A Matter of Wiring?

[GoetzManor]

I'm not sure if I'm posting this in the right forum or not, but when my band goes into the studio to record and mix, I notice that the engineer has a CD player hooked up to the board and can play rough mixes through it (without a CD) from the DAW. How is he doing this? Am I even describing something that is possible or am I imagining that that is what the CD player is for?

Thanks for the responses in advance!

 

[miroslav]

I'm sure he's just playing rough mixes from the DAW through the board....not sure why he would want/need to go from DAW to empty CD player to board...?
It may be possible that the CD player's inputs are alsp passively wired to the outputs...so that when it's not playing back a CD, it's just playing the input to the output....but there's nothing gained with that AFA I know.

 

[Mo Facta]

If the unit is a CD recorder/player, my suspicion is that its outputs are connected to the console and the inputs are being fed by a digital signal via something like an optical connection coming from the DAW. All that would be required would be to put the CD player in record/monitor mode and it becomes a DA converter.

My 2c (ZAR)

Cheers

 

[Bobbsy]

Yup, I suspect Mo Facta has it. If it's just a CD player, I don't know what's going on but, assuming it's a Recorder/Player with a digital input, it wouldn't be the first time I've seen somebody using it as an extra D to A converter.