MOTU 828 mk3 hybrid - part 1

I finally bit the bullet and bought a MOTU 828 mk3 hybrid. I have known about the 828 for a while, but hadn't seriously considered it until fairly recently. A couple of months ago I researched into a new audio interface that might give me lower latency times than my current interface, a NI Audio Kontrol 1. I had heard good things about the MOTU interfaces, so had a look at the range. I was seriously impressed by the UltraLite as well as the 828, in particular how it might be useful as a small standalone mixer as well as an audio interface. There is a £200 price differential between them, but in the end I decided that the mixer capability was particularly useful and the 828 can be expanded with a MOTU 8pre, so I set my eyes on the 828.

My over-riding concern though, having not used these interfaces, was whether I could run them in a particular setup, which I'll try and describe here. It basically came down to mixing live instruments together into multiple outputs, but at the same time using some pre-recorded backing tracks and metronome clicks from within Ableton Live. Something like this:

Live Inputs:

1. Vocal Microphone
2. Electric Guitar Amp Microphone
3. Acoustic Guitar Line Feed
4. Aux feed from FoH mixer, containing foldback mix (without the above instruments in it)

Outputs:

1. Vocals
2. Pre-mixed guitars
3. Backing track from Ableton Live
4. Metronome from Ableton Live
5. Headphone monitor mix (into headphones), containing vocals, guitars, foldback mix, backing track and metronome
6. Potentially a synth feed if I used my guitar synth, which would also feed into the above monitor mix

I read up about CueMix FX, the mixing software that controls the mixer functions of the 828, and this would happily mix the live inputs and allow me to set up outputs as I wanted, but there was no mention of how a DAW fits into the equation. I posted a couple of articles on forums, but didn't get any useful responses telling me how to do it. Moving on to the point, in the end I decided that it probably was possible and I'd just have to work it out, so one morning I placed an order for one. Literally about 30 minutes later I had an e-mail notification that one of my forum topics, untouched for a month or so, had an update on it. I had a look and there was a post describing exactly what was required to run the above setup! Brilliant!

What you have to do is use CueMix FX for your live feeds, setting input trim / gain etc and routing / mixing to the various outputs you require. Then within your DAW, Ableton Live in my case, setup various outputs for the backing tracks and click tracks. Then you send audio to these outputs and adjust the level in the DAW to mix in with the audio running through CueMix. I'll describe my first full use of this setup in my next post...