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MOTU mixer advice, please

Connecting Hauptwerk to MIDI organs, sequencers, ...
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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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MOTU mixer advice, please

PostSat Jan 15, 2022 2:25 pm

I am running HW6 on a PC and I use a MOTU Ultralite Mk4 as my audio interface; I have six stereo pairs of speakers (i.e. 12 channels), so I run the digital fibreoptic output through a Behringer DAC to get the extra channels. I also have an SVS powered subwoofer, and the input for this is the headphones output from the Ultralite. This has been working fine until today.

I have been away from home for a few days and I shut everything down first. Today I thought the pedal seemed a bit weak when I was playing and I realised that I wasn't getting any output from the subwoofer. I have traced the problem to the mixer in the Ultralite but I have been unable to resolve it.

There is a web-based interface controlling the internal mixer of the Ultralite, with several pages. The routing page shows a grid with inputs along the top and outputs on the left side. You can route an input to a specific output by clicking on the square where they intersect, which lights up. You can route one input to many outputs, but not the other way round. At the top and left edges there are circles which light up when there is a signal, so that you can check how it is working.

Each input (from the PC) is connected to its appropriate output (to the speakers) as indicated by a diagonal run of squares. In addition there is a pair of inputs and outputs called "main" and a stereo pair of outputs called "phones". The router had the Main input routed to the Phones output. However, when I played something none of the lights on the main and phones channels lit up (the other channels lit up as expected). If I clicked to route one of the other channels to the phones, then the subwoofers worked as expected, but of course I want a mix-down of the whole organ, not just one or two channels which would not include every note.

According to the manual, if you want to mix down several inputs to a single output you need to route the signal to the mixer, which I think I have done, but still nothing seems to be reaching the Main channel or any others that I have tried.

I am not very used to using mixers and I don't know what I am doing wrong, nor why it should have stopped working when it was fine previously. Has anyone got any ideas?
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mnailor

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Re: MOTU mixer advice, please

PostSat Jan 15, 2022 3:21 pm

I'm on a 24Ao, but I think the mixer and routing are the same, just with different ports.

In Routing, send each computer input to both its analogue/ADAT output and to a unique mixer input. Each computer input column will have 2 outputs checked. Two diagonals in the Routing matrix.

I use Main for the sub and Monitor sourced from Main for headphones at a reduced gain, but yours would be basically the same.

If you run into too much trouble, I'll go write down my routing links and try to clarify.

Make sure each live mixer input on the Mixing tab has its Main Mix slider set to 0 dB, the default. That sends the mixer input to the Main mixdown.

And save your settings to Presets so you can restore later.
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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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Re: MOTU mixer advice, please

PostSun Jan 16, 2022 5:49 am

Hi Mike,

Thank-you for your reply. I think I have my mixer more-or-less like that. The problem was that there was no signal in the Main / Monitor / Phones channels and I couldn't figure out why. Eventually I turned everything off and left it alone for the day, not least because my organ room is in an unheated part of the house and freezing cold at the moment (to add to the realism, of course).

This morning I booted up the system, and the signal was back in the Main channel again. I routed it back to the Phones channel, as before, and everything is working again.

I hope this was just a glitch of some kind and not an impending hardware failure.

Thank-you for your trouble. It has helped me understand a little better what is going on, though I still find mixers somewhat baffling, I think because I have never used them for anything other than HW.

Best Wishes,
Julian

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