OMNI physical I/O question (inserts)

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Maybe somebody can confirm this for me.

I have an Omni and am trying to get my head around the monitor section and the way it affects being able to use the other outputs. What I would like to do is have a 5.1 monitor output, BUT I also want 2 channels to be assigned to hardware inserts to send my recorded tracks and return them in the normal way. It seems that with the 5.1 monitor enabled, I cannot use the 4 physical analog outputs as insert sends. The other thing I discovered is that if you have a monitor path of any width, you cannot move it around from, say, channels 3-8, leaving channels 1-2 free.

So how can I have 2 channels set up for hardware inserts? I can think of two ways, but I don't have the unit with me now so I can't fiddle with it at the moment:

1. Disable monitoring altogether. I believe I can set the MAIN and ALT monitor paths each to "none". If I do this, does the I/O act like a normal Pro Tools interface? I figure if this is the case, I can assign my 5.1 out to 3-8 and set up hardware inserts for 1-2.

2. I had this thought just now: In the HARDWARE window, you have the MAIN tab. Can I assign the physical inputs to any pair I like? In other words, the thing that's causing me from having an insert on 7-8 is that he OMNI only has 4 analog inputs, called Analog 1-4. In the MAIN tab, can I assign Analog inputs 3-4 to the fourth pair of input registers?

Check out this screenshot (I'm borrowing it from some threat at Gearslutz—only one I could find on Google Images):



See how on the INPUT side, there are 4 pairs (inputs 7-8 are assigned to ADAT 1-2)? Can I assign 7-8 to "Analog 3-4" so that I can make an insert by using Analog 7-8 to go out to my gear and back in with Analog 3-4? See what I mean?

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Did I make this too hard to understand?

[KMcK]

How about setting up a 7.1 output monitor path and then in your I/O split them into a 5.1 and a stereo pair?

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I don't think it works that way. Monitor paths can't share!

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OK, sad that I had to answer my own question, but yes, you can make inserts in the I/O Setup on 7-8 by assigning physical inputs Analog 3-4 to PT channels 7-8 and it works while using a 5.1 monitor.