what do you mean by “not feeling comfortable in this thread”?
I’ve been deliberating getting a mixer for exactly that purpose for months now…not least because UAD just won’t develop midi support for its Console app which makes it cumbersome to send the ins on my UAD Apollo to AUX.
Any recommendations re mixers for this purpose?
I’ve been looking at boards with direct outs for each channel so that I could still run each one into the Apollo, but maybe a splitter/patchbay would do that job too.
And saw that you have a Soundcraft Impact. How do you route AUXs on that? (If I recall correctly, that one doesn’t have dedicated AUX outs/returns to plug in/out of?)
Most modern digital boards, if not all, have USB support so you can stream directly over USB, no need for an additional audio interface.
There’s a lot of boards to choose from. Look at the specs you need. My Soundcraft is a great desk, but it’s in end of life stage (still produced though) so I’d rather recommend looking at what A&H has to offer. The Qu line is pretty good and compact with lots of possibilities and extensions. Get enough physical inputs! 16 is a bit short if you run everthing in stereo, and plan to use outboard FX
It has 14 mix busses ( 8 mono and 6 stereo) + mains, and 4 matrixes and 16 physical outputs, if you have a stagebox (my case) you can extend to 32 physical outputs + 32 USB ASIO outputs (Not counting the internal FX busses to the onboard Lexicon MX400 processors (4 of them). You can assign any input out of the 64 (with stagebox 96) ASIO USB streams (32) included, to any of the 80 mixer channels, and any bus, matrix or direct out can be patched to any of the available outputs (ASIO USB included). Any bus can be a AUX send, or a submix, and any input can be a Aux return. Channels can be set individually to pre/post per bus, or the whole bus can be set to pre/post globally. In short, you set it up how you want.
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you did this by soldering parts of the cable together, I assume?
any chance for a simple wiring diagram for the… “electrically challenged”? 
the newer MOTUs do allow for “direct monitoring”, yes - but as you said, I suspect that it does in fact pass the AD/DA stages, but they are so super fast it´s almost impercetible.
It does, and is only an issue when combining “real” direct sound and "zero latency monitoring sound. The OT, for instance, has a latency compensation setting for this.
Inserts are typically wired using TRS jacks. The sleeve is ground, Tip is send and Ring is return in most cases. So for use as a regular insert you use two TS jacks, one wired to the TRS Tip, the other to the TRS Sleeve. These are unbalanced line level in’s and out’s.
To make just a tap, you connect a TS jack to the TRS Tip & Sleeve, and you solder a bridge in the TRS jack between T and R. That restores the link that was interrupted mechanically when you plugged the TRS jack in the insert socket of your mixer in order to open the insert path. It’s a workaround to get direct outs when the board has only insert points. Because the insert is after the preamp buffer, there’s no loss.
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To make just a tap, you connect a TS jack to the TRS Tip & Sleeve, and you solder a bridge in the TRS jack between T and R. That restores the link that was interrupted mechanically when you plugged the TRS jack in the insert socket of your mixer in order to open the insert path. It’s a workaround to get direct outs when the board has only insert points. Because the insert is after the preamp buffer, there’s no loss.
perfect, just the right way to explain it so someone like me understands what´s going on 
thanks!
I’m using the OT as a mixer and it sounds ok to me. I’m fighting against the urge to buy a four channel DJ Mixer though, I like the idea of eq and filter live while I record stereo mixes. Unfortunately my search led me down the rabbit hole of rotary mixers, which are quite tempting. Anyhoo, OT as a mixer is good.
If you use only four channels, and want eq and filter live, why don’t you just use track 8 as a master track and do your hands-on eq and filter with the encoders? They are right there…
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I use a 6channel one…xone 96
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Even with my mixer+OT I’m still doing most of the actual mixing on the OT, the mixer is more for expanded routing, getting things in and out of the OT. Love the crossfader on xvol, it.'s like a DJ mixer but a lot more as you can assign all 8 tracks to it if you want in various combinations and choose your mixing behavior with scenes, plus affect any other parameters at he same time…
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Good question. - a couple of reasons:
I have AH then a compressor after the main outputs.
I’m figuring out the routing for digitone, dfam and manther, but they could go to a mixer and then aux send to OT for sampling. Most of my stuff is in shipping so have time to work it out. A lot relates to whether I’m going to try to play live or not. Advantage of a DJ mixer is I only like to record stereo mixes then edit so like to produce on the fly.
That is on my list.
You will have 6 stereo channels from which you can record from.
U have me thinking now lol…
Using the 2 sends from xone 96 into the OT inputs. Using OT as a send/fx unit might be quite cool.
Might try that later down the road
Could have 8 fx for each send if using neighboring tracks fed into each other. 4 OT tracks per send each with 2 fx.
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Foregoing a mixer allows me to send a signal to several ext fx instead of just two. Not that i ever would but i can have (on my setup) 8 ext fx that i can route to at any given time.
Super flexible.
I use. K-Mix, which has 3 stereo AUX sends, plus plus an extra one if you use the headphone jack.
It’s pretty wild, routing-wise. You can also round-trip audio through computer/iPad FX.
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Is the k mix solid as in never crashes, no glitches and no audio dropouts?
I’d considered one for live but just wondered how it handled processing audio for long periods.
Thanks
I also installed my OT as a mixer in my setup.
However, unlike the real mixer, OT has a problem. And this problem - loudness.
Also known as toning correction. In a real mixer, depending on the volume level, frequency correction is performed. In OT, this will work with analog headphone volume pot. But in a digital mixer, the tone correction processes are usually not performed.
This was reported to me by a friend who has his own studio and he works for the film industry. He has a lot of experience in sound engineering and production.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Totally solid. Amazing little box. I can’t say the same for the iPad it’s connected to though.
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