A long time ago I bought a Behringer mixing desk, which I can actually still see sitting on a shelf, gathering dust. It failed quite quickly, the power supply constantly overheating. I don’t have a car and the idea of riding on the bus to some service facility with a mixing desk on my lap pissed me off no end, which led me to go with multiple patch bays and multiple stereo Steinberg sound cards instead. Much later on I found a Roland MX-1 which kind of worked, especially as I have a bunch of Roland instruments that connect to it over USB.
But to cut the story short – I’ve spent years working with a bunch of small stereo ASIO sound interfaces and magical incantations to get instruments to and from Nuendo. The cards that handle multi audio connections seemed expensive but … then I saw that Behringer had 18 in / 20 out for about $300. It’s cheap! But it’s Behringer! But I have some new Behringer stuff and it works! Ah bugger it lets try it…
… and suddenly I have all my hardware instruments, connected, visible on Nuendo, all working as one would desire… and I wonder how many years of my life I have wrongfully wasted. It’s WONDERFUL. IT WORKS.
It says 18 in. At the front you’ll see input channels 1+2, around the back there’s 3+4, 5+6, 7+8, a SDIF input (which works with the Roland Integra7 or the V-Synth) so that’s 9+10. The other 8 inputs are ADAT format, which at this stage I’m not thinking about but there’s an adaptor available. Some machines (across the other end of the studio) still have to be heard through sub-mixer racks but it’s vastly simpler than a mechanical patch bay.
There’s audio lines out at the back which I don’t use just yet – and two headphones outlets at the front which they count as 4 channels out (that’s OK I guess). I’m mixing down to stereo at the moment but ATMOS is a plausible goal.
For the first time I’m able to have multiple hardware synthesisers running at once and be able to adjust things in respect to each other. I say first time because I started in an era long ago where you only owned a keyboard and a 4 track tape recorder, so I kind of have held low expectations of hardware, and more reliance on software. When I did have a big mixer and a 16 track tape machine it was still all very overdub.
Usually I report on things that are new or a bit obscure. Here I’m just letting out a big ‘why did you take so long?’. You should not wait so long.