Hello fellow Arturians 
I am looking for advice to patch my AudioFuse-16rig.
Here is what i have to patch :
2 electric guitars
1 electric active bass
2 synths
2 voice microphones
What would be your way to go ?
Thanks for your suggestions!
To be honest, I’m not sure that the 16Rig is really the best interface for a setup like this. It only has two preamps, so you won’t be able to connect the guitars and mics at the same time. One option would be to use ADAT to connect a device with additional preamps, such as the AudioFuse 8Pre.
Thank you for your suggestion.
You’ll definitely want to run the vocal mics on Channels 1 and 2 for the preamps.
The synths can go on any of the other channels in the back, either mono or using a stereo pair depending on what each synth can output.
The guitars and bass can run directly into a mono output each if you’re using software to provide amp modeling, but if you are recording each one as mic’d output from a real amp and cabinet, you’ll have to run each mic to one of the 1/4" input channels in the back and see if the 16rig can provide enough gain on each channel. This is the situation where additional preamps are the better way to go. But you may be able to make it work anyway,
Hi @Talahamut . Thank you for this very clear answer. The 16rig does provide enough gain, though it could be better, so as @tmoore suggested i will try with an intermediary preamp for the guitars.
The rear (line level) inputs on the 16Rig do not provide any gain as I understand it. The gain controls in the AudioFuse Control Center only provide digital gain, so it boosts the signal after it hits the analog to digital converter. I’m pretty sure this is no different than turning up the recording in your DAW.
On top of that, guitars usually want to be connected to a high impedance input. Connecting one directly to one of the rear inputs could affect the tone.
I think there are a few options available, but they’d mostly require additional gear.
If you have guitar amps with line outputs, and you’re happy to record the output from those, you could connect those to any of the inputs on the back of the 16Rig. I’m not a guitar expert, but I know many people prefer to record a clean signal and then re-amp it or use amp modelling plugins. In that case, you would want to record directly from the guitar using an instrument input (which on the 16Rig means only the front inputs 1 & 2), but then the mics can’t be plugged in there of course, and you wouldn’t be able to plug in all three guitars at the same time.
Alternatively, you could use a separate DI box made for this purpose. I don’t know if it’s common for those to have line level outputs. It looks like this one does, though.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/SAMDA1--samson-mda1-1-channel-active-instrument-direct-box
You’d need an an adapter or cable that can convert the XLR output from that to a TRS plug for the 16Rig input.
Then there’s the ADAT option I mentioned before.
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Thanks again @tmoore that’s also my conclusion so i lean forward having the mics on the front and the synths on the rear. Then for the guitars a second rack with ADAT link to the 16rig such as the Behringer ADA8200 but 10KOhms for line input seems very low for direct guitars… Does that kind of rack event exists for guitars ? The DI boxes look like a solution but format wise it is very cumbersome regarding the battery management and the boxes being moving around, thus my preference for the rack format with all the guitars jacked once and for all.
I found this UMC1820 that seems to check all the boxes : many direct inputs with very high impedance (1MΩ) and ADAT.
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If you’re using it as an extension to the 16rig, the ADA8200 is probably a better option. The UMC1820 is a standalone interface with a lot of feature overlap with the 16rig. Mic level signal is lower than instrument level signal, so the preamps should work fine for both cases.
Thanks @Talahamut
I have read that guitar should have around 1MΩ and the ADA8200 documentation states the lines inputs are between 10kΩ and 20kΩ and this is exactly the same in the Rig16 (except for the two front instruments inputs). Does the preamps in the ADA8200 compensate for this difference ?
Now that I look closer, I see what you mean. ADA8200 has separate 1/4" line input and mic level XLR input, but no combined mic/instrument level inputs. So yeah, that’s not exactly what you want (unless you used a 1/4"->XLR adapter to run your guitar signals thru the mic preamps).
But i get your point about the UMC1820 being an full fledge interface which is redundant with the 16rig. So i will continue to look for a DI rack with ADAT such as the DI800 for a while
It does seem to be surprisingly rare to have more than two Hi-Z instrument inputs. That UMC1820 does have ADAT though, so it should suit your needs if it can run as an expander without having to be the primary interface. I’m not sure, but it’s something you could look into.
Another option is to use the ADAT expander for the mics, freeing up the front jacks on the 16Rig for guitars. If you need more than two guitars at a time, there are other ADAT expanders with a couple of high impedance instrument inputs and more mic preamps, such as the Focusrite OctoPre line, the Audient EVO SP8, and the Arturia AudioFuse 8Pre.
A third option is to use a different primary interface and use the 16Rig as the ADAT expander for it.
Thanks @tmoore I am also very suprised there is not so much I/O rack with more than 2 instruments channels.
After a while this is what i found SSL PureDrive Quad (there’s also a Octo version) but the price is of SSL standard.
So it seems i am back to the DI800 and i’ll have to connect it to the rig16 through XLR => TRS.
Not bad but not perfect.
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