Thread: Live event with Mackie Onyx 1640i, 10+ channels

I don't know Mixcraft, but you'll probably have to add tracks to the project and assign hardware inputs to respective tracks, then arm the tracks. You may need to select the correct driver in the preferences.

I prefer to record at 24 bit and 48kHz. At that quality it will use about half a gigabyte per track per hour.

I would plan to spend some time ahead of the gig connecting and troubleshooting the setup.

Look into optimizing a PC for recording. Usually the first thing suggested is to disable the wireless.

Thanks for your help!

Texas Instruments Firewire Chipset ONLY. Any other Firewire may not work for you.

as far as buffer settings, as long as the musicians aren't monitoring the audio thru the cpu, you would be safe to keep the buffers pretty high. there seems to be 'magic' numbers on a case by case basis, but generally if you keep the buffers high, you're cpu will be happy. that said, your cpu's specs are nice and you shouldn't have problems at any setting, w/ this many tracks.

in the past i've had issues w/ western digital harddrives, not being compatible with Pro Tools, but it's a very picky program, mackie makes pretty reliable stuff, so you should be fine. i use a generic esata compatible harddrive enclosure, and adapter card and my laptop.

make sure you set the 'gain stages' properly. keep your input signals about halfway up the meters, and you'll be fine.

Thanks for all the input. I was able to test it with the Mackie, and it worked seamlessly. Few follow up questions:

@kmetal: when you say to keep the input signals halfway up, you mean that "volume" slider on each track right? Is there a reason to keep it at half? Is this to prevent from clipping? Is there a risk of having too low of a sound?

Also, I'm wondering does my laptop soundcard limit the quality of the sound coming in from the mackie via Firewire? I assumed that since my laptop had a firewire port that I should be all set. But I am just wondering now if I should get an external sound card or something. The sound was pretty good when I did the test, but then that was just a test and I had only two channels coming in. At the event there will be 10 or more channels.

Originally Posted by champ1979

@kmetal: when you say to keep the input signals halfway up, you mean that "volume" slider on each track right? Is there a reason to keep it at half? Is this to prevent from clipping? Is there a risk of having too low of a sound?

No! Set the mic pre gains so the level on the meters in your recording software peak at or near the midway point. In this case the faders are for mixing, not for setting record levels.

Originally Posted by champ1979

Also, I'm wondering does my laptop soundcard limit the quality of the sound coming in from the mackie via Firewire?

Is any of the audio going through the built in sound card? If not then it should have no effect.

Hmm, I'm not sure if I'll have access to the mic pre gains. It's a live music program and the sound guys are going to keep the levels to optimize for the live performance. All I'm going to get is a firewire cable :-)

The audio comes only from the firewire...every channel on my recording software will be mapped to one of the channels on the Mackie. Does that mean the sound card doesn't come into play?

Thanks...

If they know what they're doing and run the gains correctly you'll be okay. If something is getting too close to clipping show them your meters. Maybe they'll make an adjustment.