Hi All,
I don't at the moment have an analogue tape machine, all files start and end in SADiE, so...
SADiE5 PCM8->Sintefex FX2000 ->Crane Song HEDD->dbx Quantum->Waves L2 (hardware)-> SADiE (edits/assembly and pow-R or TPDF dither)->Benchmark DAC-1->PMC AML1 active loudspeakers and Beyer DT990 headphones.
Clocking via Drawmer M-Clock, AES black to the SADiE, wordclock to the Sintefex and dbx (the HEDD picks up its clock from the AES audio). All comments on this welcome, by the way - it works fine, but is it too 'belt and braces'?
Gear notes
Sintefex FX2000: usually for compression, but I like some of the sampled EQs such as the Decca and Maselec, and sometimes run them alongside compressor gain curves only. The FX's digital EQ is usually in the side chain, but occasionally gets used pre-comp. to roll off extreme bass-heaviness in advance of other processing - I've also found the HPFs in the Sonalkisis plug-in EQ to be good for this task.
HEDD: I love this box, and use a little Pentode and Tape more often than not. When I eventually have analogue source and/or outboard I'm planning to use its ADC to get into digits.
Quantum: as some of you know, I'm a big fan of this, and use it for EQ (normal and MS) multiband compression, levelling and clipping, plus sometimes MS stereo balance and the 'ambience' function. I like the EQ in particular, and the whole package to me has an appealing 'Swiss army knife' aspect. I expect various of the Quantum's functions will be replaced in the fullness of time (Weiss, perhaps?) but I plan to hang on to it for a while yet.
L2: this is a new weapon in my arsenal and I'm still getting into it, but it seems to damage dense audio less than my SADiE limiter. At the moment I record non-L2 processing into SADiE and then perform a separate limit pass, but when I get brave enough I'll put the L2 on the end of the chain and record the proceeds in one go.
And finally, I've just bought an Alesis Masterlink - what a neat little box of tricks! The first thing I've done has been to dump a bunch of reference CD tracks into it so I can conveniently play them back through the DAC-1 via SPDIF for comparison with work in progress on the SADiE. The main reason for getting the Masterlink was to do analogue transfers at clients' studios via the HEDD's ADC, providing me with a file I can either play out or import into SADiE as an AIFF on a CD24 disk - up to this point I've had to take the SADiE to studios, something I'd rather avoid for obvious reasons. There seems no lack of HD space in the Alesis - when new it was showing capacity for (I think) 52 hours of 16/44.1 audio, so I imagine the drives are larger than they once were.
