Quote Originally Posted by Jinsai View Post
oooh, @Leviathant , you got a Big Six? I was really thinking about getting that.
I had milked my M-Audio Projectmix IO for as long as I could, because I couldn't find anything quite like it, and certainly not for the price point. But it was Firewire, the drivers hadn't been updated since AVID bought M-Audio in 2004. It was honestly impressive that a Windows 10 machine, nearly 20 years later, could still operate the hardware. During the pandemic, I picked up a Focusrite SaffirePro 40 as an inexpensive expander for the ProjectMix. There was a notable improvement in sound quality... so I picked a second one up, and got rid of the ProjectMix. I'd been making do with 8 ins and 4 outs for a very long time, and suddenly I had 16 ins and 16 outs, appearing as a single unit. There was also a hot-rodded Sound Workshop 1280b that I was using as a set of 8 console channels for EQ and color. I hooked it all up through my patch bays so I could route outputs to inputs and all kinds of goodness, but like the ProjectMix, these were Firewire devices, getting the software running on Windows required some weird hacks. It was incredible bang for the buck, but I was still operating on a short runway.

Last year, I did some big upgrades, in the name of simplification and modernization. B&H had a pretty fantastic deal on an M1 Max Macbook Pro (64gb of RAM!), and before the price drop here in the US made all things more or less equal, I was able to pick up the Big Six for about $2600 by importing from Thomann. And at the last half of the year, I got an Apple Studio Display.

So, just looking at audio and video, I went from a Dell Desktop with dual Firewire cables into two Saffire Pro 40s and a 12-channel outboard console, with all the cable snakes between them (including a snake from the console to the optional 8 VU meter attachment), power cable for the PC, weird dual DVI cable to the monitor with its own power cable to...

110v Power -> Apple Studio Display --USB--> M1 Macbook --USB--> SSL Big Six (the patch bay is where we finally start to break out into separate cables)

I think I've got 15 inputs running on the Big Six (it's such a weird name for the device). The hybrid workflow is just killer - you can route DAW channels back out through the console channels, good for running VST instruments through outboard FX, or re-amping stuff you've recorded. I could do that with the PreSonus stuff but it required two extra 8-channel 1/4" snakes and manually patching stuff - it's just a button press on the Big Six. The preamps, EQ, channel comps & bus comp are great, too, and it's portable enough that if I ever was in a situation where I wanted a nice multitrack recording somewhere, I could very easily drag it with me.

It's just incredible value for the money.