audio interfaces with more than two channels question

how many people are recording multiple synths into audio interfaces with multiple ins (4 or more) at the same time?

has it changed your music for the better?

I do, not sure if it has changed my music for the better but it has changed my mixing for the better.

EDIT: basically what Stickfigger said.

When I commit to recording live to stereo I usually come up with more unusual ideas but also things tend to be less focused and often don't sound as god (sometimes they sound better, but not always).  I like working both ways.

monomachine 6 mono ch out + machinedrum 6 mono ch out + octatrack 2 stereo ch out => roland studiocapture interface (16 input ch)

i like the flexibility later on in a daw! 
But i rarely us all of those outputs; i usually output 3 stereo ch from mnm, 1 stereo output from md and 1 stereo outputs from ot bc that’s usually enough

depends on your workflow really...

I'm sure professionals or people that know what they're doing are very happy with their multiple inputs and make good use of them.

For me I've found having multiple inputs leads to choice paralysis, overthinking and, probably as a result of that, worse mixes.

My mixer is currently being repaired so I'm reduced to sending the Eurorack into the Analog 4 and the Analog 4 into the Analog Rytm and then into a two channel USB interface. Nothing to tweak, just using Ableton as a tape recorder. And it sounds so much better ...

Yeah I've got a few noise makers I want to record at the same time...   

What's killing me is getting rid of the output expansion for my rs7000. It allows the machine to have six outs and it seems very hard to find and goes for stupid money right now.

I have an 8i/o interface and I combine this with a 24i/o out patchbay.  I also have adat on my interface connected to ES3/6 combo, which can double as straight audio i/o if I needed it to.  But the main reason I have things set up like this is easy inter connectivity between modular, other hardware synths and effects and DAW.  I don't usually record multiple instruments and if I do it is usually percussion.  The 2 main uses are i) it allows me to record dry and multitrack with any number of effects at the same time ii) setting up complex processing chains (e.g. software to hardware to software to hardware).  I also have an RME ADI2 FS converter attached via spdif which is significantly better quality than the converters in my interface, so the 'master' recording goes straight into that.  

I keep toying with the idea of getting an external mixer at which point I will probably upgrade to more ins and outs so I can do a multitracked mix, but I worry I am unnecessarily complicating things when in practice my system is fairly straightforward (connect anything to anything and then record single track to daw).   

it's cool to multitrack gear, but I prefer to mix on the fly and jam with a proper mixer. a midi-controller for controlling the mixer in my DAW while multitrack-recording can work in a smiliar fashion OK

Same, if I had the space and money for it I'd get a big mixer and go back to recording everything straight to stereo again, recording MIDI on the MPC and then mixing down live. To do what I want to do I'd need at least 32 channels though and that's not happening any time soon.

Other than that going back OTB wouldn't be too hard at this point, since the more I do ITB the fewer plugins I use - at this point I usually commit to everything except some panning and minor EQ and level changes during tracking anyhow, so it wouldn't take much to move that to a fully OTB setup.

No matter how low I get the latency in my setup I still can't get quite as good a performance when I'm overdubbing ITB as I can on a portastudio, or the 388 before I sold it. Even if the latency is too short to hear I still feel it, it's like trying to play in a band in a gymnasium where everyone is 20 feet away from everyone else, with no monitor system. You can do it, but it's going to be sloppy no matter what.

I have 8ins and I'll record as many as I'm using separately.  Either I'm gonna accidentally make a mistake that I can quickly copy/paste out on a track at a later date, but mainly I compose at home (which sounds like shit) and then mix later in the studio at work, so there's no fucking way I'm committing that down to stereo in a room that I know I can't trust.  I also have some gear that I like to later run through external gear and I want to be able to really push that without having to deal with elements in the signal that I don't want to touch.  I'm all for committing things down from a performance point of view, but fuck not being able to dig into bits from a mix point of view.  But I very much like to separate each process; Composition/recording.  Mix.  Master.

I have more than one external synth hooked up simultaneously, but I still mostly record on only one pair of inputs at the same time (unless I am layering things).

After I finish working on a project, I do like to have MIDI/audio for each track separately so I can always come back to modify details and re-record some parts.

Recently hard drive's been getting full, so I am considering moving back to MIDI only jams, and only recording finished tracks when I have cut and edited everything and the whole thing is not a 2h repeat of that one good loop which I can not get out of.

I never record more than one thing at a time, but it's just nice having all your shit hooked up and ready to go.

  On 1/6/2020 at 2:04 PM, Squee said:

I never record more than one thing at a time, but it's just nice having all your shit hooked up and ready to go.

This!

Yep that's the only thing I use it for too: Have the mic in 1, guitar in 2, turntable amp in 3&4

I've said this in a few posts, but as my gear has grown, so has my annoyance towards recording it.

I started with a mixer with 2 outputs, but soloing things drove me insane. I really can't be arsed to fire up my DAW and arm all my shit everytime I have a few seconds to muck about with my gear.

So now I run 8+ channels into my Zoom L-20 at all times, and use the auto-record feature. Basically arm my entire mixer, and anytime it makes a peep it records it to an SD card. Whenever I want, I just switch to USB mode and load my stems or masters into the computer to fuck with later.