M7CL and Presonus Lightpipe

[matthewah]

Has anyone used an MY-16 ADAT card on a Yamaha M7CL mixer to a Presonus Lightpipe? How well has it worked for you? My goal is to record 16 channels, then play back those channels through the ADAT card to individual channels on the mixer for teaching purposes. Can this be done with this equipment?

[bladeaudio]

Yes, this should work. I use the My-16 ADAT card in a DM2000 to record and playback just like you are describing.

[matthewah]

What do you use to record with? Do you use it to teach people?

[bladeaudio]

I use Reaper. I've used it to train people yes, it works well. Just be sure and save your routing though, because you will need a new input routing to send the ADAT channels to faders, vs. the actual mic inputs. Once you have these two settings saved though, its easy enough to jump between them.

I actually record/playback 24 tracks, using an extra ADAT i/o on the waves card we have loaded in our DM2000.

[matthewah]

Has anyone else used this method to train people? How well does it work for you? Pros and Cons?

[Furfu0008]

I do this exact method for training and it has been fantastic! people have been able to mix entire live worship sets and mess with them for hours. even doing a fake sound check. The people that have extensive knowledge, have enjoyed this as for they are passionate about it and dont always have frequent gigs to mix on or service's to serve at. Same with the newbies. They learn and are fast/familiar with the board in a matter of weeks. We mix on the house system and its just awesome. Highly encourage this method.

Cheers!

[daver2]

We use MY-16AT cards on our LS9-32 and they seem to work OK. We use a fairly cheap and cheerful card on the PC (Marian Marc-A I think) which I am not too happy with. Reaper was the only product we tried that worked in more than two tracks. Audacity (even rebuilt with the Steinberg ASIO SDK) wasn't too impressive with the Marian card.

Brilliant idea about multitrack recording onto the PC and playing back for training - never thought about that! We are doing some training for nubies in a couple of weeks so I feel like having a go with this.

Thanks for the kickstart guys...

Dave

[Gracetech]

I've done this with my Motu 2408Mk2 using both Reaper and Nuendo. Both software's work great and at the low low price of free Reaper really excels.

BTW you can do this on any Yamaha professional mixer out there with a free card slot. The setup to change from analog inputs to ADAT inputs is the only hard task. I usually setup two identical scenes with the different patching and then if i like a Setting i will save it to the library and recall it on the other scene.

crt

[matthewah]

Thought I should bring this topic back up and ask someone who knows about this set up. Is it true that when you playback your recording into the M7CL that it will be post HA and HPF? If this is the case, then it will be hard to train people completely using this method of recording and playback. Has anyone found away around this?

[Gracetech]

I know it's post HA but the HPF is in the eq section so i'm guessing pre HPF. Gain can easily be taught with a band on stage so i wouldn't consider it critical to the learning stage. I consider mixing, blending, and processing to be the bigger concerns when training.

crt

[matthewah]

Do you teach this way or have you seen this set up before Gracetech?

[Gracetech]

I do more training on LS9, DM2000, and PM5D consoles then i do with M7. The only time i trained with tracks i plugged them into the analog inputs. Now i have hooked up to ADAT inputs when they where available on the other boards since my Motu/Nuendo rig can output either analog, TDIF, or ADAT. It all depends upon how the system is setup as to what i use. For training purposes i tend to keep the channel count small so it's generally between 8 to 16 channels.

When training i find the most deficient area is in EQ followed by mix construction. All the Processing is cream on the cake and Gain structure isn't hard to understand especially in the Digital domain.

One of the tricks i teach with Gain structure is to get it as hot as possible. In the Digital domain you are adding noise when you don't get the signal hot enough for the A/D conversion. Also you will run into issues with Aviom gain structure as well if your pre's are not hot enough. It's easy to tell someone to crank the gain until it turns red and then back it down a bit. If you like to mix at unity then you will usually find an attenuator somewhere in the channel strip signal path(usually in the EQ section). Turn down that knob and set your fader at unity then bring it back up to desired loudness and you are set.

crt