1. Yes
2. No
3. Record View also brings up the transport control buttons...
4. Not clear to me, please explain... What does  "(assigning) backing track channels on the USB (...) to input channels" refer to?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

hi Daniel

Thanks for the reply..

About my 3rd and 4th questions..  I am trying to work out how the tracks playing off USB integrate into the mixer alongside the hardware inputs..

I will have 6 pre recorded tracks playing off the USB stick alongside live input from a band.. the backing tracks will be things like a stereo keyboard track, stereo percussion. mono sound FX track and mono click track.. I want those backing tracks to appear on their own mixer channels so if i want to raise the keyboards or lower the percussion i have free control over them alongside the microphone and line inputs from the band..

If i want the stereo keyboard track to playback on top row channels 1&2 do i press the play icon on those mixer channels and select the keyboard tracks from the USB stick ? Or would the mixer channel 1&2 automatically play tracks 1&2 off the USB once i press the play icons on those channels ?  Subsequently if you play tracks off the USB routed through the top row, does it remove the ability to use the hardware input that would have been on that channel ?  So if the 6 tracks playing off USB took channels 1-6 of the top mixer row, would i loose the ability to use analog inputs 1-6 on the back of the UFX  ?  As they would normally occupy those mixer channels..

The other question i had relating to this... If i want to play something off the USB stick alongside a live band do you loose the ability to use mute and solo buttons ? Because "record view" removes them ?

I hope i am not making it too difficult to understand.. I wish i could just visit a local store near me and see a UFX for myself but believe it or not in all of Sydney there is not one store with a UFX on display that i can investigate these things. I am left to try and ask people online.. Thanks..

Hi,
I understand you want to use UFX and just a USB flash drive (DUREC functionality) to do this, but believe me, it's going to be far easier to do this with a decent laptop with a USB cable. If I were you (I have UFX), I copy the individual tracks to Reaper, and use Reaper as a playback engine as well as recording platform. You can send click to the drummer, and add reverb/comp for the vocal/PA (via the onboard DSP of UFX), and set up is very straightforward. You can create variety of monitoring mix to individual analog outs. Besides, Total Mix FX has so many functions, and you need to literally practice hours to operate them through the encoder knobs. If it's for live show, somebody (who knows UFX's front panel menu from top to the bottom) needs to be watching very carefully. Just for example, if you use the USB drive's click track and want to adjust the output level (mostly drummers request louder), I bet it's going to take 15-20 seconds to figure it out where it is. You can do that on the fly (literally in a second or two) with the Total Mix FX on the laptop.

I got your plans and reasons. To me, chance of my laptop crash is extremely low these days (I have Thinkpad W520, a pretty stable for this kind of purpose), and never experienced troubles with UFX. But for my applications (mostly location recordings, not live gig) I still bring rackmount PC (loaded with HDSPe AIO), Tascam recorders, and another Toshiba XP laptop in my trunk, just in case.

I can definitely test with some mock tracks in the USB drive, and test the simultaneous Digicheck recording. It'll be tonight, though.

Will do. And for the sake of completeness, let me know the sample rate it is rendered. USB playback doesn't have a function of reading metadata, so the sample rate of the playback is purely on the device setup.

Awesome.. thank you for testing that out.. the result is exactly as i had hoped and has pretty much answered all of my remaining UFX questions, much appreciated.. i think the only thing left for me to do is go buy one..

Certainly you won´t. Just ordered a second unit myself.

I routed five tracks of your test file to the first five ADAT channels on the TOP row, meaning input channels. First, check levels of these five channels go up. Even the green bar goes up and down, that doesn't necessarily mean you 'hear' them or not. If you don't hear them, the submix you're hearing (either main, or phone 1 or phone 2) may not be receiving the signals. In that case, you need to raise the level bar of the submix, as well as level bar of each ADAT input channel for THAT submix (This is the basics of Total Mix, and confusing in the beginning, yes).

Once you get the green level up/down and levels for the submix is raised, then you should be able to record them with Digicheck. Now, I don't know which submix Digicheck records, and I might have missed that part, but I'm not in front of the audio rig now, so I can check that later (again tonight).

The way I checked the file created by Digicheck, was simply using RME's wave file splitter. After recording five channels of your test file PLUS two channels of MP3 playback for a few seconds, I splitted the recorded file created by Digicheck into SEVEN WAV files. Each WAV file contained recorded file as anticipated, so I concluded it worked (as far as creating multi-layer WAV file by Digicheck, from combined source of USB playback and live input sources).

Hope this makes sense, and I'll follow up with the Digicheck and submix selection later.
Masaaki

edit: Actually, recoding by Digicheck may not be related to submix anyway....I might have said something inaccurate. It should work...hang on....Total Mix is confising in the beginning, but you'll get there!

And there is a a manual that helps a lot, it just needs to be read. It also shows the signal path that you try work with. Chapter 31, page 90.

The thing i am finding is so many things interact with other things routing wise its a bit overwhelming at the moment.. Its so easy to accidently have something selected and make a change without realise it affects something else, you may not even realise till you sit there and study every inch of what you have setup.. I just need to spend more time with it i think..

I can see its very powerful though and think i will ultimately get the setup optimised for my needs..  I have a few other queries i am writing down as i go along and if i cant work them out after a week or two i will post in a new thread to enquire about them..  Thanks..

If you select post FX for your metering on the options to the right i think it will show the meters off the USB playback.. I realised my problem with digicheck initially is what MC said, i had innocently deselected EQ+D to record in the global settings and didnt realise it needed this to be selected in order for the input channels to be recorded off USB to DAW.. There has been some other little things that has caught me out also but overall i think its just my lack of familiarity at this point so i will keep playing around with it. Once again thanks for your help mate.

I havent played live with the UFX yet but based on rehearsing and other usage so far i would say im fairly happy with it.. It isnt totally without some shortcomings but it is a well made product.. Some of the things i have noticed with regards to using it as a live mixer and backing track device.

1. Pretty much everything you play off the USB stick will initially stop its playback with a large click sound.. The reason seems because the file does not end at a zero crossing point on the waveform.. So even if you have a file which has faded out totally there may be an ever so small bit of noise from a plugin you had on the track when it was rendered and this is enough to prevent the file stopping at a zero point and it will create a large click sound from DURec playback.. The solution is to render your backing tracks with a few seconds of digitally rendered silence at the very end of each backing track.. If you have 6 or 8 things running as backing tracks this digital silence needs to be present for each track otherwise a large click sound will be generated (even from just one track) when the playback stops.. Also i noticed DURec seems to use some sort of buffer when it plays back and if your digital silence isnt longer than the buffer and the file stops but the buffer still has something from the backing track that was not total silence... the click will occur again.. hence i suggest using around 5-6 secs at the end to ensure all the audio in the buffer is silence also.. You can manually stop/pause the files without creating the click sound, its only if the file reaches the end on its own that this happens..

2. The DSP onboard the UFX doesnt have as much overhead as may be needed for live bands.. For my application i dont think i will run out of the ability to use FX/EQ/Compression but with the Reverb turned on and only a handful of compression/EQ on around 6 tracks its already approaching half the DSP usage.. That is mainly because Reverb takes a lot of DSP but it should be noted if you are running a half elaborate live setup with many input channels do not expect you will have endless overheads for processing.. What is available seems adequate for basic tasks but i could imagine a band could run into limitations fairly easily..

From what i am led to believe controlling nearly all mixer functions as a standalone unit is possible, i personally havent looked at operating the UFX this way too much.. From what i understand if you run a laptop and only load totalMix to control the UFX mixer, the software is not doing anything other than providing a screen for the internal hardware mixer of the UFX and therefore not as vunerable.. If you make a volume change and the laptop crashes the mix state should remain in the UFX and the gig should still be able to run.. Then all you need to do is reboot the laptop to provide the screen again.. Also i think the possibility of a crash is greatly reduced when you arent loading ASIO drivers or running VST plugins so the laptop purely for the mixer functionality should be ok.. I will try a few tests soon and while im rehearsing i'll pull the firewire lead out and see if it causes any glitches to the mixer in UFX.. I hope not

I also think you can use external control surface like BCF2000 if you want more control in stanalone operation.. Alongside a BCF2000 you could then just use the front panel display to star/stop USB playback..

I think there is some Midi CC implementation but im not sure to what extent as its not something i have needed to look into.. Someone else could probably help you further..

I havent tried it but i would expect it isnt going to work, the same way any normal line level input cannot accept a mic source as there isnt enough gain without a pre amp..

yes, this is very easy.. the UFX is really flexible with routing. Each time you send an input to an output it also has its own level control for that individual output (if you want it to)..  the UFX is like a large monitor mixer with heaps of AUX sends.

I am on PC and i noticed you can assign the function keys to certain features in totalMix.. For instance you can turn FX on/off or start/pause USB playback.. those would be handy for live gigs, turning FX off between songs when singer is talking and obviously start/stop USB for backing tracks etc...