c'mon.. someone must have some input for such a basic question.

Is simple what you are asking. The 4 bus output is for when you want to mix multiple microphones together and feed them in a combined state to a single input channel on your recorder.

For more than 4 outputs, you should use all of your insert jacks as discreet individual outputs, as many outputs as you want to feed inputs to your standalone recorder. If you're trying to monitor through the console and audio is cut off when you plug a quarter inch monaural connector into the insert, you may need a stereo connector that shorts the tip to the ring (the Mono plug will short the ground to the return input, causing no audio). In this way you will still get your output from the insert and the adapter plug will continue to send audio through to the summing mixing bus of the console. It's that simple.

Conversely, if you use a standard insert stereo quarter-inch plug, you will find that at the end of the cable one is the output from the preamplifier and the other connector is the return to the summing mixing bus. With this setup you could patch your multitrack recorder through so that you would in essence the tracking to the multitrack while monitoring the multitrack output through the remainder of the consoles circuitry. This is the way " in line consoles" are used.

Now if you wanted to add things like a compressor before it gets to the recorders input, you would simply catch your compressor in through your insert, taking the compressor's output into the recorders input. Then of course the recorders output fed back to the inserts return for full monitoring capabilities. So the other device you may wish to purchase is a patch Bay.

Now you are ready to record your hits! Merry Christmas!

Ms. Remy Ann David

alright, thanks for that info! I was reading up on patch bays, thinking about getting one but it might not really be needed. i understood some of what you said but there are a few points that you kinda lost me. you see, the exact thing i'm doing right now is recording my own songs completely by myself from the ground up, starting with drums of course.. the way i'm doing it, i'm routing each drum channel (overhead l, overhead r, snare, kick) to its own subgroup and running the subgroup outputs in to their own track on my recording unit. This way works great for doing what i've been doing up until now..

Aside from my solo projects i've got a band that i play with and i've decided i wanna record some of our live shows, and actually come out with some quality recordings, which will work as long as i can get usage out of 8 tracks on that adat at once with the board i'm using. the subgroup out method is not going to serve me well for recording live shows because i won't be able to mix anything properly. a few things are going to have to be stuck together on one track for an eternity and i won't have full control over the mix and that sort of goes against what i ultimately intend to do..

..and i don't really know what you meant by 'discreet individual outputs'? and i got lost in that whole mono/stereo bit that came next.. hmm.. i guess i might as well just bring it down to this question: is there any plain and simple straight forward way to send what's happening on an individual channel on my board straight to its own track on my adat recording unit? sorry if i don't really fully get your answer, but i just expected it to come out sounding really simple and now it's starting to become really confusing.. lol.

Merry Christmas all!

Yes your understand part of what I said. The basics are your "inserts" can become discreet individual outputs. This makes possible the ability to feed 8 separate tracks from 8 separate channel strips and their associated microphone inputs, to your recorder for 8 simultaneous tracks of recording. But this way you could only utilize 8 channel strips to 8 tracks. This is somewhat restrictive.

Personally, for your purposes, I would suggest, if it is financially viable, one of those Mackie, Alesis, Tascam manufactured 24 track hard disc multitrack recorders. Depending on the manufacturer you can obtain one for as little as $1,300.00! Truly phenomenal! I would recommend getting one that has at least 2 hard disk drive bays. These utilize inexpensive over-the-counter IDE computer disk drives. Not only does it allow you 24 tracks of recording but a myriad of virtual tracks!

If you connect this type of recorder with its associated inputs and outputs through the inserts of your audio board, you have effectively created a multitrack, in-line recording facility, with 24 in, 24 out, 24 mix to 2. A patch bay would be handy but you would certainly need quite a bit of cabling so as to be able to " interrupt" the insert so that makes hybrid mixing (assuming an analog function) you could include various other outboard processing i.e. compressors, equalizer's, time delay devices, reverbs on a per track insert. The ability to use effects sends to those effects devices, is not affected for overall effects in mix down.

Another way to expand your current capabilities are to take those 4 bus outputs to your first 4 recorder inputs. Then, depending on how many effects sends you have, assuming you have at least 4 of them, you could then take 4 of them into your other recorder inputs 5 through 8. In Essence this gives you the other 4 buses your console doesn't have, into your recorder except that rather than on push buttons, they are on volume controls. In this way, you could have up to a full console of inputs, say 24 and be able to selectively mix and route those 24 to the available 8 inputs on your recorder, in any way. That is where a patch Bay to allow you to patch your effects sends to effects or to your other 4 recorder inputs.

With those hard disc multitrack recorders, it gives you the option of mixing down through your analog console to a 2 track input on your computer or CD burner and/or to remove those digital multi-tracks hard disks and connect them through an external optional device that would allow you to "dump" your data tracks into your computer for a purely automated computer mix!

Does this make things any clearer??

Remy which way did I go David

yes, that does make things clearer. I was looking at the Alesis HD24 a while back.. too bad i don't have the money to get more equipment right now :x .. but oh well, the ADAT has served me well in the past and is more than capable of tiding me over until I can afford to move up. Anyways, thanks for all the advice and what not, I appreciate the help.

No problem! I'm full of it! (Good advice that is and the other)

Hope you have a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and certainly a safe New Year's!

Remy Ann David

Heeser--
Welcome to the world of learning how to patch a mixer. First of all, I want you to know that you need to spend a little time learning what the hell you're doing. This isn't necessarily an easy situation to solve, but it's definately solvable and the answer should be fairly obvious after doing a little RTFM.

First thing you need to do is to learn how a frigging mixer works. What all the little knobs and buttons do and why. I assume you just looked at the "studio wiring method" diagram in your manual and stopped there. Read more.

Next step I want you to take is that I want you to go and get a pair of your mother's pantyhose. No, don't wear them the normal way. Put them on your head. Now sit cross-legged on the floor, hold your mixer in your lap and repeat the phrase, "I am heeser and I will learn the way of the bus" over and over until it sinks in. Do it. Seriously.

Once you've taken this journey of self-realization you are ready for the secrets of patching. You probably SHOULD invest in a patch bay. But don't buy a Behringer one.

Remy's idea of using your insert jacks as direct outs is a fine one. However, what you're going to realize is that now all you have is a rack of 8 mic pres that don't have any controls on them. You won't be able to use your gain pots or any of your channel controls, should you want to do so while tracking. You may or may not want to use any of these controls, but what you will probably run into, especially with this mixer, is that you will overload some of your ADAT channels. Particularly on something like a kick drum. So, after a quick perusal of the manual for your mixer, I suggest the following:

Route subgroups 1-4 to ADAT channels 1-4 like you probably have them now. If you only needed to record four tracks at once you'd be done here because ADAT inputs are normallized such that anything on input 1 also appears on input 4 (I think) if no cable is present at 4's input. It's either 1 goes to 4 and 2 goes to 5 and so forth, or 1 goes to 2 and 3 goes to 4 etc. Anyway, you want more than 4 inputs at once, so this ain't gonna get it.

Next, route the main output LEFT to ADAT 5 and the main output RIGHT to ADAT 6. For these first six inputs you can use your channel routing buttons to route signal to any of these ADAT channels. Make sure you have the "LEFT" and "RIGHT" buttons DEACTIVATED on your subgroup master section.

What about channels 7 and 8?? Notice on your channels that you have two knobs labelled "Aux 1" and "Aux 2". You'll find main outputs (and main volume controls) for these buses in your master section. Route the output from Aux 1 to ADAT 7 and from Aux 2 to ADAT 8. On each mixer channel will be a button marked "pre" with a line going to the knobs for the auxes. You can approach this two ways. First, you could set the auxes on each channel to be "pre fader" (by depressing the "pre" button). In this case, to route signal to ADATs 7 or 8 you would drop that channel's fader all the way down and turn up the appropriate aux knob to get the desired signal level. You could also leave the auxes post fader and route signal by deactivating all the routing buttons (1-2, 3-4 and main) and then increasing the appropriate aux knob to get appropriate signal level. Keep in mind in this case that both the fader AND the aux knob will affect the output level, so I recommend using the auxes set to pre-fader as it will make life easier. In all cases, make sure you've got the master knobs for Aux 1 & 2 set to unity.

To monitor everything at once, use the headphone/control room output from your mixer to a stereo power amp and make sure you depress all the routing buttons beside the level control for this output. I even suggest you depress the "CD/Tape" button so that you can line a CD player into your mixer through the RCA inputs to listen to reference discs without any odd repatching. To make this work you're going to need a TRS to two TS 1/4" cable. You can buy a standard insert cable to do this. It should be obvious how to hook it up. Remember that the ring connector is the right channel and the tip connector is the left one.

If this doesn't make sense, put the pantyhose back on your head and chant some more.

~S

I think that the TheRealShotgun has indicated something very significant regarding the pantyhose. It works great! Especially at preventing microphone pop and blasts. Although I find it much more effective to put the pantyhose into a needlework frame and then mount that in front of the microphone. Although I do like the idea of putting it over your head, it would be much better if you use your girlfriend's pantyhose that already had some good smell to it! And then repeat " I want to make a CD. I want to make a CD. I want to make a CD" and then try clicking your heels together repeatedly. Pay no attention to the man behind the shotgun.

Remy Ann David
I found the Wizard of Oz E Osborne!