HELP! 01V-96 and Cubase VST 5 / 32 Comparison

[40immortal]

Hi,

I am currently using Cubase VST 5 / 32 with a MOTU 24i to do my production work. I am lacking the sheen in my mixes, I mainly use the standard eqs, compressors and gates that come with Cubase and sometimes use the waves renaissance compressor and waves paremetric eqs when I have the processing power available to me.

My mixes don't sound that great. Admittidly, I do not have much mastering experience (though I have been doing my own masters for the last three years, just not very well) but I would like to be able to have the equipment to do a nice pro mix at the end of the day. I was thinking about buying a Motu 2408mk2 with an 01V-96 with the extra ADAT board and use the sequencing of Cubase with the outputs going into the 01V-96 and I have some questions:

1. Will there be a major difference between the standard eqs, compressors and noise gates you get with Cubase and the 01V-96?
2. Should I be able to get good mixes from my existing setup and is the problem just me?
3. What are the other effects like on the 01V-96 compared to Cubase stuff?
4. What mastering stuff comes with the 01V-96? I heard you could buy a finalizer board for the original 01v, can you get that with the new one?
5. Should I be able to get decent sounding results with the 01V?

Thanks in advance

Manpreet

[Ted]

I guess I'll just answer your questions one by one:


1. Will there be a major difference between the standard eqs, compressors and noise gates you get with Cubase and the 01V-96?

Probably not a huge difference. They'll be different, but I can't say that one's necessarily "better" than the other.


2. Should I be able to get good mixes from my existing setup and is the problem just me?

You should be able to get good mixes with your existing setup...certainly experience matters more than just about anything else, but there are other factors that come into play as well. What kind of speakers are you using? How is your room treated? Where in your room do you have your system set up?


3. What are the other effects like on the 01V-96 compared to Cubase stuff?

They're fine, but with Cubase you have access to a huge variety of plugins...much more available than you can get for the O1V. The O1V may edge out Cubase in terms of reverbs, but you can add DSP cards from companies like TC Electronic and Universal Audio that will give you more processing ability and much better reverbs.


4. What mastering stuff comes with the 01V-96? I heard you could buy a finalizer board for the original 01v, can you get that with the new one?

You can't get a Finalizer board for the original O1V...that was only for the O2R. It was made by TC Electronic and was called the UnitY. You could use it as an M2000 or Finalizer in your mixer or both if you paid a little extra. You can get a card from Waves to use in your O1V that will give you some of their plugins, though (as well as 8 channels of ADAT I/O).


5. Should I be able to get decent sounding results with the 01V?

Sure...either one can give you great-sounding results. What's probably more important is what you work best with.

-Ted

[40immortal]

Thanks Ted for that informative response, if my bad mixes arent due to Cubase then you've probably saved me more than £2000.

I have a Samson Servo 260 amp with a pair of Spirit Absolute 2 monitors. The mix sounds beautiful on the Spirits when its running through the Motu. When I play it on my other sound card through the Spirits then it sounds really bad, the high and mids seem to disappear and there is A LOT more bass. It sounds really bad, all the energy has been lost! The same is true when I play it on other speakers.

[topsecret]

Originally posted by 40immortal
Thanks Ted for that informative response, if my bad mixes arent due to Cubase then you've probably saved me more than £2000.

I have a Samson Servo 260 amp with a pair of Spirit Absolute 2 monitors. The mix sounds beautiful on the Spirits when its running through the Motu. When I play it on my other sound card through the Spirits then it sounds really bad, the high and mids seem to disappear and there is A LOT more bass. It sounds really bad, all the energy has been lost! The same is true when I play it on other speakers.

I had a servo 240 + spirit 2 setup about 4 years ago and its not the most accurate monitoring setup . Invest in some nice active monitors and it should help a lot .