In 3D!!!

As were Sean, Ells and Ed who met me at KMR to hand over the unit in person, I was the first person that ordered!! Not keen much..

They alongside Tom from KMR managed to make me feel very welcome yet very out of my depth at the same time

I didn't drop it on the way home either

I also got a demo of their Mojo preamps in the R8 in a good listening room - they're wicked. Veeery nice tone-shaping.

I've had so much time to anticipate receiving this but still managed to find myself having to resolder cables to get everything plugged in

Here's some teaser shots though for anybody that's been eying them up..













Here's a 'rack shot'
(That HRK module is actually going in slot 1 so the damn cables don't get in the way)





But the reality is more like this until tomorrow..

That is surely a beautiful thing!

But it's - C r a n b o u r n e Audio!

Put it down to over-excitement I guess, but needs a moderator to change the thread title to avoid confusion.

It was late, obviously had Camdens on the brain

No 'u' actually! It's a frequent mistake Brits make as we love putting 'u' next to 'o' on all words

niiice!!
now you just need an Avedis E12G eq..
i saw the video on YT.. they sounded fantastic..

Enjoy your unit.. looks really great!!!



Cheu

Hi Sean
Now that the rack hits the market, is there any update on the availability of the EC2? For I only want 2 channels , I would prefer the EC2 instead of putting two Camden500 in an expensive two slot rack
Ronald

Thank you!

I put the cable soldering off for a day so I could put some sound through it last night and check stability etc.
So first of all it's stable, everything works as it should straight away which is expected but still nice to confirm!

The first thing I noticed was this is the first interface of the three I've had with my K702s that can drive them properly.
That headphone amp is LOUD, as promised!
Also, I love having my reference on the DAW 2 switch. It's super nice to be able to just flick to the reference track at any time without having to select the track and mess around with muting.

I have a question for the guys about routing (there was bound to be one)!
My setup routing is quite esoteric (to me?), so this might give some insight into the unit's functionality anyway.
I want to confirm this will all work as intended before I set the switches and rack it!

Scenario:
I've got a curious 500 module (the HRK single module stereo one) that uses its rack input connector as the second channel output.
I've also got two 500 series double-width mono comps which use their right hand rack I/O for SC connections (which I don't use).
Then I've got an MDX2100 and two EQP-KTs.

I want to prioritise the R8 rack I/O connections on unused 500 slots for A/D whenever possible.
Because the HRK is effectively single slot out to two slots in, I lose the option to have all outboard come in as stereo.
So I elected to put the MDX completely on the 2626 (wordclocked) I/O.
Next two 2626 outs go to the EQPs.
Next two to the HRK.

The HRK is in slot 1, set to Analogue, [500 disabled].
It has a germanium saturation colour and tube distortion colour on each channel. It's outputs go to R8 inputs 7&8 set to analogue [disabled].
554s in slots 2-5, with 2&4 (the actual comps) set to USB [enabled] and the EQPs returning on 3&5 set to analogue [disabled].

Ok. Now after Elliot encouraged me not to distrust inserts, I've got the following:
Two 1 pole cables with a TS on one end and an XLRm on the other, with pin 2 shorted to pin 3, shield normal.

This gives me 2 send-only inserts, which will tap slots 7&8 (the HRK 'colour bus').
These will run into the comp 2&4 inputs.
I'm doing this because the 554s can bypass just the compression, which gives me the option to add transformer colour, 30KHz lift etc after the saturation and distortion.

When I want the colour bus to go through the 554s, I can simply turn 7&8 down and flick the input switches on slots 2&4 to analogue, correct?
Then I can add the 554 tone, print, switch back to USB and turn 7&8 up again when done (the level will be reset for each different source anyway).

Having the 7&8 signal coming in constantly to 2&4 like that isn't an issue is it? I don't see why it should be but thought I'd check.
If that's fine then I'll tap the EQP returns in the same way and send them to the MDX sidechain which has key listen, so that would be pretty cool.

That leaves slot 6 free for a Cranborne 500 preamp

Edit: one more thing..
If I have my turntable preamp outs coming in on the DAW2 jacks, can.I switch to DAW2 when the computer is off and use it as a phono input?

Thanks!

Hi Quetz! Few questions there. I'm going to try and answer them in reverse order.

First, yes you can use the daw 2 Aux inputs with the USB disconnected no problem.

Secondly having signal coming in constantly into the analog inputs for 2 and 4 when it's switched out is not a problem (they are disconnected from the module input with a relay).

Thirdly regarding your routing setup. All the switching should work if I'm reading your post correctly but I do see a couple issue using the inserts the way you describe with a cable wired
as described. The inserts are between the module backplane output and the internal routing to the mix bus (and the ADC and direct out xlr, it all comes from this post insert point). This means that when you insert your mono to xlr cable you will break the routing to the mixbus so you'll see no signal to the adc/mixbus on channels 7/8.

To make it work as you envision you can either take the outputs from the ch7/8 xlr outs to the 2/4 xlr inputs or you can wire up a TRS to xlr cable. On the TRS end you would connect the tip and ring together and the run the tip to the xlr pin 2 and then short xlr pin 1 and 3 to ground which should also connect to the jack sleeve. That allows the channel output of 7 and 8 to reach the mix bus and adc while also acting as an unbalanced output. Then you can connect it to the ch2/4 inputs like you described.

Also an important note. While the unusual HRK module using the input as a second output will work OK when the slot is set to analog input I do caution you to be extremely careful not to accidentally switch that channel to USB input with that module in the slot as you will be connecting the DAC output directly to the module output which is about the worst possible thing you can do to any output stage and which could well result in damage to the module and possibly even the DAC output.

Hi there, thanks for the reply!

You're right, I misinterpreted the description I read which was as I wrote, but they meant the TS end was at the device end as they were assuming jack inputs..
So yes I need the wiring as you described at the device end, which is how you'd wire any unbalanced to balanced connection correct?
At the R8 end isn't it better though to short tip to ring as described?
This is obviously OCD but with it wired that way doesn't the signal get pinged back to the summing mixer at the same time as it gets pinged out?
The article I read had their cables this way because it was the shortest purest way to return the signal from the insert.
The difference would be in pico-seconds or less I assume, the cable is less than a metre so it doesn't really matter, but from a philosophical point of view it makes sense, no?

Also thank you for underlining the potential calamity of not double checking the source select switches...

I need to write that on the wall!

Thanks again for the advice

Yep that is how you would wire any unbalanced to balanced at the xlr end. And yes you would short tip and ring at the r8 end, that's what I meant though I may not have been clear. You wouldn't use a TS mono jack though because that would just short your return (ring) to your ground sleeve instead of the tip leaving dead silence.

It would ping it back at the same point it sends it out yes, I assumed that's what you wanted when you were talking about turning channels 7 and 8 up and down. If I misunderstood and you wanted the return to come from elsewhere (channel 2/4 outputs?) then yes you would have a TRS to two xlr breakout cable. One with pin 2 on tip for the send and the other with pin 2 on ring for the return. Pins 1 and 3 connected on the send to the sleeve but on the return just leave pin 3 floating if coming from the direct output xlr of the r8.

And yeah I thought I'd better flag up the clash on that module. God knows if it was me and was in my system I would probably have a stupid moment and flip the switch to see what happens!

Cheers,

Ed

Ha ha!! Me frying my R8 - not a good look

Ed you're the man to ask this - for the xlr ends of the insert cables, can I just connect pound pin 3 to 1, or do I need to short them both to the chassis ground?

Thanks

For the send male xlr you want to connect pin 3 to the cable shield. Edit. Leave pin 1 unconnected.

For the return female xlr the ideal pinout depends on the kind of output that you will connect it to. For an cross coupled (EBOS) or transformer balanced output you will want to connect pin 1 and 3. For a non EBOS balanced output like the 500r8 outputs you will want to connect pin 1 to cable shield but leave pin 3 unconnected. (if you connect the cold leg to ground you'll get distortion and excessive power dissipation).

Just to clarify, this connection is a jack from insert point to an XLRf socket, so male send plug on the other end.

I followed you up to where we confirmed this cable wiring, I'm going with that!

Have a look at the attached image. I'm talking about an insert cable matching the lower of the two shown. One XLRf and one XLRm on one end and then a TRS stereo jack on the other.

Ahh ok, I see where we're missing each other..!

I'm using unbalanced cable.
This is where we've been talking at cross purposes

I don't need/want the return portion, it's send-only.
The channels whose inserts are being tapped should be silent because I don't want to hear sound at 7&8 (source) and 2&4 (unless I do), hence turning the mix level down on 7&8.
If I used the direct outs it wouldn't work as they're post fader.
So I'm using the inserts as a pre-fader unbalanced direct out with one jack going to one male xlr.
At the insert end, the signal wire goes to pin 2 where it's sent to the xlr but it's also looped on to pin 3 which gives you an instant return (if you need it, but usually the level will be down so the return won't be heard unless I want to blend wet and dry live).
Shield to ground.
At the xlr end it's a normal send with signal at pin 2 and I think the shield running through both pin 2 and 1 (but correct me if things are different now!)

As this changes things, please let me know if this is still an acceptable course of action ...

Glad to see these will shortly be in our hands.

Can anyone give me what the dimensions & weight are? Can't find this basic info on Cranborne nor dealers' sites.

7kg, 7.5kg packed. 4U and the same depth as any other 500 series rack. Specs, weight and dims will be posted tomorrow on the site along with us publishing the user manual.

Sorry for the delay on this. We couldn't do the final weight until we had all the bits and the boxes and all packed up which only just happened! You would think it would be easier than this as we know the unit weight, but we include other things in the box as well as packing materia and we didn't want to publish nonsense numbers.

Hey Quetz!

First of all, pleasure to meet you on Monday and I'm really glad you're getting to grips with 500R8! Thanks for the online boxing experience... I haven't even had a chance to open one yet, so it's nice to see it looks so sweet out of the box!

No on to your questions... It's hard to follow what has or hasn't been answered so I apologise for duplicates!

The XLR Direct Outputs for each channel are in fact PRE the mix bus level controls. The XLR outputs are literally positioned directly after the module but before the mix bus in the signal path so in many cases within your setup, the insert points are redundant as you can use a simple XLR to get in and out of where you need to go. Out of Slot 7/8 and into slots 2/4 - If I have followed your setup correctly.

I see why you are using the insert points on 7/8 - so you can tap the Return for something else if you desire, but I'd think that using the XLR In/Outs for your use cases would work smoother.

I'd reserve using the insert points for say - if you want to send audio from your DAW into your GAP comps and then into your KT's, simply send audio out to USB channel 2, into your comp, out of the insert and into your KT, back into the insert return and then record USB input 2 back into your DAW. Remember, you can use both the In and Out USB channels on each slot independently to apply your analogue processing, you don't need to come out of one and into another.

Hope this helps mate!? I might have to see a diagram to help my little brain follow your setup!!

We can get it going for you!

Ells

Hi Ells, likewise!

Ah damn, I was labouring under the illusion that the direct outs were post fader all this time

Yeah that's easy then, nice!
Thanks for clearing that up, poor Ed must have been scratching his head as well

Check on the USB. Now that up is north I'll draw a diagram, all the hw has hard bypass so I can make chains with those and a combination of the direct outs and inserts.

I'm just making it sound complicated because I'm trying to find a way to send stuff as freely as possible in as many different configurations as possible without using a patchbay!

The unit itself works seamlessly, and it's a joy to use!
I can send a kick out to saturate, with blend set to mix can audition it 'soloed' and check levels then use the blend while I tweak so I can audition changes with it balanced in the mix. It's a really transparent way of working.
I'm printing as I go.rather than leave everything 'live' for as long as possible hence why changing the blend knob constantly doesn't matter, it's not 'set' to anything.

Also, I had to turn my monitor speakers' gain trims down by 50% as well thanks to the generous output level of the R8 which is instant noise removal!!

I've had a couple of days to play and suss out the importance (for my setup) of exploiting toggling sources when having stuff feeding in constantly.
Now the way it's set up, I have one long chain that I can drop stuff in and out of.
Wired like this:

2626 out 1/2 to HRK ins. HRK Outs to rack 7&8 in.
It sits in slot one but doesn't use USB.

7&8 direct outs to the two EQPs.
EQP outs to slot 3&5 in (set to analogue).

554 1 in slot 2/3(double-width but audio in slot 2).
554 2 in slot 4/5 (audio slot 4).

Slot 3&5 direct outs to 2&4 in.
MDX2100 on the 2626 I/O.
Inserts from 2&4 feed MDX sidechains.

This means:

With slot 7&8 set to USB (turned down) and slot 3&5 set to analogue (turned up), I get just the EQPs on whatever I send to 7&8 from the daw.

With 7&8 set to analogue (turned up, 3&5 down) I'm monitoring whatever I sent through the HRK (saturation/distortion).
With 7&8 analogue (down, 3&5 up) I'm monitoring the HRK into the xf and tubes of the EQPs (with or without eq engaged).

I can then add the 554s in.
When set to USB I feed them direct from the daw, but when set to analogue, I can add them to the previous chains and monitor the whole thing with them at the end.

So now if 7&8 is set to USB (down, 3&5 down, 2&4 up) I get the EQPs then comps, or just the transformers/tubes and 554 tone as both the eqs and 554 compression can be bypassed, or a mixture.
With 7&8 set to analogue (turned down, 3&5 down, 2&4 up) I get:
Sat/Dist -> Xf/Tube -> EQ optional -> Xf/Tone -> Compression optional.
Because the dry signal is always available at 7&8 I can even route a bus out and make a parallel compression blend without having to create an extra bus and send in the daw.

I like how things can be dropped in and out just by flicking a couple of switches/turning a knob.
It's such a basic thing I guess but it's a refreshing way to work.
Even nicer is that I can do the routing and adjust daw send levels from the X-Touch so really don't need to touch the mouse to do any of it..!

I guess I can always try out different orders where possible as well later, but this is a great start to experiment/learn from.
The last bit is the inserts, which I wired with TS cable as I described, works a treat!
I can use whatever is on the comp 554s to sc or send whatever I like straight down the whole chain to the MDX key input.

It all works great as one chain like that and it's actually 2, one per channel, and they can be set independently of the other.
It's just as easy to sling different stuff everywhere, sat and EQP on kick which gets 554 comp which sidechains a pad on the MDX, vocal down the other EQP without saturation, 554 tone but no comp etc, it's very tactile and fast to operate which is important, and it's really fun to use with lots of switches, which is arguably more important..
Everything feels solid and built to a high standard.

So after a bit of head scratching (a lot of this stuff does not come naturally..) it's actually exceeded my expectations, I honestly couldn't be happier with it

Really great to see this bad boy in Quertz's hands!

One is in my future, just need to decide if it's the R8 or the ADAT!

Sounds great Quetz, glad you got it all up and running! To hear that it's exceeding your expectations (when you had over year to build up those expectations!!!! ) is a huge relief and frankly an honour.

...although if you think that setup is a head-scratcher, I'd hate to think of the cable spaghetti required to achieve all of that without 500R8

For the small margin of difference (£170) between the ADAT and R8 price, I'd go R8 all the way.
It's a pretty sick interface!

With the R8, you have everything the ADAT has plus monitor controller with talkback, more I/O, and you can expand cheaply then upgrade the expansion later.

With ADAT if you want to upgrade any further then you'll have to replace your main interface anyway, which you'd obviously spend a lot more than £170 on..


I've looked at the pictures so many times it feels like it's been in my room for a year already
An honour to get the first one available to the public! 3 is the magic number!!

Impossible without a patch bay and even then it would be an unbelievable amount of faff because you'd have to control all the monitoring from the daw or a mixer.

R8 is GR8

How's the conversion?

I'm not a professional, not in a studio and don't have a lot of treatment, so you'll have to take what I say with a pinch of salt, and I'm not going to talk about low freq.
But, there are differences that I didn't notice (and actually argued in a post about) when I changed from a Focusrite Scarlett to an Audient id.

The first couple of days I had the R8 I was only listening on headphones because of time/schedule, but I felt that even on cans there was a certain level of detail that I hadn't noticed before, running the same mix I'd been working on.
I preferred to believe I was imagining it, but today I had a proper run out on the speakers and there is a difference in the high end.
I have AMT (pleated) ribbon tweeters and I feel like I'm only just hearing what they can actually do.
There is no 'boost', the image is just clearer, I won't get carried away with the usual conversion vernacular because I think it's misleading, but the last time I felt a defined difference in sound was having ribbon tweeters for the first time after a more budget pair of domes.

I didn't think I would hear an audible difference between the audient and R8 which is funny because when I replaced the Scarlett with the Audient I was told to expect a difference, so was actively looking for it and didn't find it.
With the R8 I wasn't looking for it because I'd convinced myself it wouldn't be there so I was kind of surprised that it was.

Let's get real here, it's not that suddenly everything sounds ten times better. But I feel like there's a difference in basic clarity.
That could still be bias of course, but I think the clocking and the distortion free electronics around the converters are really showing their value, and that the difference is less of what people call smearing, especially as I'm running this mix quite hot, hotter than I normally do (was the same before getting the R8 on this mix).

So a very layman description I'm afraid, but I'm very grounded when it comes to language describing this stuff, the differences are subtle in a way, but the effect on mixing will be less subtle as I feel more informed about important freq decisions

I have a few esoteric things in my setup that make replacing my current Motu Monitor 8 interface with the R8 not quite as straightforward as it might be - the guys from Cranborne have been VERY helpful with helping me think round those use cases - most notably my hybrid home cinema setup and currently having 4 separate cue mixes which the Motu is pretty much designed for.
I think the R8 will likely win out, but I really need to think my workflow through fully before committing to it as it will be a ton of work and setup / rewire etc to find out i've not thought a part through fully!!!

I will be monitoring this and the other Cranborne thread fully to keep on top of what is possible - especially once the CAST breakout boxes become available as I'm hopeful they will help on the multiple cue mix side.

Having the manual available is a big help, still digesting that!

Just read about the Motu, yes it's a very niche product!
The R8 isn't a straight swap, kind of replacing apples with oranges in one respect, but it can work fine, although you'd need headphone distribution of course but there are great cheap ones out there, the Samson and Behringer ones get lots of praise on here.
You can get 2 mono cues using DAW2 and the aux outputs, then you've got the main cue and using one pair of I/O would give you another stereo or two mono cues.

You could just get a cheap adat expander for the cues, I picked up a Profire 2626 for less than £50.
The 2626 has stereo optical/coaxial format conversion which would be handy for you.

Good luck with your quest!

I noted you are using Daw 2 for reference input / but also you mentioned turntable?

That's the steer I got from Ells regarding my home cinema setup (front l/r preamp out from Marantz NR1607 would likely go into Daw 2 in, sub preamp out from the Marantz tho would have to go into one of the 8 inputs. Today with the Motu, the AV L/R and Sub in are normalled to analog inputs 6,7 & 8 through a patchbay. I'd initially thought I could do the same with the R8, but without the recall of the Motu (extensive presets in it's digital mixer), it could be a bit of an issue constantly setting 6,7,8 pans etc on the summing mixer.

The other thing i'm thinking about that would solve that would be to get a small line mixer to sum all the marantz outs to a stereo pair into the Daw 2 in, and that would be my 'listening/games n cinema' setup - switch to Daw 2, blend fully clockwise and that part would be pretty much sorted I think - CAST may well help in this area as well.

Cue mixes is a bit more of an issue as i'm spoiled with 4 separate cue mixes for everyone in the band when we record (and usually all 4 of us have at least slightly different cue mixes - more me, less him, varying click levels etc) I think we could get by tho, especially with a N22H in the control room for the singer (who naturally is the fussiest ). I'm going back over the messages from the Cranborne guys now this beast is out and the manual is there.

You still need to use the same number of outs, it's just setting the cues in the daw rather than in the Motu mixer, same process different location.
Some daws make it easier than others.

It's more the 'live' input tracks that are the issue, once drums are down, everyone is tracking separately so cue mixes are no issue there, it's all the inputs into the interface and being able to adjust them on each cue mix that's the decision I have to make on.

FWIW I never use any cue facility of the DAW, either analog monitoring of zero latency DSP for me.

I think the main thing i'm struggling to figure out from the manual are:-

1) I'm assuming ADAT inputs are passed to the Artist Mix section - the manual is generally excellent, but this is one thing I can't actually see confirmed, though it would be a pretty big miss if they weren't (e.g. nearly all my drums when we track live come from my Audient ASP800 )

2) Assuming above is confirmed, the next thing I can't see is how to adjust the relative levels of incoming tracks in the Artist Monitor mix (independent of what is sent to the DAW - I'm pretty certain I can work around the 'more me' cue side of things, but I really want the monitor mix to be fully independent of gain staging for actual 'printing' - most normally, kick, snare and vocal monitor levels will be a good bit louder than their actual recording level.

I will take these questions to the other thread, but will deffo keep an eye here for any nuggets of practical wisdom!