Feedback loops??? Please help!!!

[sethbrand]

Ok heres the deal. Last night, I got the wild idea to try and mix "outside the box" so here is what I did. I went down to the basement and pulled out an old 16 channel Peavey Mark III mixer that I have and hooked it up to my pro tools rig. I have pt m powered on a macbook with an m-audio fw 1814. I have the 4 outputs on the 1814 going to the mixer, and I also have 8 more outputs going to the mixer through an 8 channel adat unit. So basically I have 12 channels to mix with on my mixer now and get to get my hands on some faders. I opened up a session I have been mixing on, and re-assigned all of the tracks so that each instrument had its own output to the mixer, so I could do my mix on the analog board. WOW!!!!!! I could not believe the difference in sound. The stereo image go so much bigger and the whole thing sounded so much better after mixing on it for a few hours. I then went to bed happy hoping to get up today and bounce my final mix....

Well, I plugged the main outs of my mixer "back into" two imputs on the firewire 1814 to record it back into PT. I didn't think I could do this, and I was right. It created a loop between the outs and ins and makes a terrible noise. I tried inputs on the m-audio that I didn't have the corresponding output in use, and it still wouldn't work. Basically, I have tried every input on the 1814 to try and record back into PT and I can't without the terrible electronic noise/hum.

My question: Is there ANY way this can be done without having to buy a cd record/burner or some other machine to bounce too???? If that is what I have to do, then I will b/c the sound of mixing on an analog board compared to just in pro tools with a mouse (at least for me) is so worth it!!! I appreciate any feedback you can give.

Also, if I do need to buy a cd record/burner or some other machine to bounce too, any suggestions for a pretty cheap unit???

thanks guys,

Seth

[M.Brane]

You need to mute the tracks you're recording to so their input doesn't get fed back into output.

You also need to make sure what the output level of the mixer's main outs are, and set your input levels accordingly. Does the mixer have balanced outs? If so you should be using balanced cables to go back to the 1814.

I'm not familiar with the 1814, but if it has some kind of mix knob for input monitoring then you need to make sure it's set so no input is getting fed back to the output:

user-assignable front-panel level control (output, input, software return, aux send)

[TechKnowledgy]

Exactly, mute the track in Pro Tools while recording to prevent feedback. The direct monitoring for the 1814 is controlled from the FireWire control panel for the 1814. On the Mixer tab, there is an out section at the bottom of each column (1/2 and 3/4). This routes those inputs to the selected outputs. Make sure that the input you're connecting to isn't selected to feed through any of the outputs and you should be golden!

[Eric Seaberg]

You could also assign the two incoming tracks to unused buss outputs, since they won't go into record unless they're assigned to an output. The busses don't have to go anywhere... the tracks just need an INPUT and OUTPUT assigned. Doing it this way also keeps all of your outputs available for routing to the HW mixer.