Digi 002 with Mixer??

[renton]

Hi, I've been searching around and was unable to find any previous posts addressing my concern...hopefully someone can help solve what should be an easy one!

I have a Digi 002 rack unit running firewire to my PC. I want to know if it's possible to either 1) Buy a digidesigned mixer board to used instead of clicking and dragging faders on the screen with a mouse...or 2) If not by digidesign can you use one at all with just the rack version of digi 002?

And then, how about outboard gear...ie. reverb, compression in rack units...can you use all this outboard stuff with the digi?

And finally...if any or all of this is possible...how? I would assume you could use outboard gear with in's and out's on the digi basically making them become aux sends...but if you had a mixer you could also hook your outboard gear through the mixer and assign sends to it through there? Am I way off??

help please!

 

[bennychico11]

yes, all of this can be done with the 002. what you can look for is a controller, this way you can control the faders onscreen from a device that looks like a mixer. Mackie makes the Control Universal, Tascam makes some devices such as the FW-1082 and US428, and Digi makes the Command|8. Just search around on sweetwater, or musicians friend or something.

You CAN use an external mixer if you want to control levels through there, however, you're limited to how many tracks you control. There's only 8 analog outs on the 002 and 8 digital...so you'd have to get a mixer with Adat too and that only gives you 16 tracks you can control (plus the additional S/PDIF outs). You'd probably be better off with a control surface. But, yes, you can also use external gear with your 002. If you're using dynamic based stuff, you'll want to buy some insert cables and then setup your inserts in PT correctly to route them out. If you're wanting to use time based gear just treat the outputs as Aux sends and then patch back into an available input. For example:
Track 1--creat an aux send, and select Output 1
Patch into your timebased gear
Return to I/O 1 and/or 2 (depending if you're returning stereo or not)
Creat a corresponding aux track and set the input to 1/2
Turn up the fader and you should be ready to go.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[renton]

yeah that sounds perfect...thanks VERY MUCH for your help!!

 

[Motorbreath]

Sounds like you are looking for a control surface. The ones from Digidesign are pretty cool from the demos I've seen. Check this out:

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Command8/

If you ever take the leap into TDM, I think you can use this unit with it as well.

Personally, I picked up a Behringer BCF2000 midi control surface and am using it with ProTools LE 6.4. I've been quite happy with it. For $200, it's a nice unit. With the latest firmware, it fully emulates the Baby HUI. I didn't install support for control surfaces when I installed ProTools LE, so I had to download the right files from the Digidesign support site and drop them in the right place for PT to see it. But now that it does...