Heellooo?

[BlackOctopus]

I recently bought an Mbox. Now i am connecting a synth output to the input of mbox. so i have a L and a R... 1/4 inch cables on both ends, outputting of the synth and INPUTTING to mbox...this confuses me because as i understand it mbox is a 2 input device. When i have my cable plugged in though it takes up the Source 1 and Source 2 channels, which find odd because i can manually change volumes with the knobs and hear only the left channel if i turn down source 1 etc..
Is there a cable that 'sums' the left and right 1/4 inch - into the mbox - making it a single 1/4 inch input to source 1? Then i assume i could plug in a guitar of mic into source 2?

[David Klausner]

The MBox is a "two input" device, but that can either be two mono inputs or a single stereo (left and right) input. If you don't need to record the guitar at the same time as the keyboard, you may be better off keeping it as a stereo signal (depending on the patch, there may be panning or stereo effects present). If so, you should probably create a stereo track in Pro Tools so that you have a single volume control for the track, and can more easily edit both the left and right sides together.

If you do have to record the guitar at the same time as the keyboard, you can use a "Y" cable to get both the left and right outputs of the keyboard into one track. Many keyboards are set up with one of the outputs labeled "mono". If your board is like that, you don't need the "Y" cable. Just connect a regular cable from the mono output of the instrument to the MBox, making sure that there is no cable plugged into the other output on the board.