Production Studio Mission

What I want to be able to achieve in this studio is to be able to, eventually, live-monitor, record/track, and mix 24 tracks of audio through a 24 or 32-channel analog mixer using a DAW as my digital tape source.

Currently, I’m working with a single M-Audio Fast Track Ultra 8R which gives me 8 analog input and 8 analog output, and an M-Audio Fast Track Pro which gives me 2 analog input and 2 analog outputs. In the world of Windows, without using something like ADAT Lightpipe, there’s no way to extend the number of analog audio inputs and outputs with the ASIO drivers provided for most USB 2.0 audio interfaces; upgrading to USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt interfaces doesn’t interest me. There is ASIO4ALL, but I’d already had the idea of moving away from Windows when I began this project. JACK fixes this and will allow me to track down two more Fast Track Ultra 8R (or any USB audio interfaces, but I’ll be sticking with the Fast Track Ultra 8R) and combine them into one large 24-in/24-out audio interface.

So, here’s the planned setup:

Sound source audio (microphones and instruments) will be routed and recorded into the DAW via the Fast Track Ultra 8R (currently 8, later up to 24 simultaneously). Audio from the DAW can then be route out of the Fast Track Ultra 8R via the outputs (currently 8, later up to 24) into an analog mixer for mixing which will then be run back into the DAW as a studio mix through the Fast Track Pro’s 2 analog inputs.

I also plan to combine the multiple MIDI inputs and outputs to interconnect some of the outboard equipment in a way that would be difficult to try to daisy-chain through a single input and output without need to have pieces that aren’t being used powered on to utilize it MIDI-thru port or soft-thru feature.