Recording with Soundcraft Spirit M12

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bddl

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Hello!

excellent forum here, guys! i have learned a lot in the few days i have been here.

i have a quick question that someone might be able to help me with. i just purchased a Soundcraft Spirit M-12 due, in large part, to the excellent reviews i have read here. i intend to use the mixer as a front-end to a ProTools MBox setup. ideally, i would like to use the S/PDIF digital out to connect the mixer to the MBox.

my question is this: is there an easy way to route the outputs from my MBox through the soundcraft for monitoring purposes during overdubs? specifically, while recording drums, i would like to send the click/rhythm tracks to the drummer's headphones while sending only the recorded drums to the S/PDIF channel. i can't use the direct outs on the individual channels because the MBox only supports two mono/1 stereo inputs and i need to sub-mix the drums before sending them out (i have 7 mics on the kit).

thoughts? does this make sense?
 
I'm not a big fan of the S/PDIF output on the M12. I used it recently and the onboard converters sounded very thin to me--basically took out a lot of the low end. I think you'd be better off using the analog ouputs off the M12 and use the converters in the Mbox. For your overdubbing, I'd route the analog outputs of the Mbox into one of the stereo inputs on the M12 and then submix the drum channels to a pair of auxillary ouput channels routed to the Mbox inputs. Make sure and mute these inputs in PT during recording.
 
say i have seven channels of drums that have been mixed and panned to the mix bus. how would i route that mix to an auxillary channel while preserving the panning, relative levels etc? Do i just turn up the aux 3/4 (post fader) level controls on the 7 drum channels to 10?

sorry for the newbie question.
 
Unfortunately, you're not going to have much pan control with this setup. You won't just be able able to crank the aux sends as you said. The simplest thing would be to just use stereo overheads and have everything else mono. To do this send your right overhead mic to one aux send and the left to another. Route all the other channel sends to both aux channels at equal levels; or I guess if you wanted to get tricky, you could send varying levels to each side. In PT, pan the aux input with the left overhead hard left and the one with the right overhead hard right.
 
hrm. not really the best solution. i guess i will have to monitor direct from the mbox. no biggie. just not ideal. too bad about the s/pdif on the soundcraft - that was one of the reasons i bought it! thanks for your help!
 
Yep, that's probably the best plan now that I think about it. The Mbox has that zero-latency monitoring feature so it shouldn't be an issue. Good luck.
 
i would do a quick comparison. i cant imagine the converters being that bad if you had your heart set on using that feature. 16 bit out- over 24 bit using existing converter is probablythe reason.
 
It doesn't really buy you anything with the Mbox; you can only record two channels at a time regardless (S/PDIF or analog inputs).
 
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