MACKIE D8B and HDR RECORDER an option for a studio ?? its worth checking out.

[funkgod]

Was just reading nail soups post about needing more ram which prompted me to do this post

 

just in case anyone is interested.....

this is more about showing you what old tec can and cant do, and bring it to peoples attention as it seems not allot of people know about it, or forgotten about it, maybe on purpose haha,  each to their own and all that.

 

There is a system you can get quite cheapish now ( for what you are getting)  which i have been using for 20+years, never crashes,

it is old, but, still to this day its just amazing, i still don't think there is anything out there quite like it.

 

 

For example, if i said there was a mixer and recorder system out there that can.......

record 24 tracks at 24bit 44/96 at the same time all day and never crash ( in 20 years!)

full on screen editing like cubase only easier

the desk is 72 channels 8 bus 12 aux out and 12 aux internal with a mastering section every track has its own compressor gate, and range of EQs with full automation going through the desk into the recorder and back out from the recorder back to the desk

and have top quality plugins running like.....

Massenberg EQ

drawmer ADX dynamics

TC reverbs

Mackie Reverbs and delays and FX

Mackie vocal correction suit

Antares autotune

acuma final mix, mastering ( now owned by Trackion mastermix but not as good)

Stereo and mono Delays

RTA 31 graphics

5.1 cinema surround sound

+ a load more

 

 

the desk is fully automated and i mean everything, in real time

and records to the recorder 24 tracks via light pipe ( adat)

The recorder, each track has 8 virtual tracks for other takes, thats 8x24 = 192 tracks for one song all on the screen at the same time, if wanted !

Also if wanted the desk can control your DAW be it cubase, logic,  protools etc, with everything right in front of you on a desk,

And everything listed above running ALL AT THE SAME TIME ! with no crashing, drivers or windows in sight,

and all that runs with only...

wait for it.......

 

256mb ram

a 333mhz intel pent  processor

120g and 32g hard drives

the whole O/S on 3 floppy discs.

 

Would you believe it ???

 

Probably not,

yet this was available toward the end of the 90s ! yep, even then, all that was available,  no idea how mackie did it, but, it is a great feat of electrical engineering even by today's standards

 

The desk Is the Mackie D8B

the recorder is the Mackie HDR 24

youtube them

 

I run one D8B with two HDR recorders running into it, recording 48 tracks of wide open full bandwidth WAVS

and i think it sounds great, with more than enough tools to use to get most jobs done ready for release.

 

All sounds great and to be fair it still is,  but... by todays standards there are a few draw backs. if they bother you, but nothing to do with the quality of the recording or wav stamping.

1, the recorder is like a digital tape recorder, you can not slow it down or speed it up, its set, you can alter the BPM but

only as a time frame at the top for the markers, so the transport wont slow or speed up, this never once bothered me as all my songs start at a set BPM anyway and im happy with that.

 

2, on the recorder you cant flip wavs backward, or time stretch wavs, again iv never needed them, but would be nice to try,

3 on the recorder you can not create more tracks, they are set at 24 with 8 virtual tracks per track, so enough for the most.

4 if you want to take the wav files or songs from the recorder to your daw, or bouncing wavs or tracks over to your daw, you need to use a FTP link to your pc using an ip address, which i use all the time and find it no problem once set up, or you can just inport the wavs from the hard drive or just play them in to your daw via spdif out as there is no USB connection. or just backup to the caddy drive and use that drive in a one of them drive bays that usb connect to your pc or laptop, easy really.

 

When these when came out they were...

the desk about £15k + depending which plugins and options, Review here..https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/mackie-d8b

The recorder about £5k all in review here...https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/mackie-hdr2496

 

So thats about £20.000.00 of usable stuff you can get today for !

about 700 if you scoot around, a great deal i think if your into this type of stuff.

anyway, i just thought i would throw this out there, it could be an option for you if you wanted to look at something else.

i know at least one other basschat member that is still using them,

anyone else ?

or if you want to know more, ask away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by funkgod

[BigRedX]

If this works for you good.

 

Just remember that £700 is still a lot of money when Reaper is essentially free and nearly everyone already has a computer for other tasks.

 

The age of the technology means that when part of this system dies it will probably be unrepairable (or if it is still fixable it won't be worth the cost).

 

No support for plug-in instruments, which means if you want synths and samplers you'll need to buy more hardware and if you want to sequence them via MIDI you'll still need a computer to do that.

 

Personally I'd not want to rely on anything that requires floppy disks in this day and age, more out-of-date technology that is becoming increasingly hard to fix should it go wrong.

[funkgod]

agreed there is all that, , and also to add to that there is no midi recording either, there is midi sync but thats about it.

its more about bringing it to peoples attention and giving a bit of insight into it as old tec,

but i think as all old gear, its still very usable and sounds good, like all gear while it lasts.

the small floppy disc thing was just to show how small the O/S program is, you can you usb emulators in place of course.

and change the hard drives for flash cards if wanted,

i hope it does not clap out on me as my work flow around it is almost a pleasure to use and iv got a good grasp how to use it which it would take me ages to learn another system or software as good, but i do have another one just incase. loads of studios now using them as software daw controllers so also quite adaptable,

here you go

 

 

Edited July 8, 2022 by funkgod

[Skin Lewis]

Yep, still using this setup after 22 years trouble free. Helped me earn a good living. Mine replaced a Neve 51 with a 2" 16 track tape machine. Rather than plug ins, I mainly use outboard for signal processing along with the onboard dynamics and eqs. The automation and editing is still class leading to this day.

 

12 hours ago, funkgod said:

on the recorder you cant flip wavs backward

 

I got round this by using the jog/shuttle feature: reverse the track using this, fly it into the Masterlink in real time, fly it back in.

 

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

The age of the technology means that when part of this system dies it will probably be unrepairable (or if it is still fixable it won't be worth the cost).

 

There's a healthy supply of cheap parts for this system on eBay, and the brain is basically an IBM 486. I've had no failures of any parts in 22 years, it was very well built in USA from good materials. 

 

 

[funkgod]

46 minutes ago, Skin Lewis said:

There's a healthy supply of cheap parts for this system on eBay, and the brain is basically an IBM 486. I've had no failures of any parts in 22 years, it was very well built in USA from good materials. 

 

there is indeed and a great forum you can down load anything from the database with very good back up from boffins and designers some that worked on them at mackie

http://www.d8bforum.com/phpBB3/index.php

 

just looking at your rack ( if you will excuse the pun 🙂) im a bit of a rack junkie, what you using there ?

 

i also have a rack but im getting sick if squeezing round the back to connect things up, so iv just about finished making one of these...

 

 

so i can hard wire everything with patchbays on one side, will send photo when installed, at the mo its this....

 

Edited July 8, 2022 by funkgod

[VTypeV4]

We had this very setup at college back in 2000 / 2001 - it replaced an A&H GS3/V and a 16-track, half-inch tape machine. The only addition to the we had to the Mackie setup there was a TC Finalizer which was usually inserted at the end of the chain via the mini patch bay. I always thought it was ok - it certainly seemed capable and stable although as a teenager who was more interested in being the next Marcus / Stanley / Mark (etc!), I only ever really used it when I really needed to.

 

Today, as someone who regularly uses Yamaha 02Rs (with TC Electronic cards) of the same era, this old stuff still can sound awesome in the right hands and very much capable of running with modern systems - as we all know, it's usually the operator that makes the difference!  

[WINETREE]

Anybody have working copies of the 3 1'2" floppy disks 1 & 2 for ver 1.4 with big disk Operating system to boot up my HDR.

My copies don't work and can't convert files from Mackie.

[Skin Lewis]

7 hours ago, WINETREE said:

Anybody have working copies of the 3 1'2" floppy disks 1 & 2 for ver 1.4 with big disk Operating system to boot up my HDR.

My copies don't work and can't convert files from Mackie.

 

I have spare copies of 1.4 you can have. Whether they're still working I have no idea. PM me.

[countryjack]

I've been running an D8B/HDR setup for nearly 25 years, but I've never attempted to get 2 HDRs into one D8B. How's it done?

[funkgod]

On 18/05/2023 at 04:17, WINETREE said:

Anybody have working copies of the 3 1'2" floppy disks 1 & 2 for ver 1.4 with big disk Operating system to boot up my HDR.

My copies don't work and can't convert files from Mackie.

 I can do you a drive with the software on just swap the drive and your good to go. or if you just want the files from the drive, you can put the drive in a drive bay connected to your PC/laptop and just copy and past the song files with the WAVS in, but dont for get if you then say put them into cubase all files will start at the begining, so any edits/cuts you did in ther hdr will all be seen by cubase as a new seperate file, so only use that if the files have been rendered or whole in the HDR.

 

 

On 07/06/2023 at 10:07, countryjack said:

I've been running an D8B/HDR setup for nearly 25 years, but I've never attempted to get 2 HDRs into one D8B. How's it done?

 

easyer than you think 🙂

i have 1 HDR connected via ADAT (light pipe) to the normal faderbank 2 ( tape in ) and have another HDR with two analog in/out cards and one adat card ( or you could use the AES/EBU card) the 16 analog outs from the HDR goes to fader bank 1 ( mic/line track) fron chans 9 to 24. theres 16 tracks and the other adat card ( or aes/ebu) in out goes to the spare alt slot on the d8b, which come in on faderbank 3 ( effects ) from chans 17 to 24, this gives you the other 8 tracks  🙂 this then gives you with the other HDR 48 tracks into the desk  with 40 compressors and 40 gates and 40 dynamic EQs,  all 40 tracks are also automated along with the EQs and fx.

how cool is that ?

 

all that is clocked by the D8B as master you will need the apogee clock card installed in the D8B.

 

if you have a home studio like me you never need all 24 chans on faderbank 1 (ins) anyway so you may as well use 16 of them with another hdr, leaving you still 8 ( 1 to8) as your main ins for your instruments, pleanty enough.

 

and it gets better because your only using the 16 analog outs from your hdr the other spare 16 analog ins into the hdr you can connect these to any other preamp, mixers you want. if you want to get into the HDR2 from the d8b you can just go through any of the 8 chans on the alt card and then when you have recorded a track on it,on the hdr screen just move it to any track you want, you can also bounce tracks between the two hdr, and also network them together.

 

Alot to think about there, but its really easy, iv been running it this way for getting on 20 years and never a problem, and sounds great, check out the 4 tracks just released, all done on the D8B.

if you need any help just shout, and again if you need another HDR to get it to 48 tracks just pm me, cheers

Edited July 23, 2023 by funkgod