Using an analog board in a digital recording setup

[chitek]

I have a Mackie 24x4 VLZ pro that I have been using for more than a year. I use it along with Logic Audio. To this day I still feel like I don't have the board and my digital recording stuff setup to use to its full potential. Do any of you guys have any ideas on what would be a good way to setup these two types of gear? How could I use my board and my Logic Audio computer together? I actually have two computers, one for recording and one for sequencing. I have a couple of patch bays and my recording computer has two ins and eight outs. I do use it now but I just want some ideas on other ways to set everything up.

[jedijeffp]

In my opinion our main issue right now is lack of inputs to your recording cmoputer. I would recommend looking at a bigger audio input device, such as the M-Audio FireWire 1814.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...1814-main.html

You can then use the submix buses on the Mackie to submix your drums into a single track, Rhythem Guitars and keyboards into a single track, and background vocals into a stereo track., Use a TS cable plugged 1/2 way into the insert jack as a direct out on channels like lead vocal and bass guitar to run them as separate tracks on the M-Audio unit. You should easily be able to do 8 analog tracks this way. The MIDI IO should also allow communication with the sequencer you use. Hope this is useful.

Jeff

[Peter]

ya, i was in a very simliar situation. Do a quick search for computer recording arround here and it a whole thread is arround on options about recording to a computer. Just this weekend I bought a Presonus Firepod 10 in - 10 out computer interface to record alot of stuff at once. When I had only two or four chanels to work with, I would try to create a good sounding mix in one of my aux sends (dont know if your board has those) and record 2 of them (with different inputs on each track) (one to the right and one to the left of my sterio line in on my computer).

The biggest tweak I had to keep in mind was getting the levels right between how loud my aux send was and how much I amplified it in the computer. Getting that right would make or break the recording, with the signal eather peaking out, or being too faint (and the slight hiss of my computer's input taking over).