Help Hooking Up Alesis 16

[TTG]

First of all, this is my first post. I hope I'm in the right place for questions regarding the Alesis MultiMix16 Firewire.

I'm new to all this as well.
I just received the unit. The manual is not all that clear to me.
I"ve got it connected to my laptop via firewire and using Cubase LE.
Do my monitor speakers go hooked up to the sound card and not the mixer. If so, does that mean I need some type of interface as the sound card has only one input. I assumed that monitors were hook up to the mixer but I'm being told that is not correct.

Can anyone help in layperson terms.

Thanks in advance.

[ErichS]

You shouldn't need your computer on-board sound at all (at least not for recording and mixing purposes). Your MultiMix is a mixer and audio interface in one box. All you need to supply is a recording medium (your computer hard drive in this case).

If your monitors have their own power, you should hook them to either the CTRL RM or MAIN MIX outs. If your monitors don't have power you would need to hook either of the above mentioned outputs on the MultiMix to a power amplifier and your monitors would plug into the power amp.

[Almy]

ErichS nailed it. The multimix will be your soundcard. First thing to do is download the newest drivers from the Alesis site, seems like they had a date of Nov or Dec of '06, not positive. You'll get an 'Alesis 1394 Control Panel' and know you're gtg.

In my setup I don't actually have to disable my onboard audio, the Alesis mixer just takes over. I don't know if that is recommended or not, but it works like a charm so I tend to not do things unless needed. When turning off the mixer tho I do need to reboot in order for it to take over again, turning it back on doesn't do the trick. Once I've turned the mixer of, btw, my onboard audio takes back over.

I haven't experimented with that, but I don't need to. Long story short, your mixer is your new soundcard.