Hi all,
I bought a passive summing mixer and set it up over the weekend and I've ran into a problem when I solo a track. I think I should share a bit of info that could shed some light on my situation and detail my signal flow to see if anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong if I am at all.
First off, I'm running two Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 units in tandem. I have them set up in dual unit mode to utilize 16 track recording and summing abilities. Focusrite uses software called Saffire MixControl which is mainly for zero latency monitoring and routing purposes. I think I've got everything setup correctly in the software but I'm not 100% sure. The software is confusing. Now my signal flow is as follows.

I'm sending my recorded tracks to the typical bus..... drum tracks to drum bus, guitars to guitar bus, etc...etc. The buses are then sent to stems (outputs on my interfaces). The outputs go to the summing mixer and comes out as a stereo track which is fed to a two channel preamp for make up gain. Then back into two inputs on my interface. Once the stereo signal is back in Studio one, it has to go to an audio track so that the signal can be monitored. I've created a print track and sent the stereo signal from the inputs to this print track. The monitor button on the print track has to be on or I can not hear the signal coming from the inputs coming back into the DAW. From there, the summed audio signal goes out to the mains. Now, if I solo any track, all of the other tracks get muted as they should. The problem is the print track that is receiving the summed audio signal and my main outputs get muted as well and I can't hear anything at all. So I put the print track and the main outs in solo safe mode to get everything working the way it should. I watched a video where the guy is using virtually the same set up as myself and I don't see anywhere that he has to solo safe the print track and the main outs. So it makes me question if I've routed everything correctly as well as if I'm monitoring the correct source. Everything seems to work as it should but I've never had to solo safe the mains and I find that odd. Thoughts?
All feedback is appreciated.

 

Try ctrl or shift clicking the solo button on the print channel, this usually enables "solo safe" or what ever the name is. This means that if any track is solo-ed, tracks that are solo safe will also be solo-ed

 

Apologies if I was not clear. I've got solo safe working just fine. I just never had my mains get muted when I soloed a track before I set up for summing the audio. Now I have to solo safe the mains and that's what i'm confused about. I did have a friend over to help me sort things out and I'm now finding that he changed a lot of settings so he could have changed something in my options. I may be over thinking things a bit as well. Everything is working fine but I've just got a few oddities that are nagging me which is why I posted.