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I am going to explode!

I have been screwing around for the last two hours with the manual and my MOTU 896 MK3.

I use it with a laptop for remote recording with DP 7.1. I own an Alesis HD24 which of course has three ADAT light-pipe inputs and outputs. I was experimenting with a scenario of what I could do if the laptop were to ever fail on a remote recording session. I can not figure out for the life of me how to assign the eight analog XLR inputs of the 896 to either one of the two ADAT output banks on the 896. I have the 896 set to "internal 48k" and the HD24 set to "external clock 48k". I have already established that the ADAT light-pipe cable is working because I set the main output of the 896 to ADAT 1-2. I accomplished this with the Cuemix FX software on the laptop. Of course immediately, the first two channels of the HD24 responded as expected. In a real scenario, I would not have access to the software to control anything because in my experiment, the laptop would be toast.

I can not comprehend that the eight analog inputs can not be routed directly to an ADAT bank in order that the 896 could be used as a stand alone eight channel mic preamp with lightpipe output.

What the crap am I not doing?
Sorry for my temper here, this has me so aggravated my blood pressure is boiling.

Dan

I'm not sure I fully understand the problem, but are you going to each output pair's "page" or bus, and then setting up the mix for that output pair? That's how you set things up in Cue Mix.

thanks alot Shooshie for responding.
Ultimately, I don't want to use Cuemix at all. I am trying to figure out how I can use the 896 without any computer, no mac laptop, no DP7, just the 896 as an 8 channel mic preamp that sends those eight mics to 8 discrete ADAT channels.

I just want to be able to plug in up to 8 mics into the 8 inputs on the 896 MK3 and route those eight mics to 1-8 of one of the ADAT light-pipe outputs on the 896. This light-pipe output would feed one of the three ADAT lightpipe inputs on the Alesis HD24 24 track recorder.

There is absolutely no mention on MOTU's site or in the manual describing how to route the mic inputs to specific ADAT output channels except mixing them all to a stereo bus, what a joke! Wanna buy an immaculate 896Mk3?

I have a bad feeling about what I think Dave Roberts email is going to say tomorrow morning... "NO, you can not use the 896 for 8 mic preamps"

Check out this piece of Behringer crap, it distributes the 8 mic channels to the ADAT output. Certainly the MOTU 896 MK3 does this?
Dan

Dan,

You have to use CueMix to set it up, then the 896 will remember your settings when you unplug it from your computer.

And here's how:
Assign each input pair to a separate bus, panned hard left & right, and mute everything else on that bus. Set your outs on that bus to the corresponding ADAT out you want, and you should be good to go. In CueMix, you can also set it up as a preset.

Good luck!

do you mean Cuemix or Cuemix FX?
I am using OSX 10.4.11 on an old G4 but according to MOTU's site the most recent drivers for audio requires 10.4.11 so I should be OK there.

I have a feeling since I am using an 896 MK3 CueMix
is not communicating with it but CueMix FX is.

In CueMix FX, all the channels are listed under the "mixes" tab such as...
Analog 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, AES-EBU 1-2, SP/DIF 1-2 but only one bus is shown at a time.
I can click on the down arrow on the "mixes" tab and I see bus 1 -8 listed, and I can assign any of those buses to ADAT stereo pairs, and when I clicked on bus 1, I chose ADAT 1-2, then I clicked on bus 2 and chose ADAT 3-4, but the bus seen in the mixer changed to bus 2, I could no longer view bus one.

What a mess!

So should I not be using CueMix FX, and should I be using CueMIx? For some reason the 896 MK3 is not allowing the CueMix console GUI to come up, but of course CueMix FX does.

Dan

Use Cuemix FX. The other Cuemix might be an older
version or for PCI interfaces.

Open up Cuemix FX.
Under Mixes tab, select Bus 1 (little down arrow). Then unmute and hard pan analog channels 1 and 2 and make the far right output Adat 1-2. Go to Mixes tab, Bus 2, and unmute andhard pan analog channels 3-4 and make the far right output Adat 3-4. Repeat
this process for the remaining channels. Set the clocking mode from MOTU Audio Setup
(if clocking externally). You can now unplug the FW cable and the unit will operate in
standalone mode. It will also remember these settings after rebooting the unit.

between motuhelper and Dave Roberts I got this CueMix thing working great!

THANKS GUYS!!!
Dan