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what part of my mixing desk (firewire) do i plug a headphone amp into?

-dave

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Kapt.Krunch Tue, 12/19/2006 - 05:39

Depends on how you already have things connected.

By your recent post, I'm guessing you are referring to an Alesis Multimix?

I am going to guess that you record through the mixer to the computer, and monitor and listen back from the computer through the Alesis?

It's possible that you have amp/speakers (or powered speakers) connected to the main out?

That leaves you with monitor outs (according to the sales info). Consult the Alesis manual for how those are handled. It's possible that the monitor outs are pre-master fader, and possibly post-channels? If that's the case, you will be eliminating the master gain stage to feed into the headphone amp, which is good. That means you may be able to control the volume of your speakers and headphones relatively separately. But you may not be able to really control individual elements of the mix separately. What goes out the mains basically is the same mix as the monitor outs, unless each channel strip has some level control to the monitor outs?

It MAY also be possible to feed it out of the the AUX outs. Let's say you have your mix to record and playback through the speakers as you like. If each channel has a path to the AUX bus, and has a level control to feed into it, you MAY be able to send each strip channel to the AUX at their own mix level, and send that to the headphone amp. BUT, if the AUX send is mono (probably), and you have only one (probably)....you won't be able to do that in stereo. If it had two AUX sends, you could always send each strip to, say, AUX1 for left, AUX2 for right, or both for stereo, if the mixer has the capability with possibly two level controls. Also, some mixers MAY even have the capacity to do this pre- or post-(channel) fader, EQ, etc. Check the manual.

It's possible, also, to take the signal you are recording and route it through the AUX alone. Being as how you may want to record a dry signal without effects, but you might want to play with some, say, reverb, you could run the AUX out through a reverb, whatever, and then to the headphone amp? That would depend on the headphone amp. If the headphone amp has at least two sets of inputs that you can balance out with input volume control, then you could run the mix out the Alesis monitor out, left and right, and possibly run the dry guitar out the AUX, apply mono or stereo effects, and mix that in at the volume you like. That would give you the freedom to futz with the guitar effects as much as you want, and with levels in the AUX and through the headphone amp without affecting the dry recorded signal. Of course, if you WANT to use effects in the recording, then you would have to run them before the mixer inputs, because this would use up the AUX output that may have otherwise been used to run an insert effect like reverb, delay, etc.

As always, correct me if I got something wrong. There's probably a few other things that I haven't considered. :wink:

Good luck,

Kapt.Krunch