"I've got a cold and my head is a little (very) hazy..."
Bren, Poor You! But all is fogivebn, immediately and automatically! :~))
"you'd want to use something like the Mackie 1642 to control levels on 10 speakers and a sub?"
Yes.
"That is, say... in a restaurant to play 5.1 DVD-As between a 5.1 setup in the bar and a 5.0 setup in the restaurant-kind of thing?"
No. There is one room with many speakers, I want to control individual volumes of these speakers. The screening room will also be used to spatially create 5.1 and 6.1 type of audio mixes for DVDs and Sony HDCAM tapes, and for that of course the physical mixer is a good idea.
Of coruse, I also will have a 19-inch touchscreen LCD monitor there, so I suppose instead of actual, physical line sliders, this controling business can also be done "virtually" on screen. The line-level would have to be broken by the mixer, or slese if I cna get a pre-amp with a PC-based utility program, I can install this and pehaps run individual volumes through the PC (and the touchscreen).
"You have to do it where you still have it at line level... but where you mix depends on your source and sends. In the case I outlined above, you'd go from the DVD-A player into a pre/pro, which does all the decoding and whatever else you want, then you'd want to go into the board there and then out to the amps."
Gotcha. So, PC or DVD or HDCAM or whatever audio signal N first, but this would go directly to the pre-amp/audio processor. Then, take the individual (decoded and "processed" lines ot from the pre-amp via XLR, run it IN & OUT the Mackie mixer (for the volume control and further eQ, as needed), and then on to the power amps.
Do I have this right, Bren?
"Of course, you'd then have to find a pre/pro that does balanced XLR outs for each channel including the LFE channel. Might be a tough find."
Okay, I swear to you I KNEW what "LFE channel" stands for, I just now forgot it!! Would that be... the bass? Please? Well, I would not buy any pre-amp that does NOT have XLR balanced but only unbalanced RCA connections. On the other hand, the more proper way would be to go via AES/EBU digital via XLR into a digital mixer.
Blackmagic Design now has a PCI-e connected external BOB (break-out box) MULTIBRIDGE STUDIO that actually takes IN and OUT 12-independent channels of AES-EBU D-auio via XLR connections!
"If I misunderstood what you're looking for, please correct me."
Thank you again!
