Studio Setup, Hardware configuration Options

[diablo]

Hi everyone

First of all let me just say thanks to all of u who participate in spreading your knowledge to newbies like myself, its appreciated.

Well basically I'm a pre-newbie who never even used a computer in the studio before. My setup has always been a Mpc2000, a Fantom keyboard, a old Alesis q6 keyboard, turntable and a digital hd recorder the roland vs1880. After months of shopping around and debating whether to go with pc or mac or to go with protools or cubase. I decided to jump in the deep end and two weeks ago took on the challenge of going with Logic Pro 7 with a G5 dual 2.0 w/180 gigs hd and additional 120 gig hd, 1.5 gig of ram and my interface is a motu 828 2.

And this is where I need your help configuring everything. So far I have managed to install the program install the drivers for the motu on the mac so it is being recognized. As u may know the motu only has 1 midi in and out, so I connected my mpc's first midi i/o to it as I'm planning on still using the mpc as the controller thru mtc(I know that logics sequencer may be better but I will look into that later, for now I just want to dump allot songs I have made already)
My fantom is going to slave off of the mpc's second midi i/o as a sound trigger. The thing is prior research told me that I could also use my old alesis as a midi controller for logics internal instruments which I'm very excited about. The thing is I've run out of midi connections.

Questions

1) Does any of the above make sense?

2) How do I implement the alesis as the software trigger with no availabe port I have left? It doesn't have a firewire connection either?

3) Should I daisy chain it thru the midi in between the mpc and motu?

4) If so how?

5) Am I right to believe that the only connection needed for my the G5 so it can receive everything including analog and midi, is a firewire connection in the back?

6) Taking into consideration my setup and what I'm trying to achieve did I get the right interface going with the motu 828 2?

7) The mpc takes up six of my analog inputs in the back of the motu seprating my samples, since ultimatley I want to track each sound to its own track in logic. Should I then also run my fantom trigger sounds out seperatly or is stero fine? I'm assuming I can seperate them later for fine tuning in logic

Btw I can hear all my analog inputs in the back of the motu and the mpc and fantom are talking just fine. Its just now getting those signals into logic and setting up my trigger for the internal instruments.

I thank you in advance for your feedback, just browsing the forums I have learned allot already. Eventhough everybody says I'm nuts for going straight to logic pro 7 as a newbie I'm trying not to be intimidated by the learning curve. The possibilities my new setup brings keeps me reading and playing around with it even though I haven't been able to be creative anything for two weeks...

Cheers,

D.

[coldharbour]

1) Does any of the above make sense?

Certainly.

2) How do I implement the alesis as the software trigger with no availabe port I have left?  It doesn't have a firewire connection either?
3) Should I daisy chain it thru the midi in between the mpc and motu?
4) If so how?

I suggest you dump all the sequence data from your MPC into Logic, and then start using Logic as your only sequencer (much more versatile then MPC) and use MPC as a sound module only.

After dumping the data, connect like this :

MOTU MIDI Out -> Alesis MIDI In
MOTU MIDI In -> Alesis MIDI Out
Alesis MIDI Thru -> MPC MIDI In

If you don't plan to use the internal sounds of Alesis - or if your Alesis does not have a MIDI Thru - you can connect MOTU MIDI Out straight to MPC MIDI In and have all 16 MIDI channels available for MPC.

If you're using the MIDI Thru option, just remember that Alesis and MPC share the 16 channels, so you must set them so that for example channels 1-15 are for MPC and channel 16 is for Alesis - or whatever you need.

Either way, you can control your MPC and all the Logic's instruments with your Alesis.

Eventhough everybody says I'm nuts for going straight to logic pro 7 as a newbie I'm trying not to be intimidated by the learning curve.

The learning curve really isn't that steep because you don't have to know more than the basics to efficiently use Logic. Setting up environment is a peace of cake and once you've done that, you're all set. And once you're all set, there's no limits with Logic Pro 7.

Hope this helps, and Good Luck.