Yamaha mg 16/4 , Delta 1010 , Cool Edit Pro... help:(

[odiumgenus]

I am new to this forum... well any forum for that matter. I have always recorded the super poor mans way and now I have a bunch of expensive stuff and it's not working the way I believe it should.

I have read some things that are kind of like my issue but not exactly so here it goes.

So I have a Yamaha MG 16/4 mixing console, A Delta 1010 ( pci ), Powered Yamaha speakers using the xlr's to the board, a head phone amp in the rocording room connected to the board with 2 30' 1/4 inch cables, 2 8 x 1/4 inch to 1/4 inch snakes, 50' 8 x female to male xlr fan to fan snake... Well I should probably just tell ya what I am in need of I guess.

I basically thought I could just hook the speakers up to the board and hook the headphone amp to the board then hook the mics up to the 50' snake and get the xlr's into the board then here is where I believe I am having the problem... This board apparently does'nt have what I thought were ins and outs... well they are but they are not...

So I thought I would hook up all of the 1/4 inch plugs as follows...

The outs of the board to the ins of the Delta 1010, The outs of the Delta 1010 to the ins of the board. I thought this would work. I thought it would make it possible for me to hear the drummer downstairs playing through the monitors up here and allow me to mix the sound to where I wanted it and then press record and be able to hear it while it was recording and then listen to the finished product when it was done.

but that was not the case... With ONLY the XLR's ( mics from drums ) hooked into the back of the board I heard everything beautifully. as soon as i hooked in either the 1/4 inch ins or outs to get to the Delta 1010 I lost sound and bad noises were happening.

I found that if I only plug in the XLR's and the 1/4 inch outs to the Delta 1010 that I could hear and record but it would not let me use the fader or the low mid highs...

Am I retarded because I did pretty much the same thing a long time ago with a crappy old biamp board and it worked.

I don't know if anyone here can help me and I completely understand if you can't considering i don't know the lingo all that well but if you can I would GREATLY APPRECIATE IT

Feel free to e-mail me or just post here... whichever you prefer

Thanks -Shaun-

P.S. I did stop and think that perhaps the problem may be within Cool Edit but who knows... Hopefully you do

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

How are you trying to record? I can't really tell what outs are going to what ins from your description.

Are you intending to use the board to actually mix or just as a front end to get signals into the Delta (using the mic pres in other words)?

The easiest way is to just use the board for mic pres and then take care of all the recording and mixing in software. The delta then has 4 sets of stereo outs to send back to speakers, headphone amps etc. for monitoring and mixing.

I don't think that board has direct outs per channel does it? If so you can ususally use the channel inserts by inserting a 1/4" jack halfway into the socket (until you hear the first click).

 

[odiumgenus]

I guess my objective is to use the board to mic the drums and get the low mid highs and volume set ( that way i'll have it all decently mixed before entering the delta ) Then press record in cool edit.

Then once recorded onto the computer via the delta I would then mix it more in cool edit.

What I used to do with my old equipment was ( mixing on the board ) into the delta into cool edit ( to record ) Take a listen back through the board ( after recording ) and adjust the levels and such ON THE BOARD and then re-record.

I was told by these guitar center guys that everything I had would make this a reality but thus far I am stumped because I do not know enough about this board apparently.

I do know that when a mic is connected via XLR to the board and nothing else running to or from the delta is plugged in at all it sounds beautiful and I can mix it but as soon as I hook up what I believe is the out 1/4 inch jack ( top 1/4 inch jack on track one ) to get to the delta to record the sound goes dead basically... but... I did find that if I pull that same 1/4 inch jack out halfway that I can hear it just as beautiful, but when I record the fader does not respond and neither do the low mid highs but I believe the top gain ( attinuator maybe ? ) does work as a volume still.

I do not know if it has direct outs per channel perhaps you explained that in your response with the whole half way in thing which I did something like that but perhaps thats not what you meant at all

I hope this helped...

-Shaun-

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

By using the inserts as outs (that board doesn't have direct outs btw) you're outputting a pre fader signal which is why the faders and eq aren't effecting the output. You're essentially bypassing the whole "mixer" part of the board and just using the mic preamps. Presumably your old board had direct outs which were post fader so your signals were getting sent around the mixer and through the eq, fader controls etc. before getting put out.

I can't think of a way of doing what you want to do with that board unless you get the mix how you want it and then just send an already mixed stereo track from the main outs (which are post fader obviously) to the delta. (Not recommended because your mixing/editing options in the comp are then extremely limited).

On the plus side I think any kind of mixing before getting signal into the comuter is pretty pointless anyway. The pros might do it because they have really nice boards with really nice eq and they know sound really well. But I really see no benefit, you're just sending your signals through a load of unnecessary circuitry and making tweaks which you could just as easily be doing in software (where you get to change your mind later if you're not happy with something).

Obviously micing multiple sources (like a kit) you'll want a rough balance in terms of the levels on each mic but you can get that just by setting the gain on the mic pres (the top gain you talked about).

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

I had that board and that interface a couple of years ago. It has XLR and 1/4" inputs on it, and 1/4" TRS "insert" input/outputs. These are slots that are intended to allow you to plug in external things like compressors and such.

HOWEVER!

What YOU'RE looking to do is use them as simply outputs to your Delta 1010. The solution? Plug them in so they click ONCE, vs. TWICE. Plugging them in this way turns them into just outputs.

As for your monitoring question, the easiest way to accomplish what you're looking for is to plug a pair of outputs from the 1010 (like 1 & 2, just to be easy) and plug them into your speakers. WARNING: IF YOUR SPEAKERS DON'T HAVE FULL VOLUME CONTROL BUILT IN, THEY WILL PLAY BACK AT THEIR FULL VOLUME!!!!!!

Meaning: you should get something like a Mackie Big Knob (or a less-expensive version of same) to control the volume to your speakers. Alternately, there should be a way to get stereo inputs into your mixer that you can control, but it's somewhat difficult to explain/walk someone through on the internet.