do group tracks: If you lock track 1 and 2 together in Sonar, it will only move one. If the L/R master outs are locked, it will move both. If they aren't it will only move the left.

The BR faders and sofware faders match up surprisingly well. When you go from the bottom of the BR fader and push it to the top, the software is about at the same place. There's not that match latency: when you move the br fader, the software fader moves right away. The rhythm fader doesn't work, so you can control 6 faders and one master.

[galestermusic]

Auroran a technique I like to use is I will record one track copy and paste to another track and offset the second track by 4 or 5ms. I do this in the BR800. I did it once in Sonar LE when I used LE to mix a song RottenHead and I did called Sparkles and evidently I don't know what I did. Every time I do it now the track wants to jump to the next tic mark up at the top. Any Ideas?
Thanks Greg

[Auroran]

Auroran a technique I like to use is I will record one track copy and paste to another track and offset the second track by 4 or 5ms. I do this in the BR800. I did it once in Sonar LE when I used LE to mix a song RottenHead and I did called Sparkles and evidently I don't know what I did. Every time I do it now the track wants to jump to the next tic mark up at the top. Any Ideas?
Thanks Greg

Sonar (and I assume LE) has a feature called "snap to grid". By default, it is set at one measure, so if you drag something it will move one whole measure at a time.  In the main (track) view, it is located on the left above the tracks and above the clock, it's a button that looks like a checkerboard. If it's lit it is on, click it to turn it on or off.

When it's off you can drag tracks wherever. When it's off, select a track (or many) and try process/slide. It will give you many choices to move tracks around.

[galestermusic]

Great! Thank you!