bouncing and using auxs on a Fostex 450

[ethansnew]

hey yall!

from the "theres no dumb questions" department....

I am leveling up my recording skills and currently Im at a stopping point where I just cant figure it out....

I have a Fostex 450 mixer. I have 6 tracks of recorded material and I need to bounce some of them down to record more, but maintain my stereo field. That is one. I have only ever bounced with a 4 track and I am nervous to try on the 8 track for fear of screwing something up.

The second part is that I need to throw some effects as I do this (compression / reverb / distortion). I am using guitar petals, but so far the only way I can figure it out is to stick them on is on one channel....I need to be able to use the Aux inputs, but I have tried plugging in everywhere and I am just not getting something right, there is something I dont understand.

I am assuming I am going to have to use the busses somehow....

It would also be really sweet if someone could explain it to me where I could say, stick reverb on the guitar, but have the wet output in a different location on the stereo field (use stereo with the aux loop...I think I should be able to do this with my aux 2)

The things recorded thusfar
Drums (one ribbon mic as an overhead)
Djembe
Vox
2 guitars, (which were done at the same time with 2 ribbon mics at 90 degree angles, so its on 2 channels)
Trombone

If I can maintain the stereo field I can bounce all these down onto 2 tracks at once.

THANKS!!!!

[Matt C.]

i used to have one of these mixers, and from what i remember, there is no seperate aux return. you have to use a spare channel as a return for those effects. so you have your recorded tracks on channels 1-6, then patch the aux1 output into your reverb (or whatever), then plug the reverb output into the line input on channel 7. assign all of those channels to buss 1-2 and patch the buss 1-2 outputs to the channel 7 and 8 inputs on your tape machine. this way you can pan things however you want, including panning the effects returns seperate from the original dry source.

my memory of that board is fading, but i think that's how it works. let me know if that doesn't make sense or doesn't work.

[ethansnew]

thanks ill give it a shot.

I guess the kicker is that I was hoping to run the compressor thru one of the auxs and the reverb thru the other so I could get independent levels for each, and then bounce with that. Without aux returns this is impossible with my board, and what I need to do is chain the pedals together and just have them go thru one AUX?

I could also go get some RCA cable splitters, if there is a solution where that would be useful....the reverb pedal has 2 outs (not sure if thats going to help me in this case, other than I could stick it on 2 tracks individually, bounce 2 at a time and then after I do this 3 times to get the reverb on, use the the AUX for the compression when I bounce the 6 tracks down to 2.)

[ethansnew]

alright so completely different now...i still cant bounce, and Im trying to figure out how to do it just using the sends and recieves. (ive got a buddy coming over one of these weekends, who is gonna be able to show me thru some of this stuff but in the meantime...)

(so, im trying to bounce, but throw it thru an effects loop first)

Im pretty close....I take the send out of the channel that the original tape signal is going thru and stick it in the recieve of a different channel on the board. I cant figure out what I need to plug in to get it back to the tape tho....i tried just about every combination, but im not sure why I couldn't find the one that worked....

THANKS

[Snarl 12/8]

Seems to me like you'd want to use the master stereo out to the two tracks on the tape deck that you want to record onto. Then, you could use the full gamut of the mixer's features for your bounce. Any single track that gets its own effect, obviously, I'd just use the insert. Then, you've got two channels open for anything you want to be able to pan or eq after the effect. Aux 1 is mono, aux 2 is stereo, so anything you want on more than one channel has to be auxed out of whichever of those is appropriate. Then, you can bring your auxes back in either on the aux in (which I was never that sure of how to route) or on any or all of the four busses. And again, you can pan those busses to put shit where you want. When you say you can't get it to work what exactly are you talking about? It makes me wonder if the problem is on your deck somewhere, rather than the board if you simply can't get any sound recorded no matter what you try on the board.

If it was me, I'd get the dry meat of my bounce together on busses 1 and 2. Panned however I think is great. I'd stick the distortion on the kick channel via the insert. I'd set up my reverb on aux 2 (if it was stereo) and whatever else I wanted on aux 1) you could even set up 3 mono auxes using those sends and careful panning on the aux 2 outs. Then, I'd bring the reverb in on channels 7 and 8 and assign those to busses 3 and 4. (Assuming stereo) Sometimes i like to eq my reverb return and or squash it with compression (inserts). I'd bring in whatever other effects I had on busses 3 and 4 also assuming I could work out the panning the way I wanted. Then, master out to tracks 7 and 8 on the deck. Arm those tracks, but not the others and boom chaka lacka ding dong.

My one hesitation with all of that is that I never thought the master section on that mixer sounded that great. I almost exclusively recorded one channel on the mixer to one channel on the deck via the direct outs and never bounced. Only going through the master section once per song. 8 tracks max. possible via that method. But whatever turns you on....

[ethansnew]

well....i did in fact get it to bounce! thanks for the replies. if i was smart I would have written how i had everything wired, cause i think its gonna take me an hr and another bottle of wine to figure it out again next time i try, but i guess thats what you call good practice.

It was funny tho, the signal loss was really noticable, man it was bad! How much of that is the board and how much of that is just the process, I dont know, but I got much better results going from one tape machine to another at my buddies house last weekend (thru his board), so I guess I will just try and work my way over there again.

thanks yall