An interesting delema

[AustinFa04]

Okay, this is going to sound convoluted and crazy to understand, but I need you to bear with me here…

I have a Mackie D8B with 3 Apogee DIO8 Cars, and Apogee Word Clock

M-Audio Profire 2626 capable of doing 26X26 simultaneous I/O (8X8 Analogue, 16X16 ADAT, 2X2 S/PDIF).

MOTU 828 MK II Capable of doing 18X18 simultaneous I/O (8X8 analogue, 8X8 ADAT, 2X2 S/PDIF)

Here is what I want to do…

I want to be able to take full advantage of all my I/O channels on my Mackie D8B, not so much for the purpose of recording into Pro Tools, but mainly for Pro Tools to go back out to the D8B for the purpose of mixing. I hate mixing “in the box” and would much prefer the tactile mixing through my console.

My Profire 2626 which serves as my interface to Pro Tools, although capable to handling 26 simultaneous I/O in print, Pro Tools limits the Profire to only 18 I/O's. (Don't ask me why, I guess its because Avid doesn’t like the thought of one of their subsidiary’s' interfaces not sold under the Pro Tools HD brand to undermine their flagship products)

Now I have been able to achieve those 18 I/O by connecting the first two DIO8 cards on my D8B to the ADAT ports of my Profire 2626, (there are my first 16 I/O's) and my other two I sent out analogue 17 and 18 from the D8B into the analogue 1 and 2 of my Profire 2626, than I sent those to channels back out of my Profire 2626 analogue out to my MOTU analogue in's, then out of the MOTU ADAT out to my 3rd DIO8 card on the D8B.
Now the reason I am able to bypass the 3rd ADAT out card for channels 17 and 18 on the D8B and get them into the Profire 2626 via analogue is because I patched each of my line in's on my board to a patch bay, and directly below inputs 17 and 18 on the patch bay I connected the analogue inputs of my Profire 2626 (I hope that makes sense). I then connected my Apogee Word clock in and out to my Profire 2626.

My question is, does anyone else have a better way to achieve my end goal of 24 simultaneous I/Os with what I have available to me? I have been told that I can connect two Profires together via firewire, but from my understanding only if you are using a Mac, and I run a PC. The Profire and the MOTU both have dual Fire Wire ports, but I am not aware of weather or not I can have two interfaces connected to my computer at once being used by Pro Tools.

[AustinFa04]

So in followup to this that I wrote last night... Sense then I have tried the demo version of Cakewalk Sonar, and with Cakewalk, I am able to assign and use all my available I/Os for both my Profire 2626 and my MOTU to take advantage of all my channels on my D8B.

I don't really know why I am not able to do this with Pro Tools, it kind of pisses me off, because I am Pro Tools Certified, and I have been using it for years and am very comfortable and used to it. I can only deduce that Avid "built in" the limitation so as to try and pigeon hole larger studios who want full 24 or more channel I/O's into buying the Pro Tools HD setup, of which I have no interest in, because I think it is a rip off.
If anyone knows better on this subject, please let me know.

[arjepsen]

Hey.
If I understand you correctly, you actually don't want to use the d8b's audio capabilities (various fx's), but just mainly as a daw controller?
You might want to read up on the "probox" here on the forum. It's a box that someone made, that made the d8b work exactly that way.

[AustinFa04]

Sorry for the very delayed response, I have been in the middle of moving...

I actually am not interested in using the D8B as a controller for Pro Tools, except of course the transport controls would be nice, I would prefer to match the MMC on the D8B with Pro Tools via midi, use the D8B automation to do my mixing (assuming the machine time is synced) then rerecord that mix back into Pro Tools.

I did however find that it was my version of Pro Tools that was keeping me from being able to use all my I/Os, and have sense upgraded to Pro Tools 12 HD Native and am able to use all of them now.

[AustinFa04]

I think I managed to get everything figured out now! I have all 24 my I/O's going, and my HUI mode working beautifully now, I cant think of a single thing that I can complain about now. I am happy as a lark!