Hi GtrMann and welcome to the forums. TONS of information here. Congrats on your 3200 purchase. Come back here often. Most of us have been on this forum for many years.
The question you are asking would take a day and a half to write out in a way that could be followed coherently from beginning to end. Similar to "Could somebody show me how to put this car together...on a forum reply?"
Start out with the manual, get as far as you can and ask for help along the way. It's a very flexible routing machine that has taken most of us a long time to wrap our heads around.
I originally started writing a reply to your question, and spent 45 mins on it But, since I am not in front of my mixer, I don't want to give you any wrong references,
Here's what I wrote...use it a starting point. Then, get to know the routing page the best you can.............................
I wish I had a "cut and paste" for a question like this. The DM is incredibly versatile in patching inputs to outputs. You can pretty much take any input and send it to any output. And the whole thing ties very well to most typical DAWs. So how would I set up your particular rig?
For starters I will mention that none of the physical line inputs on the DM are stereo. A stereo keyboard will have to take up two individual channels, and then those channels can either be panned hard left and right, or, better yet, paired. More on that later.
The next thing I would mention is the usefulness of the analog expansion card, IF-AN/DM. Many of the users here have one, and most are advocates. It's perfect for line inputs like your PREs and your keys.
Assuming you don't have that (yet) let's start with your 3 preamps. The simplest way to plug them into the DM is in the Line inputs on, say, channels 1-3. There are other ways, but start here. Make sure each channel line/mic select is set for LINE (slider switch near gain knob)
Channel 4 needs to be a single mono source, say, your bass. This is because you can't pair stereo channels that start with and even number, like 4/5, and we want to pair the keyboards next.
Now plug your 3 keyboards (six channels total) into lines-in 5-10. Key1 into 5/6, Key2 into 7/8 Key3 into 9/10. NOW, on each of these channels, hit both "SEL" buttons at the same time, and a message on the display and will ask you if you want to pair these channels. Hit enter (yes). The advantage is now the two faders will work as one, and the two pans are now a stereo balance.
The next six channels are for whatever you want....guitar, drums. backups whatever
Now, hit SEL for every channel, one at a time, and find the STEREO button at the top left of the board, near the dark gray area, and press it after hitting SEL for each channel. You are assigning each channel to the stereo buss by doing this. You may have other routing ambitions, but for now, just so you can hear each channel, assign them to your STEREO buss (MAINS in analog speak). Hopefully you have plugged your monitors into the CR outputs and not the STEREO XLR outs. Not a big deal if you did, it's just harder to control....you will need to assign your CR outputs to the stereo buss in the options page (I think it's default). Now the stereo buss volume is controlled by your STEREO fader and the monitor volume is controlled by the CR knob near the headphone jack
Now the fun begins!.......
hit ALT/Routing
On the routing page, select INPUT tab. You should see channels 1-16 listed here.
If they are not already assigned, you will need to assign the associated M/L 1-16 to inputs 1-16.
Now use POD 3 to select 17-32. It sounds like you would like to mix directly on the DM (mixing Out of the Box..OTB) and not within SONAR with just a master stereo pair coming out (mixing IN The Box...ITB} Since your FW card will handle the audio to and from SONAR, you should assign SLOT1-1 to channel 17, SLOT1-2 to channel 18, SLOT1-3 to channel 19 etc... until your last channel is SLOT1-16 for channel 32.
Now,You don't have to set it up this way, but I am just going on your question. For instance, you COULD assign these SLOT1 returns from your DAW into the RTN inputs in channels 1-16. That way, when you are tracking, your inputs are the physical inputs. When you want to mix OTB, you could "INVERT" channels 1-16 to use the "RTN" inputs and mix from there. That opens up channels 17-32 for other stuff. Regardless, Lets get to the OUTPUT tab on the routing page......
ALT/Routing/OUTPUT
Know what? That's all I've got for now. See above!
