Let me see if I can touch on this a bit...

You shouldn't need the groups as you are recording to DAW. Any sub-busing you'll need will come at mix and it'll be all digital at that point...Y/N? Yes the imaging will be dependant on the pan controls and no there shouldnt be a summing problem when set up like this. Your faders would control each section in the group independantly, while the stereo pair would control the output of the summed group of eight.....Clear???Mud???

PFL/AFL....Pre fader listen and after fader listen...Activated by the solo switches on each channel...the SIP(solo-in-place) is also part of this monitoring system. I use mine with the SIP button on all the time as this mutes all the other tracks when I solo up a single track.

You dont plug a high-end preamp into a channel of the Ghost, you would be defeating the purpose of the high-end preamp. You send the high-end pre to a channel of the recorder directly and monitor the output through the channel of the Ghost. The preamp then becomes your sole means of level control to the track.ALWAYS think "SHORT" when considering the path to the recording device. The shorter the better.

The midimute feature is only really handy at mixdown when you want to automate all the mutes for a track. Muting particular instruments when they arent needed in a recording greatly decreases the noise floor, helps some sounds to stick out better, and enables the mixer to have more of an effect on the arrangement of the music. The midi mute system on the Ghost will not recognize some types of midi machine control language and tends to be a PITA most of the time. If youre mixing on your computer you'll never need this function. It will do nothing for you at tracking.

How'd I do?

Not to hijack, but I have frequently wondered about adding a high-end preamp, in a similar situation. So, am I correct in understanding the pre should not go IN through the board at all, only be monitored OUT? Makes sense now that you mention it Dave! ANDY

Dave, thanks for your input. I wanted to respond earlier but my email was down. As to groups, I didn't quite understand you. Basically we use Sonar and mix through the ghost. If I bus instruments together in Sonar (for example Drums on one bus, guitars on another, bass...keys... orchestral... percussion) I will end up with about 10 stereo buses within sonar. If I then route each stereo bus to two channels of the ghost then I would take up channels 1-20. If I do not do any further grouping in the Ghost and leave the groups faders all the way down, does this give the same summing effect as using ghost groups? I guess my question is this: Does grouping the 24 channels into the 4 stereo groups have the same effect as leaving the 24 channels without grouping?

As to the advice of NOT using a ghost channel when using a high end mic pre but instead routing to the soundcard, I will definately follow this advice.

Regarding midi mute, when we mix we generally do all the muting in Sonar, so will probably not use the solo or mutes with midi on the ghost. I am assuming of course that there will be no "silence" coming through the ghost channels. I still have to get my head around the whole midi part of the ghost. Right now when I switch the ghost on, channels 1-5 are muted. Is there a way of resetting this?

Dave, once again, thank you for your help on this. We really appreciate this. It is all for my wife who is a producer. She is almost blind so depends on me for setting up things. Once set up, she flies!

Christopher