Mackie d8b in a hybrid setup

[Crash]

Hey Y-my-R;
The other gear is
Lexicaon 300
Yamaha, SPX 990, SPX 900, SPX 90 (modified for balanced I/O.
DBX 160, and 166x
5 Syntech Compressors
1 WardBeck Audio Distrobution rack (8 DA's with 8 O/P each)
2 Valley People Balanced/Unbalance interface boxes.
1 CD Player (Yes my preferred media)
Bryston Amps in the background for headphones and subs.
1 WardBeck Extended Range VU meter (Very handy for setting exact levels).

Cheers to patching
Bruce

The Lexicon 300 is such an underated beast. I still have one in my rack as well.

[Bruce Graham]

So true Crash... But I feel like I need training to make it work! Or perhaps I'm just OLD.

It sounds so amazing! I have used it to delay audio to match Video (Satalite up link delay), when we did Simolcasts (TV pictures, Stereo Audio on radio...yes this was before stereo TV), it was still 20 to 20 after 5 seconds of delay and no added noise nor reduction in Dynamioc Range! Amazing

But it's like driving a 747! Gotta tell ya!

Cheers
Bruce

[zetell]

Thanks for all the replies guys!
I have thought I had the understanding of a patchbay, but some of you have definitely made me have a deeper look into the possibilities using them.

As for now, I will have to start out with the options a have available at the moment
And one of the things I DO have is the ALT I/O slot which contains(as mentioned in the opening post) an OPT-8 card which I still hope I can use to route 8 tracks (which is any chosen 8 tracks coming into the d8b from the tape machine) to my DAW via the ADAT Input on my interface.
As far as I understand from some of the posts here this will be possible. It's just a matter of routing the assigned tracks to the ALT Outputs?

[Mike Rivers]

And one of the things I DO have is the ALT I/O slot which contains(as mentioned in the opening post) an OPT-8 card which I still hope I can use to route 8 tracks (which is any chosen 8 tracks coming into the d8b from the tape machine) to my DAW via the ADAT Input on my interface.

You can assign the tape return channel outputs to buses 1-8, then assign buses 1-8 to the ALT I/O card outputs. There may be a simpler way to do it but it doesn't occur to me at the moment (I'm just a baby d8b user at this point).

Using the buses might be an advantage if you have a few tracks that you're going to be mixing anyway. If you can decide on that mix, perhaps a layering of a few keyboards or a background vocal mix, you can send that mix to a bus or two if stereo, and it'll be ready to go on the recorder.

[zetell]

And one of the things I DO have is the ALT I/O slot which contains(as mentioned in the opening post) an OPT-8 card which I still hope I can use to route 8 tracks (which is any chosen 8 tracks coming into the d8b from the tape machine) to my DAW via the ADAT Input on my interface.

You can assign the tape return channel outputs to buses 1-8, then assign buses 1-8 to the ALT I/O card outputs. There may be a simpler way to do it but it doesn't occur to me at the moment (I'm just a baby d8b user at this point).

Using the buses might be an advantage if you have a few tracks that you're going to be mixing anyway. If you can decide on that mix, perhaps a layering of a few keyboards or a background vocal mix, you can send that mix to a bus or two if stereo, and it'll be ready to go on the recorder.

Perfect Mike. That is exactly the kind of solution I was looking for! Or at least, hoping was possible.
Will try this tonight then.

[Y-my-R]

Glad you found a solution that works for you, Zetell. And yeah... you should be able to route the same signal from the D8B to multiple destinations such as the Buss that can be set up to go out the Alt I/O card, so that should work just fine.

Somehow I thought you would ideally want the full track count from the D8B or tape machine to be duplicated to your computer, and since you used analog I/O cards in the Tape slots, a few patchbays with a half-normalled setup would do the trick. But I guess I went a little overboard and off on a tangent as so often, haha

Bruce, that setup at the TV station sounds absolutely crazy! I only got to visit the audio department at a TV station once (regional TV called "Bayerischer Rundfunk" in the South of Germany/Munich). I remember starring at a large square Matrix-Patchbay that was in one of their walls of racks, not being able to wrap my head around how it works at the time.
I really liked the vibe in that place though - and they were running live-broadcasts while I was visiting. Seemed really stressful, but exiting.

I can only imagine how crazy it must have been to do the Y2K event live... I was just waiting for planes to drop out of the sky on that date, but luckily, none of that happened

[Bruce Graham]

Hey Y-my-R;
It was a busy show.
I worked for the nationa Broadcaster CBC, (Canadian Broacasting Corperation), which was modeled after the BBC, and we couldn't believe the HYPE that was generated by the media "The Sky is falling, all the computers aregoing crash".

We, the broadcast tech, and the engineers had date date tests on on the computers that fell under outr domain, like Inrecoms, Audio Consoles, Editing systems, etc. No biggie, no probelm the 1999 becames 2000. The IT departemt would hear nothing of it and went and swapped out computers so they would by Y2K compliant!

So they took the "286 computers (remember them), that ran our $750,000.00 Neve VR consoles, and put in Pentium Compters. Guess what, we didn't have workng consoles any more. The 286 was required! No problem just go get them out of the garbage and install them!

Well it seemed they could find the 286's so had to speand BIOG BUCKS to find used ones to replace the ones they could find! After that IT HAD to talk talk to Operations and Engineering prior to upgrading!

BTW we had drawing for the entire facility that laid out where every patch point was in our entire building right down to Floor, Room, Rack and row. You could plan an entire setup from the drawings.

Each control Room had a set of Audio, Video, Time Code, Intercom drawings (3 feet by 4 feet). Usually 15 drawings per Studio. Bigger studio's, more drawing.

I did a drawing for my patching before I solder a single wire.

Cheers
Bruce

[Mike Rivers]

Bruce, that setup at the TV station sounds absolutely crazy! I only got to visit the audio department at a TV station once (regional TV called "Bayerischer Rundfunk" in the South of Germany/Munich). I remember starring at a large square Matrix-Patchbay that was in one of their walls of racks, not being able to wrap my head around how it works at the time.

In the late 1970s, I interviewed for a job at Voice of America. They had a "modernization" project about to start and needed some people who could manage the contractors that would be doing the work. At the time they had this big room with racks and racks of relays as their routing switcher. Slightly more modern (and more trouble-prone) than patch cables and jacks. That was all enclosed in glass, with about 30 workstations surrounding it. The plan was for all of that to be replaced by a computer and a fairly small rack of cards.

I decided that the job would be boring and didn't pursue it, but that's as close to broadcasting (for work) as I got.

[zetell]

Glad you found a solution that works for you, Zetell. And yeah... you should be able to route the same signal from the D8B to multiple destinations such as the Buss that can be set up to go out the Alt I/O card, so that should work just fine.

Somehow I thought you would ideally want the full track count from the D8B or tape machine to be duplicated to your computer, and since you used analog I/O cards in the Tape slots, a few patchbays with a half-normalled setup would do the trick. But I guess I went a little overboard and off on a tangent as so often, haha ........

Hehe, no problem. Easy to get carried away during technical discussions
Ideally I would like to be able to duplicate all 24 tracks in one go, but as mentioned earlier, this will have to be considered at a later stage.

Anyway, during the weekend I had some time to test the method by assigning the tracks from the tape machine to the 8 buses via the ALT Inputs/Outputs. By assigning one track per bus I was able to get a duplicate of them into Cubase as separate tracks. This of course meant I had to do this operation three times (24 tracks, 8 tracks each time), but I don't see that as a major problem at the moment.

[captainamerica]

nice setup Bruce,,,like the lights in the patch-bays