turning a 12:2 desk into a 12:4 (doubling outputs),possible?

[creature.of.habit]

hello everyone,

im thinking of yet another analog (old as hell) desk but need some advice on an hypothetical piece of gear, that i dont even know wether not it exists..

my soundcard (hercules firewire 1612) only has 8 1/4" outs, and those will be used to feed the mixer..8 ins as well..the mixer specs out at 12 inputs, 2 main outputs..there's more but the rest are fx sends, etc and it's all mono..

what im thinking is..there must be a way to loop/double the signal into a little box, to come up with a stereo mixdown exit (to the soundcard) and the same but as a monitor out (well...for the monitors)..

i guess i could get this going by mixing at will, and then when finished, just unplug the stuff from the monitors and plug them into the soundcard ins and go from there...but that would involve reaching around the back all the time, and i frankly wanna make this as confortable as possible..and crazy me might even wanna do some drastic fader moves when mixing down..or whatever...

im imagining something like the art DIO or something along those lines but please correct me if im wrong...i want (lol..if this even exists) something that wont saw off my signal, but im not in a position where i can blow 200 bucks for a box like this, or something..

if this doesnt exist, ill be forced to look at others desks..and i reaally reaaally wanted this one..

anyway...thanks for any help!

[joel hamilton]

If you make a patchbay to get the most out of your console, you could have a couple of mults, and mult the main outs to wherever you want, like printing a mix through a bus comp, and one NOT through a bus comp, or any other wacky permutation you come up with.

[creature.of.habit]

thanks Joel...

so it is possible..i was beggining to loose hope...

ok, patchbays..now that's something ive never even looked at...any thoughts on what to look for? i dont need a gazilion connections..and i guess i would want it to be balanced..

[JustinHedrick]

this is kind of off topic, but not really since it is about getting more out of your cosole. I'm usuing a patchbay to enable my insets on my console to be direct outs, and tape returns while still being able to use them as inserts. If you what to go on the cheap route with 1/4" balance connectors, get the behringer ones. they are $50 a piece and can switch between normal, half, and through on each channel. ok, so i hope this helped somewhat.

justin

[creature.of.habit]

helo Justin,

thanks for the sugestion, i was actually looking at those, and a neutrik one, even cheaper...

thing is, there's no less than probably something around 16 channels, and i made a point of not having racks here a long time ago :/ i was willing to open an exception for this, but sincerely, im not liking this route that much..

thinking hard about this, my board will almost never be used for its pres (ive got the 12ay7 for that), just the eq and mixdown facility...so i dont really need direct outs..it doesnt even have inserts lol

btw it's a yamaha M512 board...old stuff...only 2 stereo outs...the rest is mono...

im wondering if there's no real way to pull this off with something other than a racked patchbay...any thoughts? something small...all my outboard stuff is 1/3 rack and its kind of on purpose...lexicon lxp1 and dbx118..

thanks again.