Mackie SR244 / SR324 Owner's Manual - Page 39

RECORDING The SR 24•4 (and SR 32•4) is a great recording and mixing console for a four- or eight-track project studio. Below you'll find the basic plan for connecting the SR 24•4 for recording and some specific ideas for multitrack sessions in Tracking on an Eight-Track. (Please refer to the graphic on page 11.) In general, recording connections follow this pattern: • Microphones, electronic instruments, fouror eight-track tape playback tracks and other sources are connected to the MIC or LINE inputs on the SR 24•4 rear panel. • Four- or eight-track recorder inputs are connected to the SUB OUT 1-8 jacks. • Two-track mixdown recorder inputs are connected to the LEFT and RIGHT MASTER jacks. • Two-track recorder outputs are connected to the TAPE IN L and R jacks. • Control room monitor speaker amplifiers are connected to the CONTROL ROOM OUT L and R jacks. • Musician headphone cue amplifier inputs are connected to AUX SENDS 1, 2, 3 or 4. • Reverb and delay device inputs are connected to AUX SENDS 3, 4, 5 or 6. • Reverb and delay device outputs are connected to STEREO AUX RETURNS 1, 2, 3 or 4, or to spare line inputs. As mentioned in the sound reinforcement section, take a little time to set everything up sensibly. It's good to group your inputs and submix buses by instruments, stereo mix position or whatever else suits you. Try to keep the drum mics next to each other, the vocals together and so on. Label your cables, number your auxiliary devices right on the front panels, lay tape (to write on) across the bottom of the faders, make a track log, give yourself a break. It can be confusing enough mixing a complicated song without wondering which channel is which. TRACKING ON AN EIGHT-TRACK Here's the situation: we'll imagine you've got a multitrack recorder. For basic tracks you will have a three-piece band with drums, bass, and guitar. The lead singer will put down a scratch vocal, and later all three of the band members will overdub vocals. They want two different headphone mixes during basics, and a rough mix on DAT to take home right after the overdub session. You will eventually fill the eight tracks with stereo drums, guitar, and bass plus 4 tracks of vocals. You will use the recorder's time code to drive a MIDI sequencer program which will play another 2 MIDI voices in the final mixdown. This is how we'll set it up: The drums will be miked with seven mics, and recorded in stereo. We will bring the bass in on two lines: one will be a mic on the bass amp, the other direct injection from a direct box. The guitar will also have two feeds: one a mic close to the amp, the second mic a few feet further away. The guitarist will sing into one microphone for the scratch track. SR 24•4 channel strips 13-20 will be used to provide a monitor mix of your eight multitrack channels. The MIDI voices will come in on stereo line inputs 21-22 and 23-24. Although the SR 24•4 has only four submix buses, for convenience each bus has two outputs: Bus 1 feeds SUB OUT 1 and 5, Bus 2 feeds SUB OUT 2 and 6 and so on. This allows you to feed any track on an eight-track recorder, selecting the track by submix assignment and by the record assignment on the recorder. If you need to record 5 or more tracks at once, you will need to temporarily re-patch a recorder input or two, using a spare AUX SEND output or a channel strip insert as a direct out. Your output connections can be seen on the table on the next page. For the basic tracks, you will be recording on five tracks at once, but the SR 24•4 has only four submix buses. One easy solution is to route the scratch vocal mic through Aux Send 6, which in our setup is unused. Don't assign the scratch vocal to any of the main or submix Applications 37