I own a midiman delta 44 but I'm not very satisfied with it. I have the possibility to swap it with another one and I was thinking about to get a Mia or a Luna II. What Luna gives me more than Mia? Are the DSP effect and the mixer much better than the ones that are in Cubase? How about the sound quality? Are the midi port OK?
Are there some compatibility issues? I have an Abit TH7 II with 512MB rambus and a P4A 1600
Thanks for any suggestion.
Davide
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: eriksatie on 2002-05-24 14:16 ]</font>
thinking about buying a Luna II
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blazesboylan
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Hi Davide.On 2002-05-24 14:14, eriksatie wrote:
I own a midiman delta 44 but I'm not very satisfied with it. I have the possibility to swap it with another one and I was thinking about to get a Mia or a Luna II. What Luna gives me more than Mia? Are the DSP effect and the mixer much better than the ones that are in Cubase? How about the sound quality? Are the midi port OK?
Are there some compatibility issues? I have an Abit TH7 II with 512MB rambus and a P4A 1600
Thanks for any suggestion.
Davide
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: eriksatie on 2002-05-24 14:16 ]</font>
For the technical questions (compatibility etc) I would go to Creamware support -- they were very helpful for me when I was looking into buying my Luna II. (Still, I can't imagine a machine with those specs having any problem at all... I run on an 850MHz AMD-6.)
I've been using Luna II for a little more than a year now and am planning to add all kinds of expansion boards in the near future because I love it so much. I've been using it to record 10 tracks of live music plus 6 tracks of software-generated (loops, samples etc) music simultaneously, sometimes for 3 hours non-stop, and have never had any crashes caused by the CW software. I'm *very* happy with Luna II.
The routing possibilities are what I use most. I haven't done much with the builtin effects except for compression and reverb. I find them both easy to use and they sound good for plugins. I use Sonic Foundry software so can't compare to Cubase, but the effects do compare favourably to Vegas & SoundForge. The main advantage is that they don't use any CPU cycles -- as much as I love Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror, it is a CPU hog. If someone can reproduce that on the SHARC DSPs I will be forever indebted!
I've never used the Mia, but my impression based on the website is:
- Mia gives you 2 balanced ins, 2 balanced outs, SPDIF, and 1 DSP
- Luna II gives you 2 ins, 2 outs, SPDIF, MIDI in, MIDI out, 3 DSPs, and the option to expand to up to 24 more ins + 24 more outs, and / or add 6 or 15 more DSPs, plus add all kinds of Creamware and 3rd party plugins.
I don't know offhand whether the builtin Luna IOs are balanced or unbalanced. The Luna DSP expansion breakout box (8 ins and 8 outs) is unbalanced; the A-16 expansion breakout box (16 ins and 16 outs) is balanced. Sound quality in the base card analog I/Os and in the breakout box are superb.
I've done some MIDI routing with the Luna II and had no problems with it. I like the fact that there is a MIDI monitor for troubleshooting (you see every message as it comes into / out of the system). And also the fact that a single MIDI input can be routed to any number of software programs, or merged with a software-generated MIDI track, etc. The power of the Creamware routing system is impressive.
Anyway I highly recommend the Luna II. For $333 USD you get a great soundcard; or go for the Recording Bundles offered on Creamware's site right now and you get lots of inputs!
(No, I ain't affiliated with CW, I'm just a die-hard convert of their religion!
)Hope this helps Davide,
Johann Tienhaara
jtienhaara@yahoo.com