The 8 outs to pro-tools 9..

Hey, whats up!

I just got into some money and updated my home studio.
I upgraded to ProTools 9 and got a M-Audio ProjectMix I/O for the 8 inputs.
What I've been doing up untill now is tracking individual tracks through the main out
with the other tracks muted, while synced to protools.
Now I want to track all 8 tracks together MONO, so I've hooked everything up
and looked in the manual on 'how to assign the output of each track'
but all I can find is how to assign a sample to a certain output, which would be really time
consuming to be honest and not much better than tracking out individually through the main outs.

thanks in advance,
AbstraktIdea

I don't really understand the reason to solo individual tracks... you may as well just mute the ones you don't want, and go stereo out into protools...
Tracking out your music gives you more creative freedom. If your recording multiple sounds from each track, you eliminate this choice. How are you going to edit anything when you've recorded everything together? Sure you can zoom in, but that's more work on you. Record each sound individually. You have PT9, so you can record 8 tracks at a time from the MPC. Learn how to copy & paste within PT. It doesn't take long to record 30 tracks.

do you play 1 sound per track? how do you compose that way?
i compose by having multiple samples on my pads, playing them ontop of some drums
on one track, then playing them differently on another, yet theres maybe 8/16 samples each track,
making a 4 bar, 8 bar or 16 bar loop,
which i would like to track out individually at the same time as my drums are tracking out individually,
this is just a matter of saving time, stereo out tracking takes maybe 24 recording processes while i want to
do 3x 8out recordings, seems much faster and i want to spend more time composing vs. tracking out

You can do what you are talking about...but in the long run it will not cut it. (8 analog outs into interface)
What you really need is an audio interface with ADAT so that you can use the digital output on the MPC.

"ADAT Lightpipe, S/PDIF and word clock I/O > total digital connectivity"

this is a feature on the project mix I/O, how can i utilize this?

Is there a way to assign ADAT channels to specific tracks instead of pads/samples?

If you want to assign individual outs to samples..
1) make sure you are in the program the samples are in..
2) hit <mode> + mixer. you should see mixer board.
3)At the top you'll see LR move cursor there and scroll through stereo 1/2, 3/4,5/6 etc. till you get the 1,2,3,etc
easy, you have just assign an output

On the Pro Tools side you want to add multiple new tracks.. you can do mono or stereo.. then on the mixer assign input to the corresponding sample output of the MPC.. Make sure to hit the [R] on each track (in the Edit or Mixer area) in order to hear any audio.

Now, do you want to do the samples all in mono, maybe the drums. but the other samples use your discretion.. don't miss out on the fullness of the stereo sample just so you can do 8 tracks at one time. Remember even if you record 4 stereo tracks at a time or 4 mono and 2 stereo at one time.. it still beats doing have to mute and record one track at a time. Can you say TIME CONSUMING.

To the OP....take advantage of the info given. Plus it would benefit you to learn some basic recording principles so that this whole tracking thing isn't a guessing game for you.

There's plenty of articles on line that give pointers on tracking made by some of the biggest names in recording.

dabmeister wrote:To the OP....take advantage of the info given. Plus it would benefit you to learn some basic recording principles so that this whole tracking thing isn't a guessing game for you.

There's plenty of articles on line that give pointers on tracking made by some of the biggest names in recording.

the only guessing here is you guessing that i dont know basic recording principles when i'm asking for specific instructions on one piece of equipment i am not experienced with.
i did however make the stupid assumption that when JJOS released an OS with the ability to assign each track to an individual output, that akai would include that in their newer models

To do what you want all you have to do is assign the samples to different programs then go to the program mixer and assign the outputs of the programs.
So if you had a piano, bass and some brass make them 3 different programs then in the program mixer screen assign the piano program to 1/2, bass program to 3/4 and the brass program to 5/6.
You could also assign the piano program to 1, the bass program to 2 and the brass program to 3.

Then when you track your drums you can assign the individual samples to different outs and track 8 (or 10 ) drum sounds at once.
So basically in 3 passes you would be able to record 30 tracks.

I personally would suggest using all analog 8 individual + 2 stereo or all digital 8 ADAT + 2 SPDIF .
If you use a combination of analog and digital you will have to do some nudging to get things back to the alignment they had in the MP.

Quick question did you already have the mAudio or did you buy it to go with 9?

thanks for a great answer, and yes i got the project mix to go with my pt9 in my home studio

Allizzle wrote:

dabmeister wrote:To the OP....take advantage of the info given. Plus it would benefit you to learn some basic recording principles so that this whole tracking thing isn't a guessing game for you.

There's plenty of articles on line that give pointers on tracking made by some of the biggest names in recording.

the only guessing here is you guessing that i dont know basic recording principles when i'm asking for specific instructions on one piece of equipment i am not experienced with.
i did however make the stupid assumption that when JJOS released an OS with the ability to assign each track to an individual output, that akai would include that in their newer models

That's where it differentiates between what JJ does and what akai does. JJ hasn't had a hand in dealing with the 5k and probably never will. So it's fair to say that whatever was written in the manual for the 5k pertaining to output assignments, that would seem to be your best answer to figuring out what it is you were after in the first place.

I understand that we can forget & get confused when we're toggling between different machines & different o.s.'s. Nobody's perfect, and we can only hope that for future references that akai will step to the plate and follow suit with an o.s. similar to what JJ's got going on. But that's just wishful thinking.

I know one thing, it would def make the world a better place if they did.

Very little in the JJ OS that the 5k doesn't do, but there's a lot in the 5k that JJ can't easily pull of because of hardware aspects.
He bends every rule he can to squeeze missing functions in as throw an occasional unexpected tweak.

The reason JJ originally impressed us was he added some debugging to the 1k OS.
Then he added some of the features missing from other MPs.
Then he began to expand the features.

He couldn't have done the same with the 4k or 5k since they weren't intentionally crippled by Akai, however they would have given far more to work with for developement.

The 5k does have a track mixer but it a MIDI track mixer and really allows you to do a lot with your MIDI gear from the 5k's Q-Links, they have global and non-global program control that works from a different mixer page.
Between the two you get massive control over your sequence that can be saved and recalled.

I wanna know how to record 8 tracks at the same time from the mpc to pro tools or logic...the question is if I connect each output from akai to one digital mixer (usb,firewire) its possible? and control the volume in the mixer also connected with the mixer of the logic/pro tools ?

sorry the stupid question.....
i dont wanna make solo in each track and record many times bahhh ehehhe