Main outputs vs control room outputs

[HBIII]

Hi all,

What is the reason that the manual says to connect your studio monitors to the control room jacks? What is the benefit of doing this over having them connected to the main output jacks (which is what I assumed I was supposed to do)?

Thanks so much!

 

[-mjk-]

The control room levels can be adjusted independently of the output.

 

[HBIII]

What are they assuming I have the main outputs connected to aside from the studio monitors that I would want to independently control them?

Sorry I am a bit new to all this and just trying to wrap my head around everything.

 

[Logrinn]

If you’d like to record your master - ie what’s coming out of your main output - you would connect that to such a device (like a DAT/CD-recorder/tape deck and so on), with the signal adjusted for best signal to noise ratio (not too high to cause clipping and not too low to cause unnecessary noise). This would often be too loud compared to the level going out from the control room out. But since they’re seperate controls, you’ll want to adjust the control room out to a suitable level and the main out to often a much higher level.
Hence the seperate controls for these two outputs.

 

[Hammarlund]

Well, it's also a useful live mixer for some things and if you use it for live sound you'll want to use the main outs for that.

A lot of this is a function of ease and design. The various switches and controls are set up to allow you to easily monitor things w the control outputs and otherwise do your "control room job" WITHOUT affecting the underlying main mix, via thing like sends and "solo" buttons.

The signal flow is designed to make it relatively easy to do w/ proper use of CR and main mix outputs, but it is not as easy (and may not even be possible) in reverse.

For example, say tracks 1-5 are already playing through main mix and you want to keep that going....but you simultaneously want to listen to a new player on track 6 and make sure she sounds OK and balanced before you send her into the main mix.

You would do that listen-and-test on CR outputs, which is relatively easy to do.

You might similarly test other settings the same way. You can even A/B stuff.

 

[HBIII]

Great, thanks a lot you all, that makes sense now.