Routing audio from Logic to a mixing desk

[Mike / g_mic713]

Hi there,

Does anyone know how I can route audio from Logic 9 to a mixing desk and when you finish mixing how do you put it back into Logic but the have sounds affected from the EQ and compression of the mixer.
Thank you very much!

[Mohamed Kamal]

You are entering the world of hybrid setups.... basically your wtf meters will sky rocket from here on

You need an audio interface with great AD/DA converters with at least 8 inputs and outputs. I have a similar setup where I send my audio stems from logic to outboard eqs, comps and summing, then turn it around and send it back to logic.

For example let's say you want to mix your drums elements on your outboard mixer with an audio interface that has 8 in/outs (same concept applies if you have less than 8 ins/outs).

Output section

In logic's mixer select the Kick drum and assign it to output 1-2 instead of 'stereo out' (actually stereo out is output 1-2). If it's a mono track, just use output 1.
Move on to the snare and assign it to output 3-4
Hats to output 5-6
percussion output 7-8

Afterwards physically connect the outputs of the audio interface to your mixer inputs. By now you should be able to see levels on your board. If not, check your cabling.

Input section
After you have mixed all the drum stems in your mixer, physically connect the 8 outputs of your mixer to your audio interface inputs... in logic create 4 stereo tracks and name them KICKin, SNAREin, HATin, PERCin. Assign KICKin to Input 1-2, SNAREin to input 3-4, HATin Input 5-6 and so on...
make sure the software monitoring option is activated so you are able to listen and viola...

Hope this helps!

[Mikki Funk]

Obviously it goes without saying to have the gains and faders on the mixing desk all the way down while you're plugging your interface outs to the desk ins/// If you have the gains up you're going to get loads of popping and clipping as you plug the cables in. Not good for your pre's (or ears depending on how high the gain is up!)

Like Mohamed has said, you don't neccessarily need a channel for every track in Logic, otherwise lots of so many people would need to run 24+ desks (its a nice thing to have but if you are going to go down the analogue route this is going to take up space etc--- and money). Anyway, you can have as little as 4 channels to sum to. Simply by bussing signals in Logic to Logic's aux busses. E.g. you might want to route the output of all your drums to (Stereo) Bus 5 for example, then select the output of this bus as 1+2 or 3+4. Then come out of these respective outputs on your converters and either into a stereo channel (so 1+2) or Input 1 for left and Input 2 for right. You should then have a stereo channel (or 2 mono channels) on your actual physical mixer with all your drums on it. Then you could do this again for say, percussion, vocals, and keys/ synths. You may want to bus the bass track (s) along with the drums to help them gel with them a little in the summing process. If you did go down this route its obviously up to you to experiment to see which routing and summing choices sound best!

I know a few people that have found this to be quite a nice simple solution for summing without going too high on channels or price!
http://www.dv247.com/studio-equipment/t ... ite--46154

Also you would actually want an analogue mixer or you want to be summing everything out of Logic to something thats analogue or you're just sending a digital signal through more digital things and bringing the quality down.