Thanks Possemo for your input and offer of help. I tried running VirtualBox and it all looked good until I tried to connect an aging M-Audio Midisport 8x8s. I couldn’t get the host machine to let go off it in order to install it within Win XP. I’d also tried Win 95 and Win 98SE with no success. I’m not sure whether Virtual players are the way to go, so after ditching the Midisport, I hooked the Ultramix Midi IN and Midi Out direct to PORT 1 on the RME HDSP card. The card (3 ADATS, SPDIF, Wordclock IN & OUT and 2 sets of Midi Ports) also has the other midi port (IN & OUT) attached to the FOSTEX G24S. By doing this I could get the software of the Ultramix to run in Win10 using Win 95 compatibility…..albeit with a few peculiarities. I could then do what I want (namely perfect a mix using hard disk tracks from Cubase with Ultramix providing MTC sync) then switching the Fostex on and by changing a setting in Cubase to receive the MTC from the other Midi port, replay that mix using tape tracks. The only downside is the software is clunky compared to Cubase. For example, you can’t even copy and paste data from one track to another….thinking about it, this may be because each track uses a different controller number (TRK1 -CC0, TRK2-CC1,TRK3-CC2 etc….). So I’m now thinking back to a template in Cubase that I started building which has a midi track for each track in Ultramix. I need to be able to assign the different controller numbers to different Cubase midi tracks and for say TRK1 to only look out and record CC0 data, TRK2 to only look out for CC1 data etc….I think I could do this by filtering using Logical Editors or something similar.
What’s really interesting in this, is how stuff sounds. For these tests I’ve been using a song that I originally recorded using a Roland VS1680 and sounds from an EMU E4K sampler back in around 1999. The VS always had a sound of its own (and suffered from a mix bus that did the original tracks no justice) but over the years I transferred the recordings to WAV, so they’re the source material. So I’ve essentially imported the WAVs into Cubase. Sent the WAVs straight out of the ADAT outs into the Behringer units and onto the Fostex G24S tape machine. The Ultramix is sitting on the consoles insert points and is automating the VCAs in its 19″ rackbrain then returning the signals to the console. By either switching the consoles inputs to listen to LINE (hard disk tracks) or TAPE (tape returns) I can hear the effect that tape has…..and I prefer it.
Anyhow, now I’ve got a system working albeit with certain workarounds needed, I’m going to investigate if Cubase could handle this side of things as it would make for a more unified system.
Al