New setup, thoughts?

kama

kama

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I've been working for ages with a 2in 2out PCI card. Just now picked up a Firewire Alesis thing with 8/8 physical io. I've been trying to figure out how to best use it in my existing setup.

I have a Yamaha 12 ch mixer that used to work as the central thing in the setup (all audio sources go through it, and it feeds the monitors). Do you lot think there would be any use to hook up the mixer as an outboard summing thing, to have 3 buses going from the interface outputs to the mixer and then back as 2 channels into the interface (with the interface feeding the monitors)?

The mixer isn't very high class, but I've liked how the gains work the sound when OD'd a little.. Am I just dreaming of something that isn't very useful on cheap mixers or could it actually be useful in the last mix stage?

I mean, should I keep the mixer and try to incorporate it somehow or just sell it off...
 
Great question. I'm guessing you picked up the Alesis MultiMix 8? Nice bit of kit there.

If I'm understanding you right, the signal chain would like something like this: CPU/DAW > Alesis Firewire >SEND>Yamaha>RETURN>Alesis Firewire>CPU/DAW

If I were in your shoes, my two concerns would be:
1. How much (if any) signal degradation would occur as a result of going D/A to A/D and back to D/A.
2. How much (if any) coloring of the signal would occur due to the different internal components (pre-amps, etc.) of each respective mixer.

I say try it out, keeping your gain values a bit low to allow for some headroom throughout the signal chain.

Worse case scenario: it sounds like shit. Best case scenario: you discover a lovely benefit of utilizing two mixers.
 
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