Point A to Point B Help

[1manband]

OK, Im not really a newbie to home recording, but am a newbie to this forum, its my first post. Hopefully i will not bore you all with my question that you have all heard many times before im sure. Basically I just upgraded all of my gear and commitment to home recording and am having trouble just connecting all the new stuff. Lets start with what I have and go from there; I am using a fostex 1840 mixer (4 BUS), a alesis adat xt 8 track, and a home computer for mixdown (I GUESS), and a few pieces of outboard gear, multieffects, compressor, the usual stuff. My problem is that i know how to run the 4 busses from the mixer to the adat, but when i want to go back and put down another track (#5), do i need to unplug one of the inputs on the adat, move it over and plug it in to another input? and so on for the remaining 3 tracks? Do you understand my question? If i had a 8 bus mixer going into a 8 track adat, i would have no problem right? Ok, next question; What do i do with the 8 outputs from the adat? run them back into the board for adding of effects? If so, do they then go back again to adat, only with effects on them now? i have no clue, how do i get the whole process down to 2 tracks(stereo) to put into my computer to burn(with mixing software) and burn on to a cd? I realize this is a whopper, but i know someone out there will love to walk me through all of this mess. If not, does anybody out there wanna buy some home recording gear?

[Son of Mixerman]

One thing that would simplifiy your life tremendously is called a patchbay. It allows you to have a panel much like old telephone operators that allow you to send nearly anything anywhere you want. It can ger fairly complex. On a 18 channel board and your running only 8 tracks of ADAT you can use 8 direct outs to the recorder, use another 8 for returns ans the last 2 for effects returns. I don't know anything about the back panel of your console, but patchbays are really handy.

SoMm

[1manband]

thank you for the advice, but unfortunately it only added more questions to my list. You say that using a patchbay i could run eight direct outs to the adat? What exactly are the direct outs? do you mean the in/out on each channell? or the insert? or is that the same thing? Then you suggested i use another 8 channels for return from the adat. I have no idea why i do this, can you explain what you mean?(the adat has 8 outs on the back). is the reason for this playback? and adding effects? Then you suggest using the remaining 2 tracks of my board for effects. Can you explain that to me, i thought you can use only efx send/return, and maybee an aux send or two to add effects? see, i am out of my element a tad and still need enlightenment. But thanx so much for the advice, please keep it coming.