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I have a really easy question. I have an M-Audio Delta Audiophile 192 sound card with:
Main Input (connects to mixer)
Main Output (sound before it gets to my software)
Monitor Output (the sound after software)

I have a Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer with:
Main Out
Tape In/Out
Stereo Aux Return
Control Room Out (going to my monitor speakers)

My question...which inputs/outputs on the mixer should be used to connect to my sound card? Should Main In/Out on my soundcard go to Tape In/Out on the mixer? Does Monitor Out on my soundcard go to Stereo Aux Return?

Thanks a ton in advance.

Comments

anonymous Fri, 05/30/2008 - 05:51

It sounds like you've got it pretty much figured out. As Greener alluded to, and as you probably know, the gear you have is not the best, but is adequate for getting started in the world of recording.

If it were me, I would connect:
Mixer Mains -> balanced sound card in (so you can use pan to select the channel to record)
Sound card monitor out -> stereo channel (To take advantage of it being balanced)
I wouldn't bother with the Main Output of the sound card. To keep it simple, keep everything on the computer.

-Steve

anonymous Fri, 05/30/2008 - 06:34

I jumped in there too quickly with that reply. After giving it some thought, you are going to run into a problem of not being able to separate your recording mix from your backing track mix when multi-tracking.

When I was first getting started, I used a board with two pre-fader aux sends for the recording mix, and used the main bus for the headphone mix. The post fader FX send on your board would work as a record input, and then you still have the main mix for the headphones/monitors. That only gives you one channel to record, but it would work.

You could get a board with 4 Aux sends, or 4 channels with inserts.

Another option is to go directly from your sound card out to your monitors. Then you can use the left and right main out on the mixer to record.

anonymous Fri, 05/30/2008 - 14:54

I decided to just connect Main Out on my mixer to my sound card and connect my monitors to Monitor Out on the card. I'm not going to loop back to the mixer. The mixer couldn't differentiate between my instrument and the loop back from the sound card...I got feedback. Anyway, it works just fine now as long as I enable Input Monitoring within my DAW. I have to turn down the "internal monitor volume" on the m-audio control panel when I want to hear my DAW or else I will hear pre-DAW as well as post-DAW sound. Eh, good enough for me. It still sounds great and I can do up to 24bit/192khz

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