To all who have posted thus far - In a private message to Eddie regarding his MOTU technical challenge and win, I had mentioned that I thought Eddie could accomplish his goal of live 'fingers on faders' mixing, with a much simpler setup than the dual computer, dual MOTU, analog mixer setup - by mixing inside the box with a control surface.

I am not a gear lover, nor am I a guy who has to have the latest software. In fact, I would guess that most people in this thread have spent way more on their software and hardware than I have - if they have made regular updates to their PG products over the years.

Eddie had some goals in the other mega thread which I was pointing out alternative ways of accomplishing the same goals, but perhaps with a technically simpler solution.

One of the goals: 'Live' mixing using fingers on faders.

This can be achieved destructively; that is, permanent changes, by the dual MOTU, dual computer, analog mixer in the signal chain method. Send out signal, mix live in the analog board, print it to new tracks in the second MOTU/Computer.

However, it can also be achieved non-destructively in the box, one computer, with a control surface. This all assumed pre-recorded material is on-hand. Remember, the goal that I understood was live mixing, not necessarily live multi-channel recording, nor live multi-channel outs to 'tape', since the tape is 'in the box'.

Eddie, you are not confused. Try watching this video of a guy simply setting the BCF2000 channels to tracks in Reaper. He is not recording any audio - he is simply recording the fader moves - which is the whole purpose of a control surface - controlling volumes, fades, effect parameters, etc. with knobs and sliders instead of mouse movements or off-line processing. What this video demonstrates is simply recording of fader automation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzjntcBx7wQ&feature=related

There are some audio/midi I/O boxes that have a control surface built in. Many of the Tascam recorders, from what I understand, can function this way as well. I think that's probably what Matt has access to.

Think of control surfaces as just another way to manipulate what is going on inside of the computer - in our case it's mimicing operations that you are doing on audio signals OUTSIDE the computer with the mixer.

Whether or not this is right for you is a different matter altogether. You can make use of one of these BCF2000 units in the MOTU setup you have right now, as long as PG software can record automation.

As far as I understand it as well, you can assign tracks that are non-adjacent in your DAW software, to adjacent faders on the BCF2000. So you might have 26 tracks in the DAW software, and you did a bad job of grouping channels and have the kick drum on track 1, snare on 5, hihat on 16, 3 rack toms on 21, 22 and 23, and a pair of overheads on 25 and 26. I believe (though unconfirmed), you could assign these DAW tracks to the 8 faders on the BCF2000 for one 'mix-down' session - except you aren't doing anything to the audio, just the playback volume of the audio, for those 8 channels.

Well, lunch hour is over and I must get back to work. Hopefully that clarifies some things a bit.

Using the control surface can eliminate all the work of sending out multiple audio channels to an analog mixer (which will introduce some noise - guaranteed), and then re-recording the live-mixed audio to new audio tracks either in the same machine or in a different machine.

-Scott

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