No ALT Monitor support for Console 2 FW

DJ Hellfire

Established Member
I hate to sound so ungrateful in light of the huge update we just got but damn! I can't shake the huge feeling of disappointment with Console 2 for FW. I feel like I waited a year and a half in excitement for nothing and have to continue fiddling with workarounds.

With all of the groundbreaking things the Apollo can do and all of the routing it can do, I just find it extremely hard to understand how something that seems so simple as re-routing monitor audio to another pair of outputs via the software is completely impossible on FW. It just makes absolutely no sense to me how something like this is tied to a specific connection type on the SAME DEVICE.

This whole crippling of the FW protocol just feels like they are trying to kill the firewire line and force everyone to TB. This wouldn't be a big deal if replacing our cheese graters with a new comparable Mac Pro wasn't a minimum of a $4000 plus tax upgrade, which is not a worthy investment JUST to have Alt Mon.

As if the nearly 2 YEAR delay for Console 2 isn't enough in itself, to be missing such a major feature just because of your connection type is absurd. Soooo frustrating! This feels worse than finding out that Halle Berry is really a man!

Just venting!

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DJ Hellfire

Established Member
ah,, you know Halle just ditched her sf and bought a bf: she too had issues:)
Stop trying to cheer me up. I'm trying to be depressed here! :p
 

shimel

Venerated Member
Hey DJ
Sorry for you but did you already tried this :
open settings in console 2
choose hardware menu
select 2 in alt count

hope that helps ;)
 

DJ Hellfire

Established Member
Hey DJ
Sorry for you but did you already tried this :
open settings in console 2
choose hardware menu
select 2 in alt count

hope that helps ;)
They completely omitted that functionality in the FW version. The setting isn't there. Smh!
 

DJ Hellfire

Established Member

DJ Hellfire

Established Member
She asked for your cell ? :)
Don't have one any more. Had to sell my iPhone 7 to start saving up for a new Mac Pro and a TB expansion card! :mad:
 
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Kcatthedog

Hall of Fame Member
Think of all the dough you are saving on needless cell charges :)

So is a used dbox out of the question if you are on FW ?
 

DJ Hellfire

Established Member
Think of all the dough you are saving on needless cell charges :)

So is a used dbox out of the question if you are on FW ?
I thought about that but not really trying to expand my gear anymore at the moment. If anything I want to add some more pieces to my 500 rack.
 

Kcatthedog

Hall of Fame Member
Your call. I used to have one and honestly the quality of the monitoring, post the dbox da far surpasses both the sf and bf apollo, 3 sets of monitors as you can drive speakers from the headphone amp it is that strong, plus summing.
 
This is disappointing. I liked the old Console just fine, the only thing better about 2.0 was Alt monitors.

Thing is, by sending all strips to an AUX and routing that AUX to another pair of outputs, you effectively have another pair of monitor outs, which is what i'm doing now.
It's just an annoying inconvenience to have to mute the mains, then turn up the AUX fader in console to swap monitors.
Surely they could just reconfigure the interface to do this.

If I can do it manually using an AUX (and too many mouse clicks), I don't see why the Console software can't just do that for me under the guise of 'alt monitor'

If it really is a resource limitation, I for one would happily sacrifice one of the AUXs for an Alt monitor, if that meant the AUX is effective repurposed..
Does anyone really actually use both AUX's for purposes other than monitoring anyway?
 
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Matt Marantz

Active Member
Hey guys,

Yes it is a drag there's no alto mon button for FW Console but if you want a significant upgrade in monitoring quality & also the ability to switch between two sets of monitors with the touch of one button on your desktop, get one of these! I bought one on the recommendation of a pro mastering engineer friend of mine and I couldn't be happier with it.

After working with the SF FW Apollo on a bunch of different projects during the 3 years I've had it, I slowly realized that the DAC in it wasn't exactly world class. It's very good, but it's not a Lavry or a Dangerous Convert 2. I didn't really have the money for a Lavry or a Converrt 2 and those are also overkill for my needs.

I also really needed a small portable and much more high quality DAC for live performance because I have switched all my live perf synthesizers over to software and all I had was a cheap crappy interface to play out of...

Enter the Dangerous Source. The quality of the DAC in this thing is unreal. It sounds so clear and warm and defined. I can hear so much more than monitoring out of the SF Apollo. I bought it from a place with a return policy just in case I didn't like it but it stayed.

It's another $900 but I don't desire to buy any other DAC at this point. You get 2 selectable speaker sources and I am monitoring through the SPDIF cable which is plugged into the back of the Apollo. So you still select UA Apollo from the sound source menus on your Apollo, but the monitor cables are plugged into the Dangerous Source and when you press the SPDIF button on the Source your audio is passed digitally from UA Apollo thru the Source DAC.

Just my $0.02.

Matt
 

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