Phayzed Out

Hey folks,

So I did a gig a while back with a good friend of mine, Estuardo Figueroa, that involved a peculiar setup. Here's the lowdown:

1. It was a live show that was being tracked, 16 channels coming straight out of the FOH console pre EQ etc
2. The recording equipment we had:

1. 2 ProjectMixes
2. 2 Laptops [MacBook Pro, Compaq]
3. cables, etc.

Yes that's right, two project mixes. That's like trying to daisy chain two 003's. We had a few people tell us this can't be done and to an extent they were right:

THERE IS NO WAY YOU CAN USE A PROJECTMIX'S FRONT END ONLY AND OUTPUT IT STRAIGHT TO IT'S OPTICAL OUT.

So our workaround? We had one projectmix paired with a Windows laptop running Pro Tools 7. We loaded 8 mono tracks. 8 inputs coming in from the projectmix's pres and being output to it's digital outs 1-8. We had a lightpipe going from the the first projectmix INTO the second.

The second projectmix was connected to a MacBook Pro running Logic Pro 8. 16 tracks were created. 1-8 inputs were coming in from the projectmix's pre's and 9-16 were coming in from the lightpipe. Now here's the problem: LATENCY.

The 8 tracks that had to go through one computer, get routed and output to the 2nd project mix were being set back in time relative to the other 8. bummer. . . Why couldn't M-Audio's control panel include a simple option to route any analog input and throughput to it's digital outputs? This is essentially all we were using Pro Tools to do, unfortunately the DAE was making it's presence felt a little too much.

We had to find a way to reference one group of 8 to the other and find a way to set them back 'in-phase'. So Estuardo suggested this:

1. Take a copy of the L/R mix from the FOH board, send the L channel to one project mix, the R to the other.
   
2. This results in one channel going through the latency and the other straight to the final destination.
   
3. After recording was finished, we soloed the L/R mix and found the value of difference between the two. This value determined by how much we had to shift the other 7 tracks to regain phase coherency between all tracks.

It worked great. So that's how you can record 16 tracks with 2 ProjectMixes. If someone else has found another [read: simpler] way, let my know!!!

PEACE.

Cristopher.