[geezer]

Well I was rooting around in my barn today because I'm transferring all my gear into the new building my wife and I bought (her store is downstairs, and just opened, so I can start doing my rooms upstairs now). I discovered, and remembered, that I actually still have 2 of the 4 channel I/Os, plus the tabletop. Also, I got the tabletop with a used Krystal rig I bought, and it does interface with it just fine....The one I got supposedly had some sort of upgrade done to the converters, I think, but who knows. The 4 channel interfaces with Krystal, for sure.....I used it that way for years. The second 4 channel unit came with the third machine I had, but I just remembered that I sold the card to Geg Hopkins a while back....He did not want the I/O.

Wavelab (I'm currently using 5 and will get 6 soon) is a very quick transition from Medit, and, as I've said, is probably faster. The same kind of unlimited, non destructive, unfettered editing is the name of the game, with the addition of having full time, accurate waveforms to work with that even respond to the results of overlapping segments in a very useful way....The addition of the "track lanes" just ends up giving you another organizational tool and doesn't lay any of the limitations of a lot of the multitrack programs on you. Because of the tracks and the free overlapping on them, I usually end up with a lot less segments (called "clips" in Wavelab) stacked up to get a similar complexity that I would get in Medit....It is simply easier to stay organized in Wavelab......Wavelab's volume envelope is very nifty, too: you can create an unlimited number of adjustment points within a clip, and this is a lot easier and more fluid than Medit's similar function. I end up having to split clips less, and can create much more elegant crossfades between clips as well.....This all became more clear when I realized I could disable a lot of the automatic crossfading functions available in Wavelab and work in the more deliberate fashion I am used to.....The built-in CD mastering and burning program is way beyond Medit's, as well, and super easy to use.

Like all the other native programs, you don't get that instant 40db of gain that you get in Medit (only 6 db without processing), but this has not slowed me down any......All in all, it only took me a few days to become totally comfortable and fast in it while applying the same working methods I used in Medit. The transition was so easy that I really didn't learn a lot of the functions for a very long time.......As I have said before, the key was realizing that all the good action was in the "Audio Montage" area of the program, which the manual did not emphasize....Once I realized that that was the ticket, it was smooth sailing.

As far as the 16/24 bit and higher sampling rate thing: I can tell you that my CD masters these days that are mixed at 24 bits on a mixer that is fully 96k capable, whether I mix them at the higher sampling rate or not, are definitely better sounding than the stuff I was mixing and mastering before. The earlier stuff, though good sounding, sounds a little band-limited to me now....This extra range even translates down to the MP3s.....I will add, however, that things are sometimes tougher to control with this hugely dynamic and extended range medium....There are times I wish I was still mixing on the original O2R, even if the high end wasn't as pretty or extended....It was easier......I just hear everything now, and that sometimes leads to great anguish. The albums that sounded good on the O2R still sound good, so.....On the other hand, some of the work I have done has only started to sound really good when I have actually mixed it analogue in and out at 96k (using external converters to get it back down to 44.1). The DM2000 really kind of sounds like a big, expensive analogue console when you do this at times.....I never know what is going to sound best....I sort of hate having so many choices to make now.....This "all analogue, but digital" choice does seem to round off some of the extreme dynamic spikes, however, and make things easier for some projects.....It works differently for different recorders and different converters.....too many choices....

Although I own Audition (2.5?), I haven't really used it much.....similarly, I upgraded to Nuendo 3, but have really only used it to organize Pro Tools HD files for my MX2424s, which was pretty simple, intuitive and fast with 3 hours of 32 track studio recordings. I did have an interesting experience with N3 when I put those files together for the MXs: Nuendo converted them to 32bit, I think, which made them sound pretty odd on the MX.....I was able to just substitute the orignal PTHD 24bit BroadcastWave files into the appropriate folder, and all things were put right again......I've also mastered really good sounding albums recently that were recorded entirely in Cubase on a Mac laptop....Too much

Perhaps the most interesting piece of newer gear in my rig is the Alesis HD24XR....Cheap as dirt, simple as all get out, uses cheap IDE drives, but the converters on the XR sound pretty good (better than the standard unit)....I recorded my son's Death Metal band on it, and coming out of it analogue into the DM2000 at the normal (44.1) sample rate really kicked ass. I'm still kind of shocked, to tell you the truth. It's really funny how different sets of converters and recorders manage to sound......Interesting thing about this unit is that there is a Yahoo users' group where a third party donation-ware software interface has appeared that allows great, easy transfers of the proprietary file format into .wav or .aif into ye olde computer.....Although it is clear that there will never be any upgrades, there are tons of these things out there, and they work, and they are still making them.

Anyway, there sure is a lot to work with out there today.....and I'm still willing to get off my MTU stuff....make me an offer.

js