So, am about to pull the trigger on a MixPre 6.
I've read the manual. Any advice on getting going quickly with this thing?
I've started reading all the threads, but it's daunting.
I'm assuming Advanced mode...
What connector are you guys using for external power? The full sized USB?
Can it make stereo tracks in pairs or is each track going to be mono?
Any rookie mistakes I can avoid right off the bat?
Things that are not obvious in the beginning?
I just pulled the trigger on one recently myself. It's easier to learn it by actually sitting down and messing with the menu options yourself than it is to read the manual. Some things in the manual are under-explained or poorly explained, and annoyingly the manual refers to an early firmware version and thus doesn't refer to some menu options that are now available in v2.21.
As others have said, you can use the SD Wave Agent Beta software to split polywave files into stereo files. I was not able to figure out a way to do this splitting in Adobe Audition 3.0, which is what I use once I have a stereo 2-channel file. Has anyone found a way to set the MixPre to simply record into sets of 2-channel stereo files directly when using all the channels? It appears the polywave default is the only option. Not hugely annoying, but it'd be nice to cut out that extra step of using the SD software.
As someone else said, you'll likely want to set the overall mode to "custom" rather than "advanced", and then set channel, headphone, record and metadata options to "advanced" while setting gain to "basic". This is because using gain in advanced mode actually introduces functionality that is less than optimal for taping, as it forces you to set the gain for each channel by using the touch menu screens (and you can't see what the levels look like while you're setting the gain this way), and instead turns the knobs into fader knobs for adjusting the overall L-R mix. This is functionality that might be good for podcasters or some other applications, but for taping a show I just want the gain knobs to be gain knobs where I can see how the levels are changing in real-time when I adjust the gain. I set the L-R mix to off entirely, so the faders are completely unnecessary. If you're planning to use the L-R mix channels, you may want to consider whether setting gain to "advanced" is useful for you, though. I also set the outputs to "basic" because I won't be using the outputs and thus don't need that whole menu to be available. If you're going to be streaming or something though you might want the outputs menu set to "advanced" so you have those menu options.
You'll probably want to set channels 1 and 2 as linked, 3 and 4 as linked and 5 and 6 as linked. The star button is a wild card type of button that can be set to do several different things, but I find it's best to set it to take you to the screen for channels 5 and 6, since the screens for channels 5 and 6 are otherwise more tedious to get to. Also if you're going to be using channels 5 and 6 for a board patch or other line level signal, you'll want to set channels 5 and 6 to "aux in 1" (found under the channels 5 and 6 menu screen) and also (this time under the inputs menu screen) set "aux in mode" to "line". If "aux in mode" is set to "mic", it's telling the MixPre to provide 3v plug-in-power through that input.
Morst, I also was confused by the difference between "off" and "off and linked", but since I'm not using the mix tracks anyway it doesn't matter for me.
Lastly, is anyone else having trouble editing the headphone preset options once they're already set? I assume that for editing the HP presets you use the headphone volume knob to scroll left and right, then click in on the knob to either select or deselect a channel you want assigned to that preset, right? For me, pressing in on the HP knob works to select and deselect certain channels, but not the ones that were already selected for that preset, if that makes sense. In other words, the channels I selected the very first time I made that HP preset appear to be permanently locked to that preset. This seems like a bug to me, very weird!
There are still a few menu options I don't understand, such as the entire tone menu, the "phase" option under each channel, the difference between 1-2 and 1-2MS (for linking channels), and the option under the inputs menu called "MS Decode", which can be set to "ISOs & Mix" or "Mix Only". But I'm not worried about the stuff I don't understand, because I understand how to get it working fully for the purposes I'll be using it for.