sonarxl and motu&outboard gear

[jmorris]

if I have sonar xl and a motu 2408mkII. Can I use the 8 in and out analog jacks in the back for using outboard gear?? I have compressors and reverbs I like and dont want to have to reley on the plugins. Also if the answer is yes can I say, use and external reverb on all 24 tracks at the same time if I wanted?? Not that I would lets say I want the same reverb on all the drum tracks and horn tracks...can it be done...Jim

[AlChuck]

You really need a mixer in front of the MOTU to do what you're talking about properly. I don't think the MOTU has effects sends and returns nor mic preamps. Think of it as the backplate of a multitrack tape machine, where the input jacks would be.

You could do some things without a mixer, if you go through the outboard gear first and then into the MOTU, but then you lose a lot of flexibility.

[jmorris]

I have a nice 36 input 24 monitor console.I would like to use the computer system to edit and be able to recall mixes/settings. The guy at Guitar Center said the motu mkII AND THE sONAR XL WOULD let me do that and still be able to use my compressors,reverbs,mic preamps that I have. I mean,big studios use pro tools and have Lexicon 480L reverbs that they use so there must be a way.....at least with Pro Tools there is.I dont know about sonar xl. He said as I stated the 8 in and out of the Motu is for this. Thank for your help

[chuchosay]

You can do exactly what you want using Sonar and a MOTU 2408. I have the exact same setup. In Sonar, you can send each track to any pair of analog outs on the MOTU 2408. For example, you can send tracks 1-8 to analog outputs 1+2 (stereo) and tracks 9-16 to analog outputs 5+6 if you want.

By doing this, you can send any track or group of tracks out to an outboard processor. From there you can do two things. The first doesn't require a mixer, but it does require a fast computer and may not even work doing that.

1) You can send the output of the processor back to a pair of analog inputs, then setup Sonar to monitor that pair of analog inputs. There may be a slight delay, though, between the rest of the tracks and the processed tracks.

2) Put the output of the processor into an outboard mixer. Also, route the output of the other tracks to the mixer. Combine them through the mixer and send them to your speakers.

Also, what you can do is after you have monitored everything and found the right processor settings, record the processed signal on to Sonar so that you can free up that output if necessary.