Complete newbie needing help

[eyhk]

Hello everyone!
I'm a tech guy who was put in charge of our church's sound system. When I first started, the church was using a very basic 8 channel mixer for a couple of mics, a guitar, and a keyboard. I understand very basic things from using it but not much else. The church just recently moved to a new building and during the clean-up of our old place, in the depths of storage, we find a fully functional Mackie d8b(the mixing panel, the computer, and a monitor)! Somebody had apparently donated it but nobody had a clue how to use it so it was just put in storage. Anyways, long story short, we finally figured out how to at least get it up and running (v5.1), but I'm butting my head against a wall trying to figure things out. I apologize in advance for any headaches and cringes caused by reading this.

My first issue is figuring out how to wire everything up. Right now, our setup is we have an elevated open control booth in the very back. Someone bought a 16 channel snake for mic and line inputs so we have one wireless and 6 wired mics, two keyboards, a guitar, and a bass guitar hooked up. Then we had to get seriously long cables to connect the master out to an amp up front connected to two passive speakers via Speakon cables. Now that we have a much bigger stage, we needed stage monitors as well. I would like to be able to pipe different channels to different monitors so that the keyboard players hear what they are doing and the drummer hears what everyone else is doing, but I haven't figured that out yet. Currently, since the amp also has a 1/4" line out(one for each channel), we used it to hook it up to a powered monitor. It had a pretty bad buzz that took ages to weed out, but it still has a bit of a hum. We also have a separate infant room where we need to pipe sound out to. I used one of the phone outs on the db8 connected to a powered speaker.

For the most part though, everything works. After that, I started to learn about the fat channel and how to adjust the EQ of individual channels. The only thing is, I'm not sure how to listen to only a single channel via the second phone out while still having everything pump out to the speakers. We hardly ever have time for a proper sound check so a lot of the adjustments I do is on the fly, but since I can't figure out how to listen to just a single channel, I can't properly gauge if my adjustments are right or not.

I wanted to add some reverb to the vocals as they come out very dry sounding. Our previous tiny mixer had a pretty straightforward effects knob but on the db8 I have no clue where to look.

We also had a scare this morning where the dreaded error 43 came up, no boot record found, and no amount of reboots would fix it. Thankfully, it seems the IDE cable had somehow gotten loose, or at least that's what I think. I unseated and reseated the cables on both ends, and that seems to have fixed the issue. I'm looking up articles on how to clone the hard drive though, since I have no idea how much life that hard drive has left. It looks pretty straightforward and much more in my comfort zone. Other technical issues include the level meter on random channels getting stuck some times and requiring a reboot, mouse not working (I tried a USB optical mouse with a PS2 converter), and really not wanting to buy a 5pin DIN keyboard (I'm looking into a PS2 keyboard and PS2 to 5pin DIN converter).

Anyways, apart from all of my questions, I'd really appreciate any pointers or tips! I'll keep digging through the forum posts in the meantime!

[the boss]

Hi

I think a service on your console will fix small issues.
The d8b is a complexed console and maybe not so easy to use if you don't used to do it!

You'll need MFX/UFX cards in the effect slot in the back to get reverb and so on.
First of all replace the motherboard battery CR2032.
Set your bios.... how to on this forum.
Set your console to internal sync in setup.
Solo.... press solo on ch, you have to tell the console how to solo pfl/ afl and where to send solo.

That's a start.
Read the manual for 5.1 on Mackie website under discontinued products, d8b.

Good luck

[Old School]

Hi,
Regarding your hum when feeding a powered monitor from an "out" on a power amp, are you sure this out is at signal level? To check this, plug this output into a non-powered speaker and if you get sound, then you are overdriving the powered monitor input to say the least. As for your monitor mixes, you have eight auxillary sends and two stereo sends that are selectable pre or post fader which should provide you with plenty of monitor mix flexibility. Read the manual and get back to us if you are still having problems.

Have a blessed day in Christ,
Mike W.

[eyhk]

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately, a few days after I wrote this post, something must have gone because I can't get it to recognize any sound inputs. It boots up fine, any changes on the board show up on the screen and vice versa, but the level display shows nothing on all channels and no sound is outputted either. It was fine on Saturday but Sunday come worship time, it just doesn't want to work. We've had quirks before that usually get solved with a reboot but this hasn't been resolvable. I'm wondering if it's just the connection from the inputs to the main mixer logic board but I'd rather not bother at this point! Anybody in the Detroit area want a D8B for parts or to fix?

[Phil.c]

Is your clock showing "Locked".

Phil