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Originally Posted by Bjazzman  so on my mixer there are left, right, and mono bal/unbalced outs. There are 6 aux/monitor outs. there is an alt. 3-4 out left and right. 4 stereo aux. return to master. And one more feature that i don't understand. It says channel access tip=out ring=in For directo out Insert to first click(there are 8 of these) im so confused. which ones would i send to the house and which ones to the firewire interface if i want to record seperate stereo tracks? is this possible? Right now i use my keyboard/bass as a monitor and it would be nice if i could keep that alone in my amp and hear everything else through the house |
OK, just keep sending everything to the house however you've been doing it: either L/R (stereo) or mono, hopefully balanced.
Now set up Auxes 1 and 2 for pre-fader, and patch those to your interface. Make aux1 left and aux2 right, and set the auxes on each instrument the way you want them in your recording. Now you can mix to the house (with the faders) any old way you want to, and the recording will be entirely separate, save the shared EQ for each channel. But it'll be a stereo mix of everything, not a multitrack recording with each instrument on its own track.
Send aux3 to your key/bass amp, set your aux 3 level on whichever channel strip your bass in plugged into, and you're done. If you decide you want to monitor anything else through your amp all you have to do is bring up aux 3 on that channel strip. Are you with me so far? The other way you could monitor keys/bass is by using a DI to the board, and plugging directly into your amp instead. That saves you an aux if you need it for something else.
The insert points are like an EFX loop for each individual channel strip. If you plug all the way in you'd typically use an insert cable, which has both a send and a return on one end (2 plugs), and a single TRS ("stereo") plug on the other end. This usually interrupts the signal between the mic preamp and the EQ section, which lets add compression or outboard EQ or EFX to just that channel. You plug all the way in, and a switch interrupts the signal flow, allowing you to insert extra processing.
But if you want to tap off a channel pre-EQ, pre-fader, say to individual tracks on your interface, you just plug in a MONO cable halfway, which allows the signal to split to two destinations without interrupting the "normal" signal path. Then you'd just set your recording levels right at the interface, assuming it has level controls. This would give you individual mono tracks, which is all many of us use for home recording if we're doing a whole band. If you need individual stereo tracks for each instrument, I can walk you through that, but you'll probably want a bigger mixer at that point -- or even a second one.
The Mackie manual explains all of this a lot better than I did, and of course I left out lots of stuff like monitors for the rest of the band, but at least you can bounce more questions off me if you like.
