Yet Another Mixdown Question

[Gbryal]

I guess I am the last person left in the world using mostly outboard MIDI. Here's my setup:

Korg N364 as master keyboard, several midi rack modules
Delta 1010 hooked to my PowerMac G4
6.103 of Metro

I currently have Metro set to record meatspace stuff like microphones and guitars from Audio 1+2 in on my sound card. Audio 3+4 in has my Behringer mixer hooked to it, and that has only my midi devices.

Then I monitor via headphone amp from outputs 1+2. This way, I can hear my midi and audio playback and also monitor my input sources. Since the midi is not on the two inputs I record from, when I record vocals it doesn't also record midi, which is what I want.

So far so good. I can monitor playback as well as recording, and all of the signals are coming into my soundcard from one source or another. The question is, how can I now mix it all down? Is there some way to route my monitor mixer on the delta 1010 to a new track during playback? I'd like a mixdown scenario that doesn't require me rewiring my studio or having to send everything back through my mixer.

I always have the option of recording out of my S/PDIF jack so I don't lose any signal, but I'd prefer to do it all in place.

[Gbryal]

After posting this, I downloaded a fleet of audio recording apps, including Amadeus II, Audacity, and Bias Peak LE. In every case, I set the recording source to the monitor mixer on the Delta 1010. On most apps I just got noise, but with Peak I got a recording, but it was full of glitches and dropouts.

This is a dual 1.25 ghz G4, btw. I suppose at this point my question is beyond the realm of Metro, besides asking if I can do this without leaving Metro. My hope was that I could string some subsections together, lay down audio tracks beside them, and then create an audio track from the second pair of inputs, carrying the external midi instruments, and then use the audio mix function to put them into a file I can convert to .ogg.

[Jerm]

"I guess I am the last person left in the world using mostly outboard MIDI. ".
No outboard gear still rocks in terms of startup and load time.

"I currently have Metro set to record meatspace stuff like microphones and guitars from Audio 1+2 in on my sound card. Audio 3+4 in has my Behringer mixer hooked to it, and that has only my midi devices."
This is a mistake I think. Read on...

"Then I monitor via headphone amp from outputs 1+2. This way, I can hear my midi and audio playback and also monitor my input sources. Since the midi is not on the two inputs I record from, when I record vocals it doesn't also record midi, which is what I want."
Ok

"So far so good. I can monitor playback as well as recording, and all of the signals are coming into my soundcard from one source or another. The question is, how can I now mix it all down? Is there some way to route my monitor mixer on the delta 1010 to a new track during playback? I'd like a mixdown scenario that doesn't require me rewiring my studio or having to send everything back through my mixer."
One option would be to simply record from the headphone amp outputs 1+2. I am not really sure what the headphone amp is or if this is even possible.

The method I would recommend would be to rewire so that the mixers main out goes to one of the sound cards ins and the mixers aux send out goes to a different sound card in. This will allow you to easily route (even with a $79 mixer, like my behringer) any combination of mixer inputs to the aux send, which is what you should use to record the MIDI without audio. Then, to record the entire mix just record from the other sound card input.

Another benefit of doing it this way is that you can easily record individual MIDI tracks to convert them to audio.

[Gbryal]

I've considered that. The reason I avoid it is then the nice clean audio leaves the digital domain for mixdown. At least if I record off of the (virtual) monitor mixer on the delta 1010, only the midi is coming from an analog source. It also gives me the option of doing a mixdown from S/PDIF, again
preserving the quality of the audio tracks.

But maybe I am worrying too much about it and shouldn't be so allergic to
bringing cables back into the machine.

I tried using Amadeus again, and got a clean recording off of the monitor mixer input, so I got my digital audio in the end. It seems like kind of a clunky solution, but it works.

[Jerm]

If you are concerned about leaving the digitial domain then do this.

Record all the non-digital audio tracks directly into Metro to convert them to digital audio and then use the Mix audio tracks to make a final audio mix.