Hey Gavin,
a few questions again ..
1. Why dont you use the firewire card for your mackie? Does the Motu sound better to you?
2. Do you Eq on the Mixer or on the Macintosh? Or even completly no Eq's?
3. Do you hear any difference between cheap an expensive cables?
4. Saw a concert of Pocupine Tree on Tuesday .. i think it was recorded 2005/6 in Germany. I saw a white " oblong " Pad on your Bassdrum batterhead. What was this about?
Nice Greetings and thanks so much ,
B.
Maybe that I can answer a few of those questions.
Gavin doesn't use a firewirecard in his mackie because his mackie simply can't accept it. He has the "older" 8bus. The firewirecards only work in the Onyxseries (with the wonderful preamps. I can recommend these! They just sound awesome!)
A little sidenote: the firewire cards are produced by Echo Audio (who sell very good firewire interfaces like the audiofire series) and strangly enough not by mackie themselves, though they have some firewire soundcards too.
If I remember well, Gavin now uses the Apogee Rosetta 800 card to record his stuff. Mackie Onyx is pretty good but they can't beat the Apogee. Im not sure if he even has his motu in use.
I don't know about the EQ but I recall reading somewhere in this topic that he doesn't use EQ and compression much (but gavin has to clarify this)
The difference between cheap and expensive cables might not be audible in some occasions. I use a mix of them and never heared the difference myself but there are some benefits from using "expensive" cables instead of the cheap ones.
The cheap ones are build cheap which means lousy soldering work, lousy connectors (usually not neutrik), cheap wire with thin shielding. They might work fine but the expensive cables are just of much better quality. Thats what you pay for. They give you some sense of guaranty for perfect operation and performance. Cheap cables don't, so don't look strange if they blow it. Also, the use of those cables depends on the application. I use pretty cheap cables in my racks on stage, just because they are very short, hardly replugged (I connect everything on the inside of the rack, that's it. Just a stereo audio cable to the mixingdesk and a monitoring cable input, thats it. All others are fixed) and the chance that they break down, wear or give a bad signal is very small. For my keyboards and all the cables that I do reconnect on stage, I usually use better quality cables because they are more durable, give good signals over longer distances and because they are a bit thicker so that they can handle more (like people stepping on them, flightcases dropping on them, getting stucked between parts etc.)
if you are looking for good quality cables for "low" price, then just make your own. Get some neutrik connectors and good quality wire and solder your own. Most bands use custom cables, usually manufactured by the roadies.