Dear little baby Junior son of a bitch, Most professional and semi professional mixers have exactly that! Most high-end professional mixers have the ability to feed direct outputs from just the microphone preamplifier all the way through to equalization if desired. Some lesser expensive consoles sometimes featured direct outputs that are not PRE-FADER. THIS IS AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE. In that if you are trying to use say a console for PA purposes and live simultaneous multi-track recording, you probably will not want a mixer that has direct outputs that are POST FADER! This would be a problem when you are feeding your multi-track recorder if you turn the slide fader controls up and down for certain microphones it will affect your recording levels on your multitrack machine. YOU DON'T WANT THAT! You want the pre-fader direct outputs. That means that once you set your microphone preamplifier levels, it will feed your multi-track recorder consistently regardless of whether your slide faders are being moved up or down.

Now on some other lesser expensive consoles, they may not feature pre-fader or post fader direct outputs. NOW WHAT DO I DO? Well if your board does not have those direct outputs, it may have INSERTS? Of course if you plug a patch cord into your inserts to feed to your multi-track recorder, it would generally interrupt the signal flow from that module channel to your equalizer and mixing bus. WE CAN'T HAVE THAT! How do you workaround that? Well, Radio Shaft used to have a 1/4" to RCA adapter. That adapter has a stereo 1/4" plug where Tip and Ring are shorted together and a female RCA jack for output. The shorted tip and ring allow the mixer to think (if that was possible) that there is nothing plugged into the insert Jack interrupting the signal flow while providing an RCA output that can be patched into the input of your multi-track recorder and voilà! Direct outputs with no interruption of signal flow and pre-fader! Now start making some beautiful multi-track recordings!

Life goes by fast in the audio lane!
Fast woman Remy Ann David

Thanks alot.. Thats what i wanted to here..

Does anyone have any good examples of one of the cheaper high end mixers with Pre-Fader outputs?..

Thanks.

Lilbabyjrsob wrote: ... one of the cheaper high end mixers ...

:-?
It would be a little easier if you just spit out a $$ figure & how many channels you need.
I have an Allen and Heath Mixwizard 16:2. It's a budget mixer, not high end - IMHO, it's a good budget mixer. Figure something over $1000 for a new one. It has direct outs on every channel that can be jumpered to be pre-everything-except-inserts. Moving up the ladder a few thousand, the Midas Venice series has direct outs that can be jumpered to be pre EVERYTHING. I don't think the Venice would be considered "high end" by most folks, but it's a significant step up from the A&H.

i picked up an onyx1620 that has an extra set of outs on db25 connectors that spit balanced outs pre-everything except the gain pots.

it also spits out 16 channels of firewire at up to 24/96 and these sends are pre-everything too. two onyx's can be firewire chained for 32 channels of asio.

i think this is a pretty slick little set up, at least for me. 1620s are around $780, firewire card is $400ish. the 1640 is the same, but with all 16onyx mic pres and 4bus architecture. its around $1575 with firewire.

also, the db25 snakes are usually about 70 bucks per 8 channels to xlr.

yay! more ways to spend yer money!

rob

RemyRAD wrote: Well, Radio Shaft used to have a 1/4" to RCA adapter. That adapter has a stereo 1/4" plug where Tip and Ring are shorted together and a female RCA jack for output. The shorted tip and ring allow the mixer to think (if that was possible) that there is nothing plugged into the insert Jack interrupting the signal flow while providing an RCA output that can be patched into the input of your multi-track recorder and voilà!

Since this isnt the "right" way to get the signal from the mixer to a multitrack recorder, will it be distorted or weakend in any way or will it be just the same as if it were a normal pre-fader output?