Looking at buying myself an Avid Eleven Rack in July this year.

Hi everyone,


I'm looking at buying myself an Avid Eleven Rack in July of this year, since I've been playing around with an earlier version of Pro Tools (Pro Tools LE 6.4), I have gotten to the stage where I want to upgrade to a more recent version, I found out that Avid's Eleven Rack is shipping with Pro Tools 11 and that I would be able to use my Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 with it too, one of my local music shops, Sounds Of Music, has one in stock so I know that they could probably order one in for me.


So, what is the Avid Eleven Rack?


The Avid Eleven Rack is a digital amp modelling guitar preamp and usb audio interface in a 2U rackmount unit, it can be used with a computer as an audio interface, or, as a standalone guitar pre-amp when going into a P.A. system, or a standard guitar amplifier, one of it's features is a special Impedance simulation circuit which makes it feel like you are playing through an actual guitar amp.


To my ears, the digital models are very realistic sounding.



http://www.avid.com/US/products/eleven-rack

It must be nice to be rich..... ;)

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Originally Posted by Fretworn

It must be nice to be rich..... ;)

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For sure, but I worked out that I could buy expensive gear by putting it on layby and just paying it off each fortnight.

Make sure you check out AxeFX/Kemper profilers before you pull the trigger on the 11 rack.

Cool stuff though!

I definitely want to get an Eleven Rack as I want to upgrade to a more recent version of ProTools, plus I'm also looking at buying myself a new Laptop this year.

I have seen the Eleven Rack in action and the only thing that is making me go for it instead of the Kemper is the fact you get Pro Tools with it :D
It really is a nice studio tool, I wish I had one! Looks like I'll be planning many trips to Darwin... Nomis, watch out!

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Originally Posted by keloooe

I have seen the Eleven Rack in action and the only thing that is making me go for it instead of the Kemper is the fact you get Pro Tools with it :D
It really is a nice studio tool, I wish I had one! Looks like I'll be planning many trips to Darwin... Nomis, watch out!

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What really clinched it for me was the fact that you can use the Eleven Rack as a standalone guitar preamp, I have a Behringer K3000FX 300 Watt P.A./Keyboard Amplifier that I use for amplifying my two Yamaha Synthesizers (an old Analog CS15D and a DX7), so, I'm thinking that if I use my Eleven Rack with the keyboard amp I'll effectively have a 300 Watt guitar amp that I can gig with, I'll be able to drown out those rowdy drummers....lol...

But yeah, the included Pro Tools software is hard to resist.

Yeah having the Eleven Rack as a standalone preamp like the Kemper and the Axe FX is great for both studio and live applications!

300 Watts should definitely drown the drummers :D

Yeah the Eleven rack is great I use it in conjunction with Positive Grids Bias Deskop Version. I've Had The Kemper And Axe Fx sold them in truth there not worth the money My Axe Fx fan used to drive me crazy the noise it made. And the Kemper used to take longer than my PC and Mac to boot up . I find Eleven Rack the combination with pro tools fantastic . When I record using the Eleven rack I can at the same time record a track with effects and also without .This then enables me to use the non affected track with Bias I then blend the three sounds together sounds fantastic . The great thing is it's also a great audio interface too . Enjoy when you get one and post some of your recordings
Best Wishes
Kimball

I've got the Desktop version of Bias on my PC at the moment, really like the sounds you can get from it, and it works pretty well in FL Studio so it's a keeper, I'm in the process of paying off a Radial Tonebone Hot British pedal that I've got on Layby at Top End Sounds, I tried my Gibson USA Les Paul Studio with it and it sounded very fat, and I liked the really smooth sustain I got.

Have you profiled any of your Amps or others yet with Bias

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Originally Posted by kimball492

Have you profiled any of your Amps or others yet with Bias

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Not yet, I might need to upgrade my copy of Bias to do so, I have built a couple of amp models in Bias though but I was just feeling my way around the software, Bias is definitely a keeper for me.

I might look at upgrading once my funds permit.


I've currently got my Marshall MA100C amplifier at a friends place being serviced, my friend is going to replace the four original output valves with a set of new ones, and he's also going to replace the original output transformer with a new JCM800 output transformer, I got my friend to do some service work on the amplifier because it kept blowing fuses at random times, so I'm looking forward to when I get the amplifier back, that's one problem that digitally modelled amps don't suffer from.

If you're only getting it for protools, and don't care for the eleven rack, I'd reccomend - if you haven't already - checking out reaper for a DAW. It's very very cheap, and you can even trial it for free indefinitely. I haven't used it yet personally - guitar and gear issues that seem to flow into one another - but a lot of people I've heard talk about it really like it.

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Originally Posted by Clebby

If you're only getting it for protools, and don't care for the eleven rack, I'd reccomend - if you haven't already - checking out reaper for a DAW. It's very very cheap, and you can even trial it for free indefinitely. I haven't used it yet personally - guitar and gear issues that seem to flow into one another - but a lot of people I've heard talk about it really like it.

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I've actually got Reaper installed on my PC and have purchased the $60.00 license they offer and Reaper is working well on my system, I've checked out some demo clips on youtube of the Eleven Rack and have been very impressed by the amp models it offers, I practically can't hear the difference in tone when comparing the Eleven Rack's Plexi presets with the real thing, to my ears it's that good, so I definitely want to get myself an Eleven Rack, because it works in standalone mode I realize that I can use it with my Behringer Keyboard/P.A. amp in times when my Marshall MA100C amp goes faulty and needs repairing, so that's a bonus.


I'm currently running an older version of ProTools (LE 6.4) on an old 90's vintage Macintosh G4 Power PC, it has had it's original single 450Mhz CPU module replaced with a dual 500Mhz CPU module and I've maxxed out the ram and upgraded the graphics card, the contemporary music department where I'm doing a Vet course in music is running a fairly recent version of Pro Tools, that has made me feel the need to upgrade to a recent version of ProTools, also, both my two Firewire Audio Interfaces (Avid Digidesign Digi002 and Saffire Pro 40) will work with recent versions of ProTools (from version 9 and up), incidentally I have just gotten both Audio Interfaces working at the same time on my PC, I just had to add an extra PCIe card with Firewire 400 ports on it and buy two new Firewire cables, so far everything seems to be working fine and my PC seems to be pretty happy, I'm pretty stoked cause I have some extra inputs I can use now.


This year I'm also going to look at buying some extra DDR3 Ram sticks for my PC as I have three spare DDR3 Ram slots on my PCs motherboard.

Did a rough recording in Reaper this afternoon of an original one of the guys wrote, just me and the singer with a Tele, Takamine & drum machine all through a single Senheiser mic into an old laptop via a small Peavey mixer.

Gives the three of us something to take home to work on harmonies and lead lines.

Ultimately I will rerecord it as a backing track using the PBH-4 and the drum machine and we'll play they electric, acoustic and steel parts live

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Originally Posted by dave.king1

Did a rough recording in Reaper this afternoon of an original one of the guys wrote, just me and the singer with a Tele, Takamine & drum machine all through a single Senheiser mic into an old laptop via a small Peavey mixer.

Gives the three of us something to take home to work on harmonies and lead lines.

Ultimately I will rerecord it as a backing track using the PBH-4 and the drum machine and we'll play they electric, acoustic and steel parts live

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Would be cool to be able to check out the demo recording, maybe we should start a thread where we can showcase home recordings.

That would be a good idea, even a PBG version of rig rundowns to show the chain of events

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Originally Posted by stan

That would be a good idea, even a PBG version of rig rundowns to show the chain of events

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Absolutely, we could also include a description on how we got the sounds we get, recording setup, etc, would be of benefit to those wanting to learn how to do home music recording and how to set up a home studio.

That is a good idea, especially for the ones who are just starting out! Maybe some of us can do complete tutorials on recording and we can have threads for the tutorials?

I'd be happy to pass-on what I know about home recording, I'm doing a Vet course in Music at Uni and part of the course involves learning how to record/mix music in Pro Tools.

great idea DrN, would love to see this

Here's a sub forum on the Telecaster forum that deals with the subject of recording, it is an international forum and there's a range of skills and experience from home recording right through top professionals playing with the big boys

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/recording-progress/

I'll have to have a chat to the guys about putting our stuff up because what I am working on are all originals which probably don't have CW protection as yet.

The backing tracks we use for covers come from Karaoke-Version.com, we use their custom tracks where you get to choose the instrumentation that you want so we can swap instruments when we want.