User Manual

User's Guide Fireface 800 © RME
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20.5 Recording a Subgroup (Loopback)
TotalMix supports a routing of the subgroup outputs (=hardware outputs) to the recording soft-
ware. Instead of the signal at the hardware input, the signal at the hardware output is sent to
the record software. This way complete submixes can be recorded without an external loop-
back cable. Also the playback of a software can be recorded by another software.
To activate this function, click on the white label in the third row while holding down the Ctrl-
key. The label's colour changes to red. In case the channel has already been part of a group,
the colour will change from yellow to orange.
In this mode, the hardware input of the corresponding channel is no longer sent to the recording
software, but still passed through to TotalMix. Therefore TotalMix can be used to route this
input signal to any hardware output. Using the subgroup recording, the input can still be re-
corded on a different channel.
As each of the 28 hardware outputs can be routed to the record software, and none of these
hardware inputs get lost, TotalMix offers a flexibility and performance not rivaled by any other
solution.
Additionally the risk of feedbacks, a basic problem of loopback methods, is highly reduced,
because the feedback can not happen within the mixer, but only when the audio software is
switched into monitoring mode. The block diagram shows how the software's input signal is
played back, and fed back from the hardware output to the software input.
A software monitoring on the subgroup record channels is only allowed as long as the monitor-
ing is routed in the software or TotalMix to a different channel than the active subgroup re-
cording one.