Routing tracks from Mixcraft to outboard gear.

[rick d]

I have a question about routing tracks from Mixcraft to outboard gear.

Ok, here is my scenario. And I will list the whole procedure in order.

1. First of all, my drum tracks are made and sequenced with Beatcraft. I use no external drum machines.

2. After that, I go to Mixcraft and lay my drum track (Which is a single file) into a specific track into Mixcraft.

3. I have soft synths only, so all of my other instruments like bassline, piano chords, and guitar chords, and other various melodies are all done within the PC as well via MIDI, and the tracks are laid in Mixcraft.

4. The vocal recording stage is the only recording process done with external gear. I do them like this....They are recorded and ran through an external analog mixer, which is in turn routed into the pc. The track is recorded with Mixcraft of course, and laid in the vocals track.

Ok now here is the actual issue....................,I have some tracks that I want to apply certain effects to, but the type of effects that I want has to be applied live. Unfortunately plug-ins just can't do it, so that is the reason why I need the hardware units to do it (Which I don't have yet but will get them soon).

Ok, since the effects have to be applied live, that means that I have to play the tracks live, so what I was planning on doing was routing each individual track out from the PC, into the analog mixer, then from there, have each track going into the effect units. I guess from there it would have to be recorded directly to tape or another hard disk recorder (Neither of which I have yet), since it can't be routed back to Mixcraft.

So, my question is........ is all of this possible with MIxcraft?

Thanks in advance.


EDIT - To be more specfic, the effect that I want to apply is a harmonizer (You know, where you can shift the pitch up and down, but the particular way that I want it done is only possible doing it in real time), and I want to apply it to my vocal track (Just a certain area, so that part of the vocal track has to be on a seperate track) and on a certain area of my piano chords track.

The rest of my tracks have the plug-in effects applied to them already, so I don't need outboard gear. However, I still have to individually route all of the tracks out from the pc though, but only two of them will go through the effect processing unit.

I wish there was someway that you could just individually like, send/return the desired track out of the pc into the outboard unit, and back into the pc and into the track with the effect successfully applied, instead of going through all of this trouble, but that doesn't seem possible.

[EL34]

You can send signals out of the soundcard via the line level out jack.

I have two soundcards in my computer.
One is a PCI soundcard that I use for recording, and the other one is the soundcard that is part of the mother board.

The motherboard soundcard makes a great playback card.
You choose this card as your playback card in mixcraft and choose the other card as the recording card. I do that as my standard way of recording overdubs because I like to hear the playbacks on speakers, not headphones and because of the way I record Guitar Rig 3, I have to record through a separate sound card.

You just play your mix out the mobo soundcard and record the effected overdub on the other card onto a new track.

Most mobo's have a built in soundcards these days that not many people use to record with, but they are just fine for playback.

[rick d]

You can send signals out of the soundcard via the line level out jack.

I have two soundcards in my computer.
One is a PCI soundcard that I use for recording, and the other one is the soundcard that is part of the mother board.

The motherboard soundcard makes a great playback card.
You choose this card as your playback card in mixcraft and choose the other card as the recording card. I do that as my standard way of recording overdubs because I like to hear the playbacks on speakers, not headphones and because of the way I record Guitar Rig 3, I have to record through a separate sound card.

You just play your mix out the mobo soundcard and record the effected overdub on the other card onto a new track.

Most mobo's have a built in soundcards these days that not many people use to record with, but they are just fine for playback.

Ok, I get what you're saying. I see how it works now.


I guess the way how it works though is that you have to solo each track and do the effects one at a time.

For instance, I want to apply the external harmonizer unit's effect to only a particular part of the vocals track. So I have to solo the vocal track and arm the new track for recording, then do an overdub recording.

However, if I wanted to apply the same effect for a certain area of the piano chords track, I have to do that process seperately right?

Sorry if it's confusing, but right now I really don't know of another way to describe the process.

[EL34]

I don't route out to external effects through my second sound card, but all you need is a 1/8th inch stereo male plug splitter cord.

Not sure what the input plugs you need on the other end are?
Probably 2 RCA male plugs or two 1/4 phono plugs?