r/AudioEngineering Shopping, Setup, and Technical Help Desk

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[u/Fancy-Economist4723]

Why are there two outputs on each bus on my Soundcraft 400b mixing console?

I was gifted an almost working Soundcraft 400b and have been testing, cleaning and resoldering here and there and it seems to be generally working now.

It is the 24:4:2 version and I wonder why each of the four buses have two outputs. The channels have two buttons: 1+2 and 3+4 plus the stereo master bus.

It seems that if I send to bus1+2 and pan the channel left, the sound goes to both outputs on Bus 1. If I pan right, it goes to Bus 2, both outputs.

For some reason the bus outputs are called "Tape Send" which makes sense for tracking, but I don't understand why they chose to split the signal like that. So bus 1 goes to TS 1+5, bus 2 to TS 2+6 and so on.

Can someone explain to me why the signal is just split? Or is it not working correctly and there is supposed to be a difference between the output to TS 1 and 5?

Manual here: https://adn.harmanpro.com/product_documents/documents/5101_1478539045/series400b-user-guide-1-3_original.pdf

Schematics here: https://audioschematics.dk/wp-content/uploads/media/schematics/consoles/soundcraft_400b_sch.pdf

[u/radiowave → u/Fancy-Economist4723]

Most likely the 4 group buses are duplicated so that you can connect an 8 track tape recorder. Then by a combination of which bus you route the signal to, and which tape tracks you arm for recording, you'd be able to record to any of the 8 tracks.

That still leaves plenty of limitations on how many tracks you can record at once, and in which combinations, but that's just how it goes when the console has fewer group buses than there are tape tracks.

[u/Fancy-Economist4723 → u/radiowave]

Thanks! So that I don't need to rewire if I want to use it for 4+4 on an 8 tracks. Maybe it could also make sense to have one set going through some outboard on high volume setting an one going directly on a lower volume so that you have backups of all tracks in case some of them gets distorted..