Hello fellow recording pros.
I am new to this forum and came to it in search of some technical experts with lots of hands on experience on the Behringer DDX3216. First a little background. After retiring from Berklee College in Boston after 31 years teaching initially jazz courses and then teaching recording techniques and managing ten 24 track studios, I retired and started (or came back to) a location recording 'business'(?). My passion has always been recording Big Band Jazz and I also play trumpet in big bands but the gigs are now few and far between.
In 1997 I started putting together equipment so that I could record bands on my own as a business (that means trying to break even with my buying habit). Initially my equipment included:
An Allen & Heath 16:2 Mix Wizard (I do have an Amek Tac Bullet 24x8x2 but it is too heavy to lug to location jobs), a Tascam DA-302, a Lexicon MPX 100, two black face ADATs synced, a John Hardy M-1 mic pre which I recently upgraded from two channels to four, and lots of good microphones including AKGs, two Neuman U-47s, two Earthworks TC 30K, and a Royer SF 12. I also have a used 100’ 24 in snake with splits that I added for house sound with 8 of them transformer isolated and 16 hardwired. I made a 16 channel interface snake with TRS plugs on one end to be used in the mixer inserts and quarter inch TS on the other end for analog inputs and returns for the ADATs. I mixdown to DAT and transfer that to my Mac G4 for stereo editing using Peak and Jam for CD prep. Using the inserts works nicely. It’s like having a 16x16x2 inline console. Real-time mixdown became too much of a chore so about two years ago I bought a Behringer DDX3216 and used it only for automated mixdown still using the Mix Wizard on location recording sessions and overdubs. I recently sold my pair of U-47s so that I could buy more equipment. Among other things, I bought a second ADT 1616 optical module for the Behringer and an Alesis HR24XR. I racked it with one of my Black Face ADATs so that I could record and mixdown up to 32 tracks. This is where my setup (routing) problems began (finally to the point).
My intention was to return the optical outputs of the recorders to the channel section of the 3216 for stereo monitoring of up to 32 tracks. This part is no problem. For tracks 17 through 24 I have an M-Audio Octane 8 channel mic pre with ADAT optical outputs (it also has analog outs) with the optical outs connected directly to the HR24. I have ordered a Behringer ADA8000 to use when I need tracks 25 through 32 live intending to send the optical outs directly to the black face ADAT. Now for the problem: I had intended to feed the Direct outs of the Behringer 1 through 16 analog inputs to the output of module one of the ADT 1616 to track 1-16 inputs of the HD24. I got it working about two different times but the Behringer objected on many tries by showing full scale meter readings on all modules like a feedback loop possibly of the clock signal. FS Clock when it worked was set to one of he ADT 1616 modules. Sometimes I would get a low-level inaudible signal showing on the Behringer and the Alesis corresponding to the armed track. This level indication would slowly grow over time. When that happened, I was not getting intended audio signal to the HD24. Usually on these failed attempts, the mixer would report no clock and revert to internal 44.1. When added the black face ADAT into the equation, the mixer would go into feed back when I switched the black face into digital input. Later I tried tying all optical equipment together using the BNC clock connections and setting the Behringer to internal 48K clock but this made only minor improvements. At this point I could not even route the analog inputs to the Buss outputs pre fader and get the intended audio signal to the HR24. I may have been able to do this when I first got the mixer but it won’t do it now. Something might have gotten damaged. I might upgrade to the new software system that has surround mixing thinking that my firmware may be corrupted. I don’t think the design engineers had my dual path desire in mind since most examples used different banks of modules for send and return. I want it to function just like my analog mixer using the inserts. How else could one do punch-ins with musicians monitoring on headphones? I now will get around the problem by feeding the digital recorders with analog signals since I can simultaneously get optical returns from the recorders to the Behringer for monitoring and headphone mixes for the players. To the analog inputs of the digital recorders I will use input 1 through 12 from the Behringer analog inserts, 13 through 16 directly from the M-1, 17 through 24 from the analog outputs of the Octane and 25 through 32 from the analog outs of the ADA8000.
There you have it all. I promise I will be brief in the future but I had to give you all the info in order for you to study the problem. This is no big deal now since I have committed to using analog inputs to the recorders. I am going to send most of this to Behringer to see if their design engineers can help me. Who knows, they might even redesign the firmware to address this application.
Thanks in advance to anyone who offers expert help.
Joe Hostetter