Submitted by anonymous on Wed, 11/21/2001 - 05:43

With the Digi 001 system, are you limited to mixing onboard, or is there a way to get all 24 tracks out to an external mixer (analog or digital)? Sorry if this is a "duh" question, I'm very new to HD recording and wanted to be sure I hadn't missed something.

Thanks!

-Mark

Comments

Greendestiny, I have a pair of AW4416's, which I have digitally cascaded. I have lightpipe cards in them (Waves Y56K / MY8-AT), and those are connected to a digital patchbay, as is the lightpipe I/O of the Digi 001.

I can transfer tracks into or out of Pro Tools LE using the lightpipe. You have to set the software to get the word clock sync off of the incoming lightpipe, and get MTC from the AW's MTC out port (set the AW to generate MTC as the MTC master) and PTLE to be the MTC slave (Project Settings lets you adjust the Start time). Lockup time is quite fast - a couple seconds max. Sync is rock solid, and the transfers work perfectly. If you use the S/PDIF connections too, you can digitally transfer up to ten tracks in either direction in a single pass.

Add a MY8-AD24 card and you can use the Digi's analog outputs to feed another 8 channels into the AW4416 at mixdown time, for a total of 18 channels - the maximum individual I/O the Digi 001 supports (I'm assuming you'll want to use the AW's mixer instead of mixing everything in PT).

If you DO want to use the AW's mixer, you can submix some things to various output pairs in PTLE to get around the "24 tracks but only 18 I/O's" problem. For example, background vocals - you have six tracks... submix them to a stereo output pair and assign those two channels to two AW inputs / faders.

AW4416 OS version 2.0 adds MIDI CC capabilities to the AW4416... this means that you can program the AW4416 faders to send / rcv. MIDI CC data to control PTLE's faders from the AW's hardware faders. I've been meaning to program a AW4416 fader "template" for use with PTLE (I have a Tascam US-428 which I use in JL Cooper CS-10 emulation mode for that purpose now) but I have not gotten around to it yet.

Anyway, with a 8 channel lightpipe card, the S/PDIF connections and a 8 channel analog in card and your AW (and a Digi 001) you have a total of 34 discrete tracks on your AW at mixdown - each with its own moving fader, 4 band EQ, dynamics processing, etc. - PLUS whatever processing / editing you want to do within PT. Pretty powerful system IMO. If you want to do some submixing, you can get a total of 40 tracks with just one AW. Yes, I wish you could use multiple Digi 001's on a single machine, and that PTLE supported 32 tracks, but with the AW, you have additional power and those limitations are not nearly as crippling as they are for people who have just the Digi 001 and nothing else.

Hope this helps...

Thanks David - I actually WISH I could take "credit" for that, but it was a "gift" from a friend of mine (the mighty KHAN, the TRUE master of the graemlin, for those of you who ever visit musicplayer.com). He had posted it one day, and I, because of my USMC background, said "gotta have that", to which he said - smileys have free will - they sometimes choose YOU. So, if you feel the desire, help yourself and feel free to use it. ;)

Semper Fi!