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Questions About Midi Controllers

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  • March 5, 2014 at 10:51 pm #2008506
    Alex Moschopoulos
    Participant

    Not sure. I do know things are all USB now. Midi In/Out in my book is when you’re trying to get away from software and be more “live musician” with drum machines and keyboards.

    March 6, 2014 at 4:26 am #2008541
    Lamid45G
    Participant

    I believed Cubase is gearing more toward a windows based hardware, while Ableton not that much,
    If you just starting to get into the production, why the audio interface ? just wondering why dont you go ahead get the all in one solution with keypads

    March 6, 2014 at 8:43 am #2008588
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    probably because he doesn’t want to use the soundcard built into his PC/laptop and perhaps he wants some inputs as well?

    March 7, 2014 at 10:53 am #2008834
    Yared Lee
    Participant

    All in one solution? And yes DJ Vintage is right. I plan on using a condenser mic so I’m going to need phantom power

    March 7, 2014 at 2:02 pm #2008870
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Lot’s of midi gear these days is midi over usb. If you intend to use many external components like keyboards, having midi (DIN) connections may come in handy.

    Not on account of these two specific soundcards, but more along general experience lines, I’d say the FocusRite is the better of the two. Having said that, the difference shouldn’t be huge. Both have phantom power and all the bits and pieces you might need. SP/DIF is nice if you plan on using it, but if you don’t know what it is or if you will ever use it I’d say don’t worry about that feature. I can vouch for the build quality of the FocusRite, they are tough and certainly road worthy. Both units are USB-powered, so no specific difference there. Especially when phantom power is to be used regularly and it’s not about having a mobile setup, then I would somewhat prefer getting a soundcard with it’s own power supply. I don’t have too much faith in USB ports when it comes to powering critical applications, but that’s perhaps just my paranoia.

    Both are 24-bit which is pretty much a must these days for digital recording. The Alesis however is only 48KHz sampling rate, whereas the Focusrite is 96KHz. Where for pure DJ-ing stuff I’d say don’t worry about it, when it comes to anything like production, sound manipulation and such, I’d probably get the FocusRite for that single reason.

    Other alternative is the venerable Lexicon Lambda USB. It looks like you can get it in a dime-store as a relic from times past, but don’t let looks fool you. It’s got all you need (incl. midi-DIN) and the sound quality is great. Price wise it’s closer to the Alesis than it is to the Focusrite. Finally, for the money of the Focusrite you can get the Lexicon Omega Studio. More channels, external power supply and great pre-amps. Lexicon might not be known in the DJ/producer community (don’t know for sure, but never hear it mentioned there), but ask any studio techie about Lexicon and chances are you get a nice bit of praise for the brand.

    Hope that helps some.

    Greetinx.

    <edit> The Omega Studio is 48KHz again, but that fact is off-set by a lot of pros. Might want to Google the Sound On Sound review.
    <edit 2> In light of full disclosure (don’t want anyone swinging bats at me lol) it’s a USB 1.1 device, not 2.0.

    March 7, 2014 at 4:13 pm #2008896
    Yared Lee
    Participant

    Thank you DJ Vintage 🙂 You’ve certainly given me some good advice here. The main reason I was comparing those two models is because I was having a conversation with my best friend who’s a guitarist and he uses the Alesis, when I told him I want to get the Focusrite he said that the Alesis is cheaper and that I have a bad habit of liking to spend money(Which is admittedly true). Ill definitely head to an audio store and ask the opinions of the technicians there, but I just wanted to go armed with my own information to mark myself as someone who knows a bit about what they want so that some malicious employee doesn’t try and take advantage of me. You are right on the fact of alot of MIDI production devices working through USB nowadays, I was reading through some reviews on this site and I think the Novation LaunchKey is going to be my choice for my first controller (To add to my kit along-side my Mixtrack Pro II) because it has quite a bit of features thrown into a small package for a “keen price point” (to quote Phil hehehe) and it’s good for both production and performance. WHich fits with my DJ style because I DJ mainly EDM(Electro-House, Prog. House, DUbstep and Trap) as well as Reggae(Roots-Reggae and Dub), and both those genre’s have quite the reputation for life performance aspects with effects units, samples and the like. Is there anything else you could tell me about the LaunchKey? Could I map a Digital Delay(Echo sounding effect)/Reverb/HPF&LPF to the various knobs of the channels in order to go with my live dub-mixing?

    March 7, 2014 at 4:28 pm #2008902
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Sorry m8, you are getting outside my area of expertise now, so I’ll hand off to others on this forum to tell you more.

    One tip if you are into spending … have a look at the new Roland Aira. 😀

    Greetinx.

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