Vs 880 Ex W/mackie 1402 Vlz?

[GrahamCA]

Hello, I just bought a VS 880 Ex. I was wondering how I could use my mackie 1402 vlz pro mixer with it. I know that the vs 880 ex does not have phantom power so I would have to go with the mackie anyways to supply power for my condensor mics. How would I go about hooking the mackie into the 880? I want to record all my drums onto one track on the 880. Can I mix it on my mackie then route it into track 1 on the 880? Also I want to use the mackie pre-amps for my mics. I am a little confused. Any tips or help on setting this up would be great. It arrives on Friday. YES!!!
Thanks,
Graham

[virtual.ray]

Hi! I have both a 1402VLZ and an 880EX.Yes you can do all you spoke of,although I personally don't see why you would want to put drums on 1 track.The Mackie has what they call "Alt 3/4 buses that can be used independantely of the main outputs.You'll see,the Mackie manual is as dissimilar from the Roland Japlish as Perrier is from RC Cola.Very helpful.I wouls heartily recommend if your finances permit the acquisition of a high quality A/D converter to plug the Mackie into and then go in to the Digital inputs on the EX,thus bypassing the EX's A/D converters. One such unit is the Midiman Flying Calf which can be found for as little as $100.Cheers!

[Bloomington]

I have a 1604 and use it often times for the preamps - it works well. Can record a much hotter a quieter signal to the 880 running the mikes thru the Mackie instead of directly into the 880.

Yes- you will find a slight (ha!) difference in the way the manuals are written. Tell me which one you like better!

A question for Ray regarding the A/D converter - what is the benefit in puting a converter between the Mackie and the 880 and feeding it into the digital inputs? And if you do it that way how do you do what track you want it assigned to?

Thanks for all your help!!!!

[virtual.ray]

The A?D converters in the VS 880EX simply aren't that great and the method I described above allows one to bypass them on the way in.Trust me,it sounds better no matter what your source is.There are other good quality A?D's out there,I got a smokin' deal on my 24 bit Calf,it works for me. S/PDIF,the standard that the Dig. ins on the VS use,is a stereo input but you can use it as mono as well. You just assign whatever tracks you currently want to record to inputs 7&8 which are the defaults for the Dig. ins. BTW,you have to change the Master clock to "DIGIN 1" if you're using a coax input such as you would with the Calf,or "DIGIN 2" if you're using an Optical input such as from a CD player.