[beggehorn]

Believe it or not, I simply bought a cheap sound card (Ensoniq PCI) from Fry's (a local electronics superstore) for $10. Most "sound blaster compatible" cards have a mic input, line in and line out. I run a stereo pair out of my 882/20 to the line in (using an adapter cable), and a cheap computer mic in the control room to the mic input. This saves me a precious input on my interface for more important things. The line out goes to the snake and to the musicians headphones. Using stereo sends and a master fader sourced from that send and routed to the cue output pair will let you build an independent stereo cue. The sound card came with a software "mixer" which is user configurable and has separate controls for mic, line, synth, wave, cd audio, and master level. It also feature a mute switch for each fader. I simply mute and unmute the mic when as needed. The only frustrating thing is that I have to click back onto PT to make it the active application before any of the keyboard commands will work. However, I'm going to insert a switch in line w/ the mic that will let me keep the mic unmuted and prevent this annoyance. Incidentally, the sound card has wavetable synthesis and wavesets including a drum set. You can assign the PT metronome to trigger a click, bypassing the need for a midi sound module. Furthermore, you can buy a simple game port to midi adapter cable to use the card as a simple yet effective midi interface for external midi gear. Hope this helps ya out. It solved all these issues for me for less than $25.

[This message has been edited by beggehorn (edited 11-04-99).]