Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Making Music on the Surface Go Ep4 – Multi-track Audio Recording”.
Hello, I’m rapping Vincent and welcome to his sort of surface sessions and molten modular mashup, where I’m combining a couple of my my favorite things, modular synthesis and a really surface, and what I want to show very simply in this article is multitrack audio recording on the Surface go and how I actually accomplish that coming out of my modular, so modular and multi channels of audio going into the surface go. Is it capable of recording multitrack audio? That’S the kind of thing I’ve got going on and in this I’m going to be featuring. The steady state fate Newton, which is over here now this throws up a couple of questions. First of all, how do you get multitrack audio into the surface go, and how do you get multiple channels of audio out of your modular? Well, let me show you for the surface go. What you need is a multi-channel audio interface yeah. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but you’ll be amazed at how many people don’t really quite grasp this. So a USB device, a USB audio interface that has multiple inputs and outputs.
It doesn’t need the outputs, in this case we’re just looking for multiple inputs and as such. What I have here is the arterial audio fuse. This is the audio interface I’m using for the surface, go this plugs in via USB via a USB hub, because this has USB C in the side, and this is a regular, USB, a/b type, cable, Joby, that’s plugged into a little hub, which then goes into the Side of the surface go and the audio fuse by itself just provides the usual sort of stereo in and out sort of business, but via the magic digital cable. Here huh.
This gives me access to an additional eight inputs via eight at optical now. Ada optical is simply a digital audio connection that contains eight channels of audio. It used to be used in old ADAP machines, which were digital, recording machines that recorded to video tape. Would you believe, but that format, that digital audio format is still very much in use? Today and it’s that which enables the audio fuse to handle an additional eight channels of audio, but in order to do that, you need some kind of box which take the audio outputs of the modular and squeeze them down into that light. Pipe digital connection to go into the audio fuse, so some kind of box – you say yes, some kind of box, a converter, a row of mic preamps, often that then convert that into a doubt, optical for whatever audio interface. What device your written that to so before! All of this gets far too confusing. Let me bring you in closer and explain exactly what’s going on so as far as the surface go and the audio feeds are concerned, all it cares about. Is this cable? This is what comes out of our a DAC converter box, our mic preamp to a doubt box. It just comes out in a digital cable, which is a laser cable, optical, cable, you’ve seen the sort of thing – and it’s like this see that that kind of data is spilling out of that cable. Now all over the floor and it’s all over my hands now. Meanwhile, over here I have a whole load of cables disappearing off the desk and those are going to my aid out box. Let’S have a look down here so here here is my a doubt: box is in a nice little rack, racked up out of the way, and it has these inputs in the front eight channels, eight channels of analog audio, going in either microphone into these sorts of Sockets or online level into here and then you’ve got a gain knob to control the level of. What’S going in, that’s really very, very handy because the audio out of eurorack is often quite hot, quite loud and so having something with which to attenuates. That is a good thing.
This is called an ultra gain in digital or an ad 8/8 200. It’S a piece of behringer gear, it does the job, and I have individual channels of audio from my modular on this bunch of cables going into individual channels. Those are then sent over that digital cable has eight separate channels arriving at the surface, go where I can record them.
So how do I get the audio out of this mess and mess of eurorack into the converter to go to the surface? Go while I’m using this magical module called mute on here I mean you, don’t need this to do it, but this actually makes it stunningly easy. I mean previously before I’ve been taking outputs from the odd VCA from here the output of something else and routing that through. But what the mute on does.
This gives me not only a great performance at all, because I can mute channels in and out, which is what these big buttons do, but I can kind of use it as a stage for outputs to go somewhere else. This has eight channels of it is essentially a channel VCA, a voltage, controlled amplifier and for each channel. I have a mute button, so I can turn different things on and off very very easily. Each one also has a CV input, so I can control the level if I want to either using an envelope into it or just a control voltage level in order to balance things out a bit right and then they all have individual outputs and it’s these outputs That I’m using to route out to the ADAC converter now normally when I’m using my modular, I’m going through an output unit over here. So I end up mixing everything kind of internally and everything ends up eventually just going through here. This also has a send for effects now, as I’m sending everything out individually, I’m not rooting through any effects at all.
So all of this is coming out very clean, so the recording I’ll do on the surface, go isn’t exactly as it would be. If I was performing live with this, because some of those effects like reverb, for instance, are missing, but once I’ve recorded it into the surface, go then I’ll be able to apply a little bit of mixing little bit reverb delay and balancing levels of panning, and that Kind of control, afterwards, in my recording software, I mean one of the things: if you’re a rack, is that there’s an interest or an excitement about recording it, just as it happens just getting in there performing the piece having it recorded and then it’s done. However, using a door over here that’ll give us a whole load of sort of post-production and mixing possibilities that perhaps will just elevate it to be that little bit better than it is straight from here.
Simply because I don’t have the equipment in my euro rack to really produce a full releasable mix. What I do – and I don’t I mean those things so unbelievable objects – how long as a piece of string kind of questions, but ultimately my recording software on the surface. Go is going to allow me to do a bit of mixing and a bit of effects adding so I’m gon na do that, because some of that will be missing because I’m recording individual channels out of my eurorack hope.
That makes sense. So, although there are eight channels in the mute on, I only actually have six that I want to use now. This cable is really annoyingly in the way.
When I put that somewhere else perfect now I have access to all of these eight channels. So let me turn these on and off and show you what happens on this go. I hope that it’s demonstration enough to show that the surface go is completely capable of recording that level of audio all at once.
Its internal drive not using any sort of external drive, I’m just using whatever the surface go happens to have built into it. So I have the two HP pluck coming through on this channel and you can see over on the surface. Go there we’re getting a level indication here on a doubt number one, then the next channel should be bass coming up an ad at channel 2. Then number three is: is the sto the output from the sto? Then I’ve got the sub out from the sto Channel. Four Channel five I’ve got a bit of picture coming out of the Erica since picot drums, and then I’ve got some noise coming out of desimilus, so that is six channels of a they’re all being monitored. They’Re coming out of my modular now, as you can hear, that sounds flippin amazing well from P P. So what we’re actually seeing there is the audio fuse control panel and the monitoring that it uses through its own software. But what we’re interested in is going to be bit weak and how that feels about it so set up eight channels within bit week to record directly to the timeline and the plan is going to be that we turn all the leads on and seem about.
Six channels, they’re recording, should just be able to hit record so down in so here. I’Ve just recorded six channels, well actually eight channels, because I had these other two channels activated, which didn’t need to be funnily enough, and then we can play that back. But more interestingly, what I will do is perform for about 10 minutes on the modular record that directly intimate week. Then maybe do that again made me.
Do that again a couple of times I don’t know in order to capture some kind of performance and then I can mix it and edit it on the surface. Go that’s the plan, that’s what we’re trying to do here. So an answer to the question: can the surface go cope with multi-channel recording of audio? The answer is absolutely yes. No problem at all hasn’t even thought about it, not a problem, and I can similarly add a reverb and do a little bit of mixing and that kind of thing without it really batting an eyelid.
So that’s good to know how many channels of audio can it do? Oh wow, you know whatever all I can do is do a demonstration of something that can do and then you know you have to see for yourself whether that’s an indication of how it can work in your situation or your environment, because I don’t know I just Do stuff put it out there right now, I’m gon na get on and start recording this for real this time in here and perform it and tweak it, and that kind of thing and I’m gon na release a video. I hope of the performance of that that I do and the finished mixed recording so look out for that and look out for some more surface go videos coming very soon as I’m getting stuck back into it again now, along with more videos on the surface pro Six more videos on modular, more videos are all sorts agrees, our technology and wonderful, wonderful things. So I hope that was helpful. Word in the meantime go make some tunes zero .