FIREPOD line outs!? Ah crap.

[Slowjett]

Well last night I was playing a show and brought my laptop and firepod. The mixer they had in house had no channel outputs. So I thought to myself.. Ok I'll go in through the firepod and out through the lines in back to the PA mixer.. Sounded like a simple enough task. Well It turned out that the Line Outs on the firepod do not go directly through. Which probably has its reasons... But it was quite anoying at the time. I figured they were software controlled but I only had 5 minutes or so to figure it out. I just said the hell with it and didnt record the show.

So how would you deal with this problem?

Also do you know if the software controlled line outs are subject to the latency you set on the firepods software? Or do they simply switch on for direct monitoring of sorts? (that would be nice)

I could have simply recorded a stereo pair (maybe it would have been better than nothing) but I didnt even bother. The channels on the PA mixer each had one buss so I basically would have been recording everything onto one track. Ah well.

Any suggestions for next time?

-Josh

 

[Slowjett]

In fact I cant get the line outs to work at all, not through cubase or anything. =[

Any ideas?

 

[Jim Y]

Can't help you with the silent Firepod, but did the desk at the show at least have channel insert jacks? These can be used as direct outs but you need to make special cables - unbalanced but with a TRS plug for the inserts.

The T AND R contacts both connected to the cable hot while the S goes to the screen. The TRS plug then connects the send back to the return in the socket so the path thru the mixer isn't broken and at the same time taps a direct, although unbalanced feed to your interface. More reliable than the usual "plug in to the first click" method of using inserts for outputs.
Many mixers direct outs are not truly balanced either, so little is lost, and the Inserts are usually pre-eq and fader while Directs are mostly post fader and almost certainly post-eq. Taking a feed pre-eq gives you the chance to record a raw signal that you can do you own thing with later.

 

[travelin travis]

just saw a post in another thread saying that the new firepod firmware allows direct linking of inputs/outputs. you might want to check out the presonus site.

........I guess you would already know that seeing that your the one that posted it.

 

[Slowjett]

just saw a post in another thread saying that the new firepod firmware allows direct linking of inputs/outputs. you might want to check out the presonus site.

........I guess you would already know that seeing that your the one that posted it.

That was in standalone. Im gogin to try to upgrade the firmware to find out if it will work in regular mode..

Thank you VERY much for the info on the inserts.. Thats really great stuff!!! I wish I knew that last night!!

-josh

 

[dgatwood]

Can't help you with the silent Firepod, but did the desk at the show at least have channel insert jacks? These can be used as direct outs but you need to make special cables - unbalanced but with a TRS plug for the inserts.

You probably don't need to make a cable at all. Most of the inserts in boards I've seen use the ring as the output and are normalled so that if you insert a plug at the first click, you get effectively a direct out without interrupting the signal path in the board.