New Model 24 Owner - Ableton and Skype

Dan On Drums

Active Member
Joined
Jun 23, 2019
Messages
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Website
www.allthedrums.com
Gear owned
Model 24, DR-40X
I picked up one of these because it ticked a lot of my check marks.
- Live Sound with ability to record said performance without a computer
- Project Studio recording with the ability to bounce to Ableton easily
- Enough tracks to make a good drum recording. I only have four mics now but will add more as I get comfortable. I used to record drum tracks for people through ProTools 10 years ago when I was playing lots of music.
- Ability to Skype while playing along to prerecorded tracks for the purpose of lessons and constructing/demonstrating drum parts.
- Easy method for getting good sound in video.

First impressions - It's nice enough. The feel of the faders and buttons are what you should expect from a relatively inexpensive unit given all of the features so they lack that nice solid feel of higher end equipment.

Currently I'm Working On: (Updated 6/29/19)

- PC Audio routes to Model 24 Channels 1 and 2. This would work better if it played out of combined channels 19/20 so I'm seeing if I can route this differently. If I can do this I can eliminate the physical cable from aux/monitor out to the PC/Skype.

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Features Successfully Implemented:

Skype where I send all signals (5 mics, ipod, computer/skype) to my in ear monitors and send everything but the PC to the end Skyper. USB connection sends computer to channels 1 and 2 so I route all signals except channels 1 and 2 to Aux/Monitor with a physical cable to the PC's Mic Input and then choose that microphone in Skype.

Tracking directly to Ableton through the Model 24 as preamps - I have Model 24 sending individual channels to my PC and am able to track individually in Ableton Live and send the monitor mix to my in ears which are plugged in to the Model 24. Push 2 also is sending the midi mix to the master out (which was surprisingly difficult to finally get to work).

Video - I made a drum cover video shown below. I sent the Mixer signal to the PC via USB and recorded live with OBS with a little compression and reverb on the sound output and it was pretty good. No post recording editing/mixing was done.

Equipment List:
- Drum Mics - 3 SM57's (1 snare, 2 overheads) Beta 52A on the kick
- Vocal Mic - AKG C520 Headphone Mic
- Westone UM Pro 20 In Ear Monitors
- Windows 10, I5 processor, 16gb of ram
- Ableton Live equipped with a Push 2
- GoPro Hero3 recording directly through OBS Studio (freeware)
- Tascam Model 24 (of course)
 
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Update - Tascam doesn't have any technical support. "Please reach out to your retailer"
I called Sweetwater and they are just shipping a new unit out and I'll send the old one back...
 
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21st Century Customer Service.
 
I think you'll be good-to-go, Dan!
 
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Got the replacement unit and all is working as anticipated. I updated my original post with the next things I'm sorting out as well as what I've resolved so far.

I have Ableton Live recognizing the individual channels on the Model 24 which is great.

Definitely a great unit for my use case. Getting this setup to handle Skype lessons will be tricky with the need to send all channels to myself (easy) but to send all channels minus the end users voice back to Skype. Perhaps I'm overthinking it but I imagine I'll need to use the monitor out and use the physical connection on Skype calls and bypass the USB style connection to the PC.
 
Dan, I use a small mixer with USB interface with Skype myself. Just use the 2-mix output of the console as the send to Skype. Unless you have some specific need to send the caller's audio into the console, you send it to your headphone or computer speaker output. There's no need to set up a mix minus unless you are setting up for a broadcast situation. Basically, you keep the speaker settings in Skype where they are, and you simply make the output of the console as your microphone source.
 
I'll be playing along to a drumless track from an iphone that I'll need to send to my in ear monitors and to the end Skype user so I do think I need to go the complicated route.

Shouldn't be too difficult to accomplish. A new cable to connect monitor output to a mic-in jack and then send all to that monitor except the Skype caller...

Thanks for helping me think this out. :)
 
Hi Dan. Now I understand what you want to do. If you send a feed to the Skype caller of the backing track separate from the live drums you're playing, you risk a latency delay issue, not to mention trying to balance different sources. I think using the iPhone as a playback device in the manner you described might be introducing extra complexity.

This is what I would try first, based on a long history of live streaming and professional radio remote broadcasts. It also has the benefit of not requiring you to buy anything new, as you now own a very sophisticated USB interface.

Set the console up like we would do in a broadcast situation where we do not want the caller's audio in the mix. You feed the caller an aux bus, while you monitor the stereo bus:

Set up Skype to take a console out USB channel as it's microphone input. Assign an aux bus to that channel, so everything on the aux bus goes to Skype. Take a single USB channel input to your console, and assign it to the output of Skype. So, the aux bus on your console goes to Skype's input, and Skype's output goes to a single fader on your console.

Assign the fader with the Skype signal to the stereo bus only.

Using another USB channel, assign the PCs audio bus to another input on your console. Assign that input to the stereo bus too.

(In this scenario, we have separated the caller's audio from the PC audio bus. This is because this scenario uses the PC as the backing track player. If you use an external device, then you can put the PC audio bus including the caller on a single fader as there is no need to play the PC audio bus to the caller.)

Use the PC to play the backing track along with your drum mix, and send the drum mix and the PC audio channel on the aux bus which will feed Skype.

You monitor the stereo bus and hear everything, in sync. The Skype caller hears verything too but the caller's audio is not on that mix.

Of course, you could use any external player that you wanted on its own input to the console. But the key is to have everything go through the console, and not separately to the caller somehow.

Simply stated: Aux to Skype. Skype to stereo. Monitor stereo.
 
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I may have to read that 10 more times to fully get it, or I think we may be close to on the same page. I'm not sure.

I feel like your post may be implying that I can assign/modify the USB channels logically in the PC and so far I have this assumption that the Model 24 only receives a signal from the USB/PC connection to channels 1 and 2 and sends the Main Output. At least that's all I can figure out at this point.

In Aux to Skype I think I just called it Monitor to Skype but I'm choosing to do this physically because I don't know/think I can also send to the AUX channel.
Where you say "skype to stereo" I think I just called it PC to Mixer where I use the USB/Model 24 connection to send the skype signal but I think the Model 24 forces you to use channels 1 and 2 for this, but I'm hopefully mistaken.
And in Monitor Stereo, I think we're also on the same page where I'm taking the signal from the mixer Main/Headphone out to my in-ears.

If that is true, then it just seems I'm doing a physical connection from aux to skype instead of using the USB and that's because I'm not sure how to assign the USB signal to different or multiple channels.

My lingo with all of this is really poor so that doesn't help. I'm very self taught.
I think I'll draw a diagram next. ;)
 
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I tested out my setup and just ran the Aux/Monitor out to my PC and chose that input in Skype and it worked great. I think I'm good to go.

If I can leverage the USB connection to send the Aux/Mon Output to a logical microphone in my PC that would be more slick for sure, but the physical cable method works just fine.

Definitely a cool unit. I tracked drums directly to Ableton today and also to the SD card and all works well.

I should be done tinkering and back to playing now. Woohoo!
 
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Hi Dan. I honestly don't know much about the Model 24, but whatever gets the job done! Glad to hear you have it working.
 
Forum question - Am I right that I can't edit posts that are a certain age? Seems my idea of keeping the first post in this thread up to date won't work out...
 
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Yes Dan, you are right. Once outside the window, it's etched in stone.
 
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Update - I've had a 2nd unit fail on me. Because it's beyond 30 days I have to send in for repair and be without it for weeks at the very least.

The reliability seems very sketchy and I'm overall quite bummed with the product. It's feature set is extensive and it quickly became critical in my workflow enabling the following:
- Drum lessons on skype
- Mixing and Recording gigs, rehearsals and auditions
- Mixing sound for youtube videos
- For sending multiple drums to DAW for making electronic music in Ableton Live
- Recording practice sessions to analyze playing

Being without it while they try and repair this unit is a major hit to my productivity. Also bummed that sweetwater won't make this right by doing a swap for a working unit.

I'm highly suspect of the quality of this unit.
 
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Dan, I'm surprised and sorry to hear that too. When my Tom Scholz Power Soak broke after a year, the store took it back and gave me a new one immediately. Tom had directed them to do that since he wanted failure data from the field. Perhaps complaining directly to Tascam would help.

You will probably end up getting a new one from the factory though. Too bad you have to wait.
 
Thanks for the tip. I'll reach out to them.
I don't mind waiting as this one is workable as long as I boot it up 60 minutes before I need to use it to get the monitors working properly, but being without for weeks would grind my workflow to a halt.
 
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