Digital Postman

Does anyone have experience with this combination? I was thinking of picking up an MTi2, but it's hard to find detailed accounts from users. I'm curious about how it performs in a multi-monitor setup, how it deals with mixing in 5.1, and whether the Logic front end is a well developed as the one for Pro Tools. Also, how is the support from Slate?

I think the "open recent" menu causes problems in a number of programs, especially if you have a lot of volumes. It's possible that it's recalling a file path to a drive that's no longer there, or renamed, and glitching on it, or just getting bogged down looking through various directories. Try running Logic with minimal drives mounted and see if it makes any difference.

I always send to an aux with a reverb on it rather than inserting into the instrument channel - this gives you a lot more control over the verb tail itself, you can sculpt it with EQ and expand it to manage the decay more precisely. Also, keep in mind the sonic qualities that "catch" reverb more readily: transients, or at least distinctive attacks (vs a sustained pad type of sound) and, notably, upper mids. Try experimenting with enhancing the 1-5K range a bit, not necessarily on the dry piano, but on the reverb feed - insert the EQ on the aux ahead of the verb. If you get more reverb definition this way you may be able to back off on the send a bit and that might help address your concern with muddiness.

I agree with everyone else - go for the 27" i7 - 21" is smaller than it used to be, the i5 is underpowered, you can't install more than 16Gb of RAM and you can't change the memory at all without dismantling the whole thing - the 27" has a convenient door in the back for memory installs. Also, stay away from the wireless keyboard and mouse - they blow through batteries like crazy and when the battery goes you're completely disabled.

I have a 3Tb fusion drive in my iMac, which is basically a 3Tb SATA drive coupled with a 128Mb SSD but functioning as a single drive. It has a dedicated microprocessor that manages storage in the background such that your most commonly accessed file (including the OS) are stored on the SSD, making for a fast system, but with a fairly large internal storage. Assuming it's still an option (I bought mine in 2014), it's worth the extra $200.

I've used the SSL plugin for a while, and I have come to relay on it a lot. As mentioned, it's CPU-efficient (unlike some Waves plugin) and the compressor is quite intuitive and natural. The gate works better as a gate than as an expander, so it's not ideal for dialog, but for $30, yes, by all means its worth it.