Can you have a stereo channel? Record out?

[BrianJ]

Hey guys! I'll be hooking up the D8B at my church this Sunday to use as a live board as the old board they have is having problems. I do have a few questions though...

1. Is there any way to get a stereo signal onto just one fader/channel? We have a desktop PC in the soundbooth that runs the video portion of our service, and we often play videos for the audience from it. So I need to have an input on the D8B for the audio from the computer. It would be nice to have just one channel occupied for this without having to use two faders for this stereo signal.

2. What would be an easy way to have a "record out" channel? On the old board there was a stereo channel dedicated to recording. This is what we used to record the sermon, we ran the "record out" to a Roland handheld recorder and I upload to the internet from that when I get home. I need some way to do this in the D8B...

Thank you for your help!

Brian

[BrianJ]

Still searching for answers...as I was looking though I guess I could use one of the headphones out to go to my Roland recorder so that shouldn't be a problem...

But what about the stereo channel? Any ideas?

Brian

[anyhorizon]

You can assign 2 channels (in fact as many as you want) to be controlled by a group fader. 8 group faders are available if I remember correctly. They reside in the 4th bank. (I'm not by my machine at the moment).

Peter

[BrianJ]

Thanks for the reply Peter! I guess I should have been more specific...

Since this is going to be used at the church, I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible for now...not so much for myself, but for others who may need to use it from time to time. This is a HUGE jump from the Yamaha MG32/fx14 we currently have. The way I had the yamaha set up was that it had channels 29+30 linked to one fader and 31+32 on another...there was physically only one fader on the board for each of those pairs. I used these to connect a laptop or iphone to play a playlist for background music, and the other was hooked permanently to the soundbooth PC. So, for example, the pastor may come over and plug his iphone into the board and play some music he wants, he would just grab the "laptop" fader and set the level. I'd definitely rather not have various people trying to switch between layers to adjust things. Also, there are alot of times that I have to mix a soundtrack from the PC or iphone along with a singers vocal...I would keep one hand on the music and one on the vocal. This wouldn't be possible if the music fader was on the 4th. layer.

I did find out how to link channels so that only one fader needed to be moved...however, it's still neccessary to use up 2 actual channels on the first layer for EACH stereo input. This uses up 4 channels.

I was also looking for more information on the 2-track A, B, and C inputs. I'm a little confused as to what these are actually for...and can these inputs be used for this and somehow routed to a single channel fader?

Brian

[Casey_Pittman]

There are no Stereo channels on the d8b. just mono ones. So to get a stereo signal you will have to use two channels. Or, feed the ipod into a DI that will mono sum a signal and bring that into a single channel. The 2 track A,B,C just inserts a stereo input to the control room out I think. Pretty sure it doesn't send to the main output, but try it I may be wrong. Also there is no level control for the two track inputs. This may need to be something you supervise until they get their board back. For the record out Id say use the nearfeild or main output then you can control what goes to the recorder. Or use the studio output. Or send everything to an aux at post fader then send that. There are quite a few creative ways to get outputs from the d8b.

-Casey

[Crash]

You could do what Peter said with a virtual group from bank 4 to control a stereo set of linked channels. To get by the bank switching, you can put the virtual group from bank 4 on any bank you want. Via the GUI, under the aux sends where a channel is listed, you can access a drop down that allows you to move a channel to the that channel. I may not be typing it right but I have done it many times in a live situation. In V5.1 you can also vertically stack stereo inputs though I always found this odd since I am old school. In essence, channel 1 and 25 are a stereo pair, 2 and 26, and so on. You need to read up on it in the manual for the details. So when you move channel 1, channel 25 follows it. This takes careful consideration with your input patching. Just some more options.

Casey has you covered on stereo outs. There is also XLR and 1/4 inch outs so if one of those if it is open, hit 'em. I like the idea of the studio out so you have independent level control.

[BrianJ]

wow, great ideas guys! I just got done installing the board at church, everything went pretty smooth except the CPU fan all of a sudden started making an awful noise, so I had to put in a replacement. Everything sounded great though once it was up and running. I like the idea of stcking tracks on different layers, that would let me reclaim the two extra tracks back on the first layer, and I like the studio out to rec so level can be controlled...thanks guys!