I use my AW4416 only occasionally, so each time I go back to it, it tends to be a learning experience. I finally got tired of relearning the same things over and over, (getting frustrated, thinking, "I know I used to understood this pan route screen, but right now it makes no sense!!! Why don't I hear anything?") And it's a chance to play with my digital camera. So here's what I (re)learned again tonight for the dozenth time. (Next time I hope I can just look over this.)

What I'm trying to do: Record guitar on inputs 3-4 to tracks 3-4, and drums on inputs 5-6 to tracks 5-6, using the "default" (non-direct) method.

Step 1: Connect the inputs to the recorder tracks. Press the Pan/Route button, and select the "input 1-16" tab:

This screen controls what the inputs are connected to. For each input you are recording, check the box for the recorder track you want to direct that input to, and make sure to adjust the panning, odd tracks all the way left, even tracks all the way right.

Typically, you don't want to monitor the inputs at this point in the signal chain, so leave ST unchecked. If for some reason, you do wish to monitor the input signal here, select ST for those tracks. Be careful not to select ST on both the "input 1-16" tab and the PAN MONI tab at the same time, or the signal will be doubled. Select ST on at most one of those two. Select ST on at least ONE of these two, or you will not hear the track while monitoring. NOTE: A knowledgeble person from the AW4416 yahoo group tells me that I don't need to pan hard left and right on input to the recorder, only on playback. I think it works like this. As long as you're only sending input 5 to recorder track 5, then the pan knob is going to act like a gain/attenuation knob. (So panning doesn't hurt but may add 3db due to Panning Law, but this can be compensated for by adjusting input levels.) If you were sending input 5 to tracks 5 and 6, then the pan knob would send varying amounts of the signal to each track, but I'm not doing that, so just leave the pan alone and adjust pan on playback.

STEP 2: Set the input levels.

Press the "input 1-16" button to set the mixing layer to the inputs, then the "home" button.

Select the "input 1-24/Rtn" tab.

Then use the input knobs to set the input levels so the clipping indicators don't light.

Press the "Input" button, and arm the tracks you want to record, then use the faders to adjust the recording level.

Step 3: Set up monitoring

Press the PAN/Route button and select the "PAN MONI" tab:

This screen controls what you want to monitor. Normally you will either have nothing selected for a channel, or "ST" selected. (Not sure why you'd elect to send monitor signals to a recorder channel, though there's probably some altogether too clever reason to do it in some situation.)

Press the "MONI" button, and use the faders to set the monitoring level. The levels set here have no effect on the levels sent to the recorder, they only affect the monitor mix.

Adjust panning here.

Step 4: Press "record" and "play" and start wailing on guitar.