Hardware Mixing in Renoise

Hello everyone, I have set up a MOTU Ultralite MK3 routed into a Mackie 1202 VLZ4, after many head aches and frustration I have managed to get sound coming out of my analog channels on Renoise,

I am having trouble setting my renoise to come out of the main outputs of the mixer, I can only hear sound through the channels, like 1+2, when i do set it to main outputs 1+2 I can hear some sound but its really quiet.

sorry to sound fully n00b! but I cant even get my head around how to mix using this technique, do you send for example drums to 1 + 2 panned left and right on mixer set the levels then press record? or do you render it to samples?

In my head I imagine it works like this. send master output to come out of main 1 + 2 on mixer then use the channel strips to mix with a possibility of mixing track by track, so for example send drums to 1+2 mix it, record it then send bass to 1+2 tweak it and record it. Am I on the right path here or is my head mixed up like spaghetti?!

Also for what its worth im pretty sure my signal path goes AI -> Mixer -> Speakers, I could not get sound out any other way. Also I cant even figure out how to get my Mac’s system sound (itunes/youtube etc) to even come out of anywhere

Any help would really be appreciated, I bought my mixer and AI quite some time ago and out of frustration pretty much gave up on music and have only just returned…

Please Help!!

Prob should have put this in the beginners questions, any mods happy to move it please do.

no one?

Sorry can’t really help due to lack of experience with actual hardware, osx audio, your sound card etc. But maybe give some pointers.

First I’d like to know why exactly do you wish to use the mixer? In modern music I think they have their place when recording, working with hardware devices, but I’ve never heard before that someone wishes to bypass a daw’s digital mixer in favour for an analog one. Only heard about ppl automating the daw mixer with a big ass midi controller, but that is just for the tactile, the actual mixing still happens inside the daw. Or maybe I’ve understood wrong what you wish to do?

Maybe it can help you to write down the signal flow on paper with boxes featuring little ports and lines. in/out top/down or left/right, “backlinks” need to be special especially when going via sound card inputs because they can cause feeback or extra latency that will need to be compensated.

Other than that - get to know your gear inside out. The mixer and its internal signal flow, the sound card and its own mixing and routing, the osx configuration of the sound card… you are not gonna have great chances to succeed and customise your workflow if you don’t rtfm hard and understand how it works. It is pro audio gear, not some learning by doing toys after all.

Maybe also think about strategies to test intermediate stages. If sound comes through but too quiet, there is something wrong somewhere, maybe the level too quiet in renoise, the sound card, the mixer, somewhere else… don’t try to build your setup in one step or rather leap, take it in little modules advancing the flow in steps where you can test level, sound etc in each, and first testing a single channel before you move on to wiring up more of them.

If you really wish to mix renoise channels in the hardware & record it, you would for example need to wire up each channel you wish to mix to an input in the mixer via your audio interface until you have them all hooked. For example think like this - The 4 mono channels you could use for mono signals, like in the renoise channel a stereo expander mixing to mono, followed by panning hard left or hard right, and putting two to the same sound card stereo line (I guess the outputs are stereo jacks?), and from there with a split Y cable into the mixing desk. This is just one example, you will have to make sure it’s properly, Idk if it is legit to split balanced stereo lines into mono channels for example, you need to research each step to see if it is sane. Then you could feed the mixer back into the computer, and from that input drive some recording software sampling your live mix.

HTH a little

I am having trouble setting my renoise to come out of the main outputs of the mixer, I can only hear sound through the channels, like 1+2, when i do set it to main outputs 1+2 I can hear some sound but its really quiet.

• what do you mean it is quiet? volume up?

sorry to sound fully n00b! but I cant even get my head around how to mix using this technique, do you send for example drums to 1 + 2 panned left and right on mixer set the levels then press record? or do you render it to samples?

• a bit confused, mixing and recording is not the same… i never render anything in renoise to sample. if your sound is need to be stereo then its simple, nothing to do it is go thru to the master in stereo mode, no need pannig leftright 1-2 or something as u mentioned. why? you dont need to do this,

In my head I imagine it works like this. send master output to come out of main 1 + 2 on mixer then use the channel strips to mix with a possibility of mixing track by track, so for example send drums to 1+2 mix it, record it then send bass to 1+2 tweak it and record it. Am I on the right path here or is my head mixed up like spaghetti?!

• make a drum track and send all of your drum sound to this group before the main and you can edit only this one track or group track if you want eq comp filter or something all in your drum sounds,

Also for what its worth im pretty sure my signal path goes AI -> Mixer -> Speakers, I could not get sound out any other way. Also I cant even figure out how to get my Mac’s system sound (itunes/youtube etc) to even come out of anywhere

• AI? what is AI? you dont need any mixer if you have soundcard like your motu. The second half is a WHAT? put your MOTU output to your speaker, setup your soundcard and thats it.

Any help would really be appreciated, I bought my mixer and AI quite some time ago and out of frustration pretty much gave up on music and have only just returned…

Still dont understand what the … is AI?

Use your motu dont need mixer., motu has a built in mixer for this.