I picked one of these up a few weeks ago for $250 bucks. I have to say it was the best purchase i've ever made. When i purchased it, all i wanted was a good multi-channel recording interface, so my project studio can record live drums. (Some people didn't like my set up with 2 rock band 2 drum kits and 2 cymbal expansions. I personally love it, and if they wanted their drum sounds i just recorded each drum individually and patched the samples in ableton's drum rack) But back to the point. This thing is amazing. The sound quality is great either recording vocals or instruments. The board is a little small but so is the space in my studio. I messed around with the "Room Acoustic Control", but i think it did more harm than good. The built in effects are alright, but who needs them with all of the vst options available. When i first started looking at this a while back, all i knew about it was that it was a 16 in 2 out audio usb audio interface, made for home recording, and made by fucking roland. So that's all i needed to know.
But when i got it home, and looked to make sure i had up to date drivers, and i found an amazing new update. With a few MIDI messages sent to the device, this thing became a full fledged midi controller. In one mode all of the knobs and buttons become midi controls, ideal for mastering or possibly a live dj show, but i haven't even started on that. Then in another mode, only the AUX knobs and buttons are midi. So i tag this up with my NanoKontrol, and when recording i have: volume, aux send 1 and 2, track arm, solo, and mute. I was thinking about buying another nano, and still might because they're so cheap, but now i have 3 digital knobs(well 1 fader) 3 and buttons on each channel, along with all of the analog controls on the m-16. And all of this with a very tiny table footprint.
The sound output level isn't extremely loud, but i think it will do for a live dj show. And the sound output quality is top notch. With all of the knobs on this thing, i think i could pull of a decent live setup with some more buttons/triggers. And i can hook up my headphones to the control room out, so no need for an external mixer at all. All of this is just a thought, i'm not sure how it will work for a live set, but i'm going to fool around with it today.
But yeah if anybody on here is in need of a good home recording set up, look no further. To think i almost dropped $800 on a zero-8.
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