Monitoring off an Analog Console in Luna with SonarWorks

[andersmv]

I’ve been messing around with Luna again lately, I’m exclusively a ProTools user. I would like to start tracking with Luna so I can avoid having the Console app running in the background. It would make punch ins and routing with my real API Console a lot easier as well.

During tracking, I want to send things out to faders on my API Console so I can group things like guitars and drums easier. The biggest issue is that I would like to monitor everything with SonarWorks room correction on for myself in the control room. When I set this up in ProTools, I send the main outputs of the API Console to a pair of inputs on my Apollo and set up a stereo track in the background that’s record enabled. I put SonarWorks on that channel, that way I can mess around with levels and stuff on my analog console as we track, and everything coming out of the console is heard by me in the control room with room correction on.

With the way input arming works in Luna, I just don’t see a way to make this work. Am I wrong in thinking this is going to be impossible? Kind of frustrating this isn’t something you can manually “turn off” on a channel by channel basis. I just want to monitor the input with a 0 latency plugin, but doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to make this work…

Pretty frustrating. I can’t send multiple channels to a single output in the Console app (still don’t understand why this is still a limitation, would be nice to sent all my drums to a pair of faders on the analog console). It doesn’t look like there’s any way to get SonarWorks working with Luna while record or input enabled. Just a few small things limiting me from giving Luna a fair shot, but still a deal breaker. I’ll keep waiting!

 

[Nyoak34]

You are correct.

 

[Quint]

I’ve been messing around with Luna again lately, I’m exclusively a ProTools user. I would like to start tracking with Luna so I can avoid having the Console app running in the background. It would make punch ins and routing with my real API Console a lot easier as well.

During tracking, I want to send things out to faders on my API Console so I can group things like guitars and drums easier. The biggest issue is that I would like to monitor everything with SonarWorks room correction on for myself in the control room. When I set this up in ProTools, I send the main outputs of the API Console to a pair of inputs on my Apollo and set up a stereo track in the background that’s record enabled. I put SonarWorks on that channel, that way I can mess around with levels and stuff on my analog console as we track, and everything coming out of the console is heard by me in the control room with room correction on.

With the way input arming works in Luna, I just don’t see a way to make this work. Am I wrong in thinking this is going to be impossible? Kind of frustrating this isn’t something you can manually “turn off” on a channel by channel basis. I just want to monitor the input with a 0 latency plugin, but doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to make this work…

Pretty frustrating. I can’t send multiple channels to a single output in the Console app (still don’t understand why this is still a limitation, would be nice to sent all my drums to a pair of faders on the analog console). It doesn’t look like there’s any way to get SonarWorks working with Luna while record or input enabled. Just a few small things limiting me from giving Luna a fair shot, but still a deal breaker. I’ll keep waiting!

It's because UA has never seen fit, thru all three generations of the Apollo, to offer more than just the absolute minimum of routing in the FPGA used within the Apollo. So these are the sort of shortcomings that we all continue to have to deal with. Maybe the next Apollo generation will finally address this?

 

[MaiDog]

I don’t use Luna but I route the mix bus from my console into two channels on my x6. This is generally used for “printing’ the mix but I also use a product called Audio Hijack to grab that audio which I can the run through the Sonarworks SoundID plugin (in Hijack) and route that to my x16 Mon outs (in Hijack) which are patched to my Auxiliary 1 inputs on my console. I can then switch between the mixbus and this auxiliary input from the console to switch between sonarworks corrected and raw. Maybe worth a try as this approach is DAW agnostic. You can demo Audio Hijack to see if it works for you.

 

[andersmv]

I don’t use Luna but I route the mix bus from my console into two channels on my x6. This is generally used for “printing’ the mix but I also use a product called Audio Hijack to grab that audio which I can the run through the Sonarworks SoundID plugin (in Hijack) and route that to my x16 Mon outs (in Hijack) which are patched to my Auxiliary 1 inputs on my console. I can then switch between the mixbus and this auxiliary input from the console to switch between sonarworks corrected and raw. Maybe worth a try as this approach is DAW agnostic. You can demo Audio Hijack to see if it works for you.

Wow, I’ll have to check that out! So in that case, I wouldn’t even need to apply the plug-in inside my DAW. It would route outside to everything going through the main outs with the standalone SonarWorks program? That might be a better solution overall for me, even in ProTools. Any additional latency?

Our consoles are set up similarly. I can monitor the Program Out strait from the board, and I’ve got my Apollo Monitor Outs going to a Tape Return so I can monitor the computer stuff.

 

[andersmv]

I don’t use Luna but I route the mix bus from my console into two channels on my x6. This is generally used for “printing’ the mix but I also use a product called Audio Hijack to grab that audio which I can the run through the Sonarworks SoundID plugin (in Hijack) and route that to my x16 Mon outs (in Hijack) which are patched to my Auxiliary 1 inputs on my console. I can then switch between the mixbus and this auxiliary input from the console to switch between sonarworks corrected and raw. Maybe worth a try as this approach is DAW agnostic. You can demo Audio Hijack to see if it works for you.

If you wouldn't mind taking a screen shot of your Hijack Session so I can see how you've set it up, I would really appreciate it. I'm messing with it now and can not for the life of me figure out the best way to set this up. Since it does AU Plugins, I thought this was going to be as easy as setting the Apollo as the first device and putting the SonarWoks Plugin after it in Hijack. Maybe I'm just not understanding the core concept yet...

 

[MaiDog]

Anders, there are a number of ways you can do this, but here's my current config. The Mix Bus block in the top left is the dedicated input channels for the mix bus outputs from my console (which happens to be input channels 3/4 on my X6). The metering is an intermediate point where I also send the signal out to my Clarity M through the X16's AES/EBU port - you don't need that metering block. The last block on the right is the dedicated output channels (I'm using my main X16 Mon Outs), that are patched to the input of my "External 1" on my Console. The blocks beneath the top row are for getting virtual channels and the system audio out through the same SonarWorks to Console path for other sources. Note that you have to set the input and output channel number in those blocks using the channel numbering in your I/O matrix. For example for me, Channels 3/4 on my X6 are 55 and 56 in my input list and the X16 mon outs are channels 1 and 2 in my output list. Also, blocks can be switched on and off depending on what you are doing....



On my console I can monitor through External 1 which is the SonarWorks treated sound or the mix directly by switching buttons in the monitoring section

Hope that helps.

 

[andersmv]

Thanks so much, that does help and gives me a lot of ideas. In the middle of all of this, I think I figured out a much easier solution that will work fine for me. I didn't realize you could just disable the ARM function whenever you wanted to. I can either set up an audio track in Luna that's recording my console outputs and put SonarWorks on that, or just leave SonarWorks on the Master. Either way, I can just disable ARM at any point and hear things with the SonarWorks correction, even in the middle of a recording.

If I set up the console print track with SonarWorks on that, I can throw that in input monitoring while I'm setting mics and compression/eq and hear it with the correction really quickly. Take that out of input monitoring and start running the session like normal once I've got things set mic/eq and whatever else. There's obviously some delay, but not really a big deal as the artists will never hear it if I don't route the console track to them. I can route all the Luna tracks to a pair of inputs on the console and just monitor off the console on my side through the console track in input more with the correction.

I'm tinkering around with that right now and I "think" it will work for me. I've got some sessions coming up later this month with a friend of mine that's also an engineer. He'll be patient enough with me to work this in a real session situation to test it in Luna, I can road test this before I try it with "normal" clients....

Thanks for the help! Not sure why I didn't think of this before. I have not messed with Luna since it originally came out years ago. Did ARM always work like this or was it updated at some point?