"What do I need in order to connect two Mackie Digital 8-Bus mixers together so they work with my six ADAT's (yes, I have six ADAT's)?

Pray. No, just kidding. It's really not that hard and we actually have a number of customers doing it. To some extent it will vary depending upon other equipment in your studio, but the basic idea is the same.

You obviously need to install three of the OPT 8 (Light Pipe expansion cards) in each of the D8B's multitrack I/O slots. Then you need to install one more OPT 8 into each board's Alt I/O. This is important because it provides the connectivity between the two mixers for things like aux send busses, the main stereo bus, and word clock. You'll have to set up which Alt I/O channels carry each type of information. If you are sync'ing to another clock source such as house sync or black burst you will need to add the clock I/O card to each mixer and slave it accordingly. You need to connect an Ethernet crossover cable between the two CPU's (and setup the appropriate IP addresses and so forth) to allow the two mixers to communicate solo and mute logic with each other.

There are some other particulars that will vary with your specific setup, but we can help you through those on a case by case basis. If all of this sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to you don't worry. That's why we have a staff of technical support professionals. We can (and would prefer to) take care of all this dirty work so you can focus on making music.