ORIGINAL: ohhey

The way I understand it all the mixing of tracks already recorded is done in Sonar (pan, level, effects, etc.). So it's already a stereo mix before it goes back to the Alesis. You don't do any hardware mixing of pre-recorded tracks other then setting the stereo level.

So, it would not matter how many tracks were in Sonar, you could have 30 tracks in Sonar and they would still all get mixed down to two before they go back to the Alesis.

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you're saying but to my point again, what is actually mixing them before going back to the Multimix then? SONAR? Multimix drivers behind the scenes perhaps? Does your PC's performance somehow limit the amount of workload you can process?

Anyway. In addition to this, I forgot to ask something else in my previous note, and this is a very important aspect that I couldn't find explained on the unit's malnual: Say you record 8 tracks with SONAR on the PC, then you want to add two more for the guitar and keyboard solos. Can the Multimix playback what is recorded from SONAR while recording those two new tracks to the computer? I just read somewhere else that somebody at Alesis kind of mentioned that the Multimix is not full-duplex. IS THIS TRUE????

ORIGINAL: Gusfmm

ORIGINAL: ohhey

The way I understand it all the mixing of tracks already recorded is done in Sonar (pan, level, effects, etc.). So it's already a stereo mix before it goes back to the Alesis. You don't do any hardware mixing of pre-recorded tracks other then setting the stereo level.

So, it would not matter how many tracks were in Sonar, you could have 30 tracks in Sonar and they would still all get mixed down to two before they go back to the Alesis.

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you're saying but to my point again, what is actually mixing them before going back to the Multimix then? SONAR? Multimix drivers behind the scenes perhaps? Does your PC's performance somehow limit the amount of workload you can process?

Anyway. In addition to this, I forgot to ask something else in my previous note, and this is a very important aspect that I couldn't find explained on the unit's malnual: Say you record 8 tracks with SONAR on the PC, then you want to add two more for the guitar and keyboard solos. Can the Multimix playback what is recorded from SONAR while recording those two new tracks to the computer? I just read somewhere else that somebody at Alesis kind of mentioned that the Multimix is not full-duplex. IS THIS TRUE????

Yes, Sonar turns your PC into a digital mixer (and multi-track recorder, effects, synth, etc.). So all of the tracks are mixed inside Sonar before they every hit the driver to go back to the Alesis. At that point the Alesis is nothing more then the stereo output of a "sound card". It seems like a miracle but computers really are powerful enough to do that now. All Sonar needs is a sound card to get sound in and out of your computer and it does the rest of what used to be an entire recording studio. I used to have two huge racks of effects, three ADAT machines, A DAT machine, and a huge 24 channel mixer. All that stuff went on e-bay when I got Sonar, it does it all.

It may be confusing to you because the sound card is built into the mixer so you can’t see the wires that attach everything but it’s just a sound card with lots of inputs and only two outputs, no mixing happens in the Alesis on the way back out. You only use it to monitor live inputs as you record and supply a "copy" or send of those inputs to Sonar. On the way out it’s just a volume control and headphone amp for the built in sound card.

As for full duplex of not it should be, check the manual you should be able to hear what comes back from Sonar even while recording.

ORIGINAL: ohhey
As for full duplex of not it should be, check the manual you should be able to hear what comes back from Sonar even while recording.

Thanks for that response, I feel a bit better about the first issue. On the second though, I've checked the manual and it is absolutely minimalistic about anything related to its audio playback & recording capabilities. There is no clear mention to anything like this at all. The only thing it says is that you should be able to hear SONAR's monitoring function (if enabled within SONAR), but they don't recommend it and rather suggest to use the mixer's monitor OUTs for that, which I think makes a lot of sense (avoiding any kind of loop). But with regard to playing back any previously recorded track while recording, it isn't clear at all. One could assume of course that if it does get back from SONAR audio with the monitor signal it should perfectly do so with any other "non-muted" audio track you could have in the project, but I just wanted to make sure with some of you who already own the unit and has tried this yourself.

I appreciate all your help!

One last thing that I'd appreciate a lot somebody clarifying for me. Kind of disappointed also that Alesis hasn't included a more professional technical profile description for the unit on the appendix. I'm very curious as of things like S/N ratio, THD, FX's DSP specs, A/D/A, etc. as to be able to compare the Multimix to the rest of my setup. I don't want to get something that will, for instance, have the highest S/N of my whole setup being the centerpiece of it, as happened to me once several years ago with a SoundBlaster.

Do they include any other datasheet mentioning these things with the new unit?

It should be better then the soundblaster for sure, the firewire board in the mixer will have more modern chips that are designed for high quality recording. The only question is how good the analog parts of the mixer are (preamps, etc.) before it reaches the converters.

I downloaded the manual to the mixer and on page 18 it says the 2tk switch is what you press to hear the sound from the firewire on it's way back from the computer (Sonar). If you want Sonar playback over the main mix outputs you also need to press the 2tk to mix switch (page 17). So that is your playback monitor path. All volume and pan adjustment will need to be done in Sonar for playback tracks. The manual is not that bad, I've seen worse.

Keep in mind the effects in the mixer won't get recorded in Sonar (that's a good thing). You can use them as a "stand in" to make you sound better while you are tracking but you will need to insert a plugin in the tracks effects bin in Sonar after that to have effects on playback. This way you can choose the effects you want for each track and have as many of them as you like. Plugins are also easy to use since you have the pop up dialog to adjust them with not just a bunch of numbers and knobs. So just choose a nice reverb on the mixer and blend a little with the montior signal during tracking to give you confidence, it won't get recorded in Sonar you will just hear it while you record. Then when you get ready to play and mix everything is done in Sonar. Effects plugins are great, unlike the one signle effect you have in the mixer, in Sonar you can have an almost unlimited "rack" of effects each with their own settings ! Most computers can do a silly number of tracks and effects now.

More follow up.

The Alesis Multimix did a great job of recording 8 seperate tracks live. Each song was up to 6 minutes so I can't say anything about very long recordings yet but these were recorded flawlessly (except for some trim pot level setting user error).

This was done with a Dell Inspiron 6000 described earlier in the post, using an external 7200 RPM seagate 120 gig drive in a acomdata firewire/usb case (with USB cable used), nothing fancy there but it works fine.

Everything went into the mixer, but we muted everything except the mics, which went on to the power amp of the 'pa'. The mute button doesn't stop sonar from recording those tracks, but they don't get passed to the speaker, which is a great option for a garage band to record with. So we had mics on the drums and amps and vocals - and each to its own track.

I'm wondering what the upper limit will be. Sonar shows 16 inputs available, but who knows how many you can really record at once. In any case, 8 worked fine.

By the way - it's really easy to set the ttrim levels too high and ruin an otherwise good recording. When the loud music was playing the singing turned out to be much louder that during the level set - and digital distortion is ugly. Leave extra headroom!

Hey sounds good....

Be interesting to hear how the preamps sound compared to a Presonus or even the Mackie 400F.... hmmm...

Cheers!

The limitation for ultra audiophiles of course is that the sample rate tops out at 48khz, whereas the MOTU896HD for example has the 192khz frequency option.

I chose the Alesis as I'm recording in a garage band setting and the audio quality of the alesis is light years ahead of the source material, that is drums and bass and guitar blasting away in a crowded room. Also, as I want to get as many simultaneous tracks as possible, doubling or quadrupling the data rate (96khz or 192khz) just to improve an ultra high frequency that I probably can't hear anyway seemed excessive.

However the Alesis does support 24 bit, which is helpful for recording at lower volume levels - or leaving headroom so you can yell into a mic and not get that terrible digital distortion. All your audio CDs are only 16 bit and they sound fine.

Yeah they sound like they're ok for the price point the Alesis... especially if they support 24bit.

Bit hard to compare against 16bit CDs because not a lot them are originally recorded in 16bit. You can notice/hear it when you dither at burn from 24 to 16 as opposed to 16bit all the way.

Cheers!

I installed the firmware update and driver from Alesis' December update but have not installed the January one yet.

I was still having trouble with it working properly, esp in WDM mode which I prefer to use, had clicking and changing latency only changed the frequency of the clicks. On my last call to Alesis tech support he informed that the manual is incorrect and you CANNOT use a 4 pin to 6 pin firewire cable to a laptop. I did not know this. He said they are working on an update to solve that, maybe in the January version he did not know.

So the tech had me go buy a PCMCIA card with a 6 pin firewire port, but at the same time I also finally figured out what Alesis was saying (he didn't know either) about how to setup the driver for WDM mode so I can't really say which change finally solved it. The driver download has a special note to Sonar users for WDM mode which is not very clear;

When you run the driver profiler, it will show a different profile result for the input device than the output device, and these need to be the same. You need to switch the driver profiler to show the DMA buffer size for the inputs at 44.1khz and the instructions say to enter this for "all other Dice devices" which did not make sense to me at first. Thought I had to go find another place to enter the DMA buffer size from the profiler. Then I figured out that this is all done right in the same window by switching it to the output profile and manually entering the same number in all those profiles as the input showed. The sample sizes need to be the same for both input and output and the profiler did not do this on it's own (updated driver might though).

It works great now, no clicking or popping. Not pushing the latency yet but I will be seeing how low I can go.

The mixer will actually send 16 individual channel inputs to Sonar IN ADDITION to main mix left and right so you can actually record 18 channels simultaneously which I have done succesfully. I am only using a 5400 rpm internal hard drive and it keeps up.

To a previous post; Sonar will actually see the Alesis Multimix as one of your "sound cards". Yes it is full duplex. I did not have to disable other sound cards.

I use the control room out from the mixer for playback of recorded channels while I record other tracks.

I have mine setup so that I run everything into the mixer, then use an aux send to run the vocals back to the PA for monitoring, and then set the vocals channels accordingly. Otherwise I would have guitar amp and drum mics, etc, coming back to the monitors while playing.

It seems extremely quiet for this price range. No doubt Mackie has better mic preamps but these seem fine.