no more digi inputs on Mackie D8b

[Ian Livingstone]

Hi folks - I\'ve got the maximum allowed of 3 opt-8 cards (adat I/O) on my D8b desk one for each of my PCs (loaded with RME hammmerfalls), and am using the d8b\'s Spdif in for my laptop.

Just about to add another 2 PCs - the only way I can see of upgrading is to go analogue.

Is there any other solution I\'ve not thought of? like an adat merge box or something?! I usually only use 2 outs from each of the adats so there\'s loads of channels waisted on the d8b.

Was going to try chaining the new PCs up directly into my main mixing PC\'s Hammerfall (ie bypassing the desk altogether) as it has 2 spare unused adat ins, but I\'m not sure if this will cause further problems monitoring the 2 new PCs outside of the desk environment....

Someone must have done this....besides buying another D8b....any ideas?

Ian

[Sam]

I have all my lightpipe gear go to a Frontier Dakota+Montana, which is a good ADAT patchbay.

My main DAW sends 2 lightpipes to my mixer, but any of those channels can be a patch from other ADAT ins. The patching doesn\'t incur any noticable latency. Frontier also sells a hardware ADAT patchbay, I can\'t tell if it just patches 8 channels through or if you can patch single channels like the Dakota.

Also, the Dakota software can store multiple patch configurations.

I wouldn\'t be surprised if RME also has a patchbay feature, though I don\'t think they did as of a few years ago.

[John DeBorde]

Try looking at the \"catching up w/ new technology\" article on jeff rona\'s website (www.jeffrona.com), which also appeared in the most recent keyboard mag that i received.

i believe he addresses this exact issue by using motu 2408\'s as a lightpipe patchbay to strip unused channels from his giga rigs.

hth

john

[kid-surf]

Sorry no answer, but...


I\'m in the same boat, I have the HDR set up on the 3 OPT cards and digi001 on the ALT OPT card...


*What do you have in the ALT slot. May not be a full solution but you could add another OPT 8 if you don\'t have that slot filled.

I\'m wondering myself if there is some kind of \'switch box\' or something?


I have a lot of thinking to do as well...


BTW--Please let me know if you find something, I\'ll do the same!

Good luck!

[Nuno Fonseca]

Since RME cards have very low latency and several ADAT interfaces, you could do a daisy-chain:

pc1->(adat)->pc2->(adat)->Mackie

You still use the mixer to work with all channels. Of course, if you wanted to use 8 channels in each pc, you couldn\'t, but that is not the case.

[thesoundsmith]

This may not be the way you want to go, but if you record to yor DA or HDR, or whatever, then you can use a patchbay (like the Frontier Apache) To get 24 channels at a time to the d8b (or 32 with the alt OPT.

OR-use analog for the extra I/O - 24 lightpipe,24 balanced I/O with the RME, 8 more with the ALT cart=56 in, like Greg promised...

Dasher

[kid-surf]

Thanks for the tips guys!

[Ian Livingstone]

yes thanks chaps - some good info there - will let you know how it goes with the chaining of the RME\'s first.

Ian

[Ian Livingstone]

got an answer back from Frontier on the apache


All the routing on Apache is done at the port-to-port level (not channel-to-channel), so the answer to your question is no. Apache has 12 input ports and 12 output ports, and when you create a patch from port 3 to port 10 (for example), all 8 channels from port 3 are routed to all 8 channels of port 10.

Lanelle
Frontier Design Group <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Does anyone know of any other adat patchbays which will let you assign channels within ports?

Ian

[Sam]

> Does anyone know of any other adat patchbays
> which will let you assign channels within ports?

(Maybe you meant besides Dakota?) Dakota does this, you can check out the manual:
http://www.frontierdesign.com/Dakota_Guide.PDF (\"http://www.frontierdesign.com/Dakota_Guide.PDF\")

See page 29, \"Patchbay Tab\"

I use this all the time, it is really useful.

I\'m a bit surprised they didn\'t give the Apache the same configuration ability.

[Sam]

> will let you know how it goes with the chaining of the RME\'s

Please do, if it works as I might expect I wouldn\'t be surprised if you have latency problems and I can imagine it could be a bear to get a solid sync. I hope I\'m wrong!