About Monitoring 21
MT8XII—Owner’s Manual
About Monitoring
The MT8XII features a flexible monitoring system, allowing you to monitor signals at various
points. You can monitor sounds through a pair of stereo headphones connected to the PHONES
jack, or through a monitor amplifier and speakers connected to the MONITOR OUT jacks. The
MONITOR SELECT switches are used to select the monitor source, and the MONITOR LEVEL
control is used to adjust the level.
GROUP—These switches select the Group buses as the monitor source. This allows you to
monitor signals that are assigned from input channels or ST inputs to groups for recording. Use
these switches to monitor what will be recorded. For example, if you’re recording the sounds
from three input channels to one track simultaneously, you’ll need to listen to a mix of the three
sounds in order to balance the levels correctly. You can do this using the GROUP switches.
When only the [1–3] or [2–4] MONITOR SELECT GROUP switch is pressed, the monitor sig-
nal is set as mono. This ensures that the signal being monitored appears in both the left and
right monitor speakers. So even when you monitor a single group signal, it will be heard
through both speakers. When both the [1–3] and [2–4] MONITOR SELECT GROUP switches
are pressed, however, the monitor signal is set as stereo. So you can monitor stereo signals on
Groups 1 and 2 or Groups 3 and 4.
STEREO—This switch selects the Stereo bus as the monitor source. This allows you to monitor
the STEREO OUT signals and is typically used during mixdown. It can also be used to monitor
signals that are not going to be recorded by the MT8XII, such as a MIDI tone generator that is
controlled by a MIDI sequencer. In this case, the tone generator is only monitored while other
sounds are recorded on the MT8XII. Then for the final mixdown, the tone generator sounds
are mixed with the sounds recorded on the MT8XII and mixed down to a stereo master recorder.
CUE—This switch selects the CUE bus as the monitor source. The CUE bus signal from each
input channel is determined by the [FLIP] switch. When the [FLIP] switch is in the up position,
the tape signal is fed to the input channels CUE controls and onto the CUE bus (the MIC/LINE
signal is fed to the channel fader and controls). When the [FLIP] switch is in the down position,
the MIC/LINE signal is fed to the input channels CUE controls and onto the CUE bus (the tape
signal is fed to the channel fader and controls).
When the tape signal is monitored using CUE, the actual sound source changes when the
MT8XII starts recording or rehearsing. During normal playback, the sound recorded on tape
is monitored. Obviously, if nothing is recorded, there’s nothing to monitor. When either record
or rehearse is started, however, the source is changed to the signal being recorded. The applica-
tion of this may not appear very obvious at the moment, but all will become clear in the punch
in/out and ping-pong recording sections.
Note: Although you can monitor GROUP, STEREO, and CUE all at the same time, there is
a possibility that you’ll monitor the same signal from two different points in the signal flow.
At first, you may find it less confusing to select just one monitor source at a time.