One of the (unintended) benefits of Luna at this early stage is that it doesn’t suffer from “too many features.” Also the UI is design is geared toward people who are familiar with and/or enjoy the workflow of a traditional mixing console. Most DAWs such as Ableton and Logic do have a channel strip/mixer view with faders, etc.
If you’re interested in digital tape emulation, I don’t know of any that are better than the UAD stuff. But I’ve only used those and the Waves J37, which is also nice.
If you wanted to multi-track more than 2 channels simultaneously in Luna**, there are several options.
Luna Multi-track Solutions
- An Apollo interface with multiple hardware inputs (Apollo x4 / x6 / x8 / x8p)
- Apollo Twin X connected to another interface or preamp box via Optical In aka ADAT Lightpipe
- Optical is limited to 48 kHz unless the receiving interface is S/MUX compatible, which accommodates “4 channels at up to 96 kHz, or two channels at up to 192 kHz, on one optical cable.”
- Apollo x16 connected to a mixer/preamp box via D-Sub 25 or Optical/ADAT
** The same applies to any DAW, but Luna requires a Thunderbolt-equipped Universal Audio Apollo interface and at present is only compatible with macOS 10.15 Catalina. Apollo Thunderbolt interfaces can be daisy chained to achieve more than 16 simultaneous input channels.
Otherwise, you can add inputs with something like a Focusrite OctoPre connected to an interface with Optical inputs. Just be aware of that 18 channel cap on combined analog/optical inputs, and a single optical cable only handles up to 8 channels (at 48 kHz). Some interfaces only have 1 optical input while others have 2.
If you have more than one audio interface (Apollo and/or other), you can create what is known as an Aggregate Audio Device. The cheapest possible way to record real time multi-tracking in Luna is to combine an Apollo Solo ($499/£449) with another multi-channel interface, assuming you already own one, as an Aggregate Device. However, only the Apollo’s inputs can function as UAD Unison preamps.
Yes, you can track a mono channel or stereo pair 1 or 2 channels at a time. This is what I currently do with my Apollo Twin 2 input interface. However if recording external gear running at it’s own tempo, you will have to solve the issue of clock sync to take advantage of features like non-linear editing (on the grid), flex time/warp, etc.
The clock of any DAW can be slaved to an external device via MIDI. Conversely, you can sync your hardware to the DAW’s clock, but I would use the S2400 as Master clock to ensure solid timing when recording it. After the externally clocked device is recorded, you can play in any MIDI, electro-acoustic, or software instruments to the beat you’ve recorded.
The other option is just ignore the DAW clock all together, sync whatever you need to the S2400/external clock, track separately and play along to your own rhythm or the rhythm of a pre-recorded track. In that case you really are just treating a DAW as digital tape. But yeah, tracking separately is usually the way to go if you have large track counts and you are not creating a sub mix on an analog mixer going into the interface.
Sorry everyone, this thread has now gone off topic.