What’s up guys. I’ve been making beats on the 2400 for a couple months or so, and I’m ready to get a bit more dialed in. I need your help.
I want to be able to sample 12 bit and I notice you cannot do so from the USB connection, only 16 bit. What cords do I need for the analog input? (I’m assuming this is how you get the 12bit sampling to work.)
Do I need a mixing board?? If so, which? I come from Maschine MK3 where I can mix samples and the entire beat on the software. Here, it is obv. very different. How am I able to mix the samples so I can layer sounds effectively?
2B. Or… does this require a bigger audio interface? Right now I operate on a tiny PreSonus Audiobox USB 96 with 2 mic inputs, 2 MIDI ins, 1 L and 1 R main out.
Sorry for the noob questions. But thank you for your help!
Teqnotic answered the first question perfectly: you can indeed sample 12 bit through the analog inputs, but resampling does the exact same thing without any cables. The dynamic filters can sound amazing but they can be very confusing as well, and don’t have anything to do withr 12 bit sound, so I would stay away from those until you’re completely comfortable with the routing on the machine.
As for your second question: do you mean to be able to mix your tracks in your daw/computer? You can mix tracks in the s2400 itself, but if you want to track out individual tracks in your daw you dont need a mixer or audio interface either, you can track out the tracks one by one by syncing your s2400 to your daw and recording each track in turn through your stereo input audio interface. An 8 input interface is quicker of course, but not necesary!
Firstly, do you have the DSP card? If you have access to the DSP Mixer window then you will probably do what you will with plugins. Without it you basically just have filters. Having come from Maschine as well, something to keep in mind there is no way you’ll have the same flexibility on the s2400 itself
Well there’s 8 faders for setting the level ( and envelope/pitch) for each sound, and 8 encoders to adjust filtering. This is more or less what an oldschool mixer provided.
If you want more fx you need to bounce to your daw!
If you have the DSP card, you’ll be awash in EQ plugins. If not, you need a mixing board or a way to dump your tracks into your DAW. You can set levels and filters with the 2400 out of the box, which can get you most of the way there, depending on what kind of stuff you make.
Alternately, you can dump your multitracks into a DAW over USB, but you won’t have access to the output filters. That may or may not matter to you.
As others have said, if you want to stick with sampling through USB, you can easily resample through the input filters in Classic mode. Note that if you use the 33@45 option for any melodic content, you should pitch it back down by 5.37 semitones so it’s easier to tune your samples if necessary.
If you want to use the analog outs on the 2400, you’ll need some kind of mixing board (or multichannel audio interface). I know Tascam makes a series of mixers that double as a standalone recorder, triple as an audio interface, and some of them can also serve as a simple control surface for your DAW. I’m sure other companies make similar items (off the top of my head, I’m pretty sure Soundcraft does), but the Tascam units are what I’m personally familiar with.
As an example, on my first tape (made with an MPC X), I used a Tascam Model 24 to track the eight outputs of the MPC into Reaper, and then I used the Model 24 to mix the recorded tracks to stereo (also in Reaper). Nowadays I have the eight outs of my S2400 running into a patchbay, and from there I can route the individual outputs to outboard effects on the way to my Tascam 388 eight-track recorder.