- Hi. I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative. In this video we're gonna show you how to connect an audio mixer to the Focusrite Scarlett
Solo audio interface. We have done a separate video on how to connect an
audio mixer to the 2i2 but a lot of people have the solo and they wanna know
the best way to connect to the Focusrite Scarlett Solo. If you are looking for
pricing or specs for anything that you see in this video as
we put this video together, please check out the links
in the description below. We have current up-to-date pricing at a variety of online retailers. We show you where you
can find the best price on everything that you see in this video. So please do check those videos out. So connecting an audio mixer to the Focusrite Scarlett
2i2 is a nice way to unlock extra inputs. You can connect an audio
mixer that has anywhere from 2 to 48 audio inputs
depending on the size of your audio mixer and connect it to your Focusrite Scarlett
Solo in order to connect it to your computer so you can record what happened during that recording. Now, this is especially useful if your audio mixer doesn't
already have USB connectivity. If your audio mixer
already has a USB output, I always recommend just using that. Unless there's a specific
issue or a bitrate or something that that mixer
won't achieve specifically that makes you wanna use
the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. I always prefer set ups
with less points of failure. When you introduce multiple
pieces of equipment like this you introduce more cables,
more power supplies, more things that can go wrong. So I always like simple setups but if you have an older
audio mixer like this, this is basically the MG10
before it was the MG10 It's the MG102C. So this
has no USB connectivity and say we're doing an
event or a live stream or something like that. We
wanna use the audio mixer, the EQ, the compression, all the tools, all the bells and whistles
from this audio mixer and we just wanna record
the stereo output. Now you won't be able to multi-track. So we have a 10-channel mixer here. If you fill up all 10
inputs on this audio mixer with the Focusrite Scarlett Solo, you're just gonna get the flatten mix. Another thing to note that, different from the Scarlet 2i2, the Focusrite Scarlett Solo
only has one line input. We're gonna go a little
bit more into that later but what this means is that
you're really only gonna be able to capture the stereo mix
but you're only gonna be able to capture the mono version of that. So for example, if you have
a lot of things panned left and right and you know
you're gonna be doing this for a live stream using the Scarlett Solo, I would encourage you
to pan everything center because you're only gonna
be able to capture one of the tracks from your audio mixer. If you really need to
capture the stereo output from your audio mixer,
we'll talk a little bit more about that later in the video but you would need to upgrade
to the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 so you can get both the
left and right channel. I hope that makes sense. Another question that
we get all the time is about monitoring and headphones. Where do you connect your headphones when you have a setup like this and you're connecting
to the audio interface? If you're just wanting to
monitor whatever's going into the mixer, there's nothing wrong with using the headphone jack
on the audio mixer itself. But if you're wanting to
monitor the mixer input and maybe you're doing this as a recording and you have a track or something coming from the computer, the Focusrite Scarlett
Solo is the only device that has two-way
connectivity to the computer. So that signal wouldn't
make it from the computer to this Solo, to your audio mixers. So you would need to
then plug your headphones into the Focusrite Scarlett Solo. I hope that makes sense. We get that question all the time. Next, we're gonna show you
how to connect everything and set your gain properly
so you get the correct amount of gain all the way through your system into your recording. The first thing that
we're gonna do here is we have the Audio-Technica AT2020. This is a condenser
microphone. It's super popular. We're gonna connect that
and set up the gain properly on the audio mixer. Connect the XLR cable and we're gonna connect
it to the audio mixer. Now before we do anything, we do wanna look over the audio mixer. This is always important. People that ask questions all the time, typically they have a
setting that's set wrong. So we need to zero out the mixer. We need to put everything
back to the factory settings. On this mixer that means that the compressors are turned
down, the gains turned down, the EQ is flat. Flat for
EQ typically meant means up in the 12 o'clock position. If you have an OX that needs
to be turned all the way down. As I mentioned earlier, let's start with panning dead center so straight up. All the levels are turned down. Quickly turn everything down and the stereo output
is set to zero as well turned all the way down. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna turn the
stereo level all the way up to this triangle. Yamaha
likes to use triangle. Mackey and Berenger will use
a zero or an infinity symbol or something like that
but basically zero, unity or a triangle is what you're looking for and that's gonna be where
you set your stereo output. That's very important throughout setting up the gain properly on this audio mixer. The next thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna turn your
level knob all the way up to that same triangle,
zero or unity position depending on your mixer. Sometimes this is in the 12
o'clock position on Yamaha. It happens to be over in
the three o'clock position as you can see here. Next
we're gonna set the gain. But as I said earlier, this
is a condenser microphone which requires 48 volts of Phantom power. So we do need to turn on the Phantom power on this audio mixer. Once that's set up,
we're gonna take a look at this meter as we
increase the gain here. As we increase the gain
you can see the meter start to wake up and we're gonna go until it gets all the
way up to zero there. That's a really good starting point for setting up the gain properly. You want your loudest
moment when you really talk into the microphone to hit
zero like it's doing for me. If it's a little more conservative when you're a little
bit quieter, that's okay but you want your peak set to zero. This is the same on all audio mixers. Next depending on the
outputs of your audio mixer, we need to talk about line level signals. You can see here on your
Focusrite Scarlett Solo, you have an XLR mic level input and then your quarter-inch
input can be line level or you have the INST or
instrument button that can convert that to an instrument level input. So if you just think
about this for one second, what input are we gonna wanna use on the Focusrite Scarlett Solo? We're gonna want a line level input coming from the line level
output of our audio mixer. So what we're gonna try and do here is we're gonna connect this
line level quarter-inch output. Most audio mixers will always have a line
level quarter-inch output. So do keep that in mind. That
should be pretty universal. Most of the time, this
will be a balanced output. So we're gonna connect that
to the line level input on your Focusrite Scarlett Solo. One other thing to quickly discuss here is that there is a good possibility that you don't want to send
the main stereo output. Maybe those are connected to speakers and you're doing a live
event, a corporate event, a wedding, something like
that and you don't wanna mess with that at all. You wanna
let that be its own thing for live sound. You can always
use this auxiliary output. Again, most audio mixers this size or bigger will have an OX output. This would allow you to
custom mix the feed going to your Scarlett Solo using these auxiliary mixing
faders here or knobs here so you can send a level that you want from each input to your recording for the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. This would be really helpful if you do have completely
different gain requirements for live and recording but for
the purposes of this video, we're gonna keep it simple and use the main outputs of this mixer. Maybe we're doing a
live stream of our band. That's the premise that
we're gonna move forward on. So as I said earlier, we
have to make a choice here. Do we wanna connect the left output or the right output to
our audio interface? Once we make up our mind
which output we're gonna use, by default I always use the left output. If you're gonna choose one, I always choose the left every time. There's no real reason. I just
always choose the first one. And we do wanna use a
balanced quarter-inch cable. If you can see here, you can tell this is a
balanced quarter-inch cable because there are two rings on the sleeve. You have the tip, the ring and the sleeve. That's three parts. You'll
see two black rings there to separate all three parts. That's how you know it's a balanced cable so we can undo the velcro here. We're gonna connect the left
output from our audio mixer. You can choose the right if you want. Again, I do recommend that
you set all your gain flat. I can't stress that enough because you do have to make a choice because there's only one line level input on the Scarlett Solo.
So we you connect that. We're gonna leave the
volume all the way down. You can see already with
the green blinky light here that we're getting an
appropriate gain level. If we look over in Logic Pro
here, you can see the meter of the input. It's coming in up -12. Now if you know my
recommendations on recording, whenever I'm recording
a video like this one I try record between -12 and -18. That gives me tons of headroom. If you look at this audio meter here, you can see that when we hit zero that we also hit -12 on
the Yamaha or in Logic Pro. So as we go up to zero here
on the zero, there we hit it. You can see we hit -10.6. We came just over zero on
there, translates to -12 in the software which is exactly right. That means that if we
peak on the audio mixer where we go plus 12, then we still are just
a hair below peaking in our recording which
is absolutely perfect. That's the whole point of this gain setup. And the reason that I
recommend using zero, unity or the triangle position
for both the stereo output and the level knob. Once you set your gain properly, this will ensure that you
have the proper amount of headroom all throughout the system. It comes in at zero on the mixer and then it comes in at -12 in Logic Pro which is absolutely
perfect for our recording. So there we're all set up. We did speak about monitoring. Again you do have two options.
You can plug your headphones into the headphone jack on the audio mixer if you just wanna monitor your mixer or if you need to monitor
something from your computer, you can plug your headphones into the Focusrite Scarlett Solo. If you have any questions
that we did not cover properly in this video, please leave it down in the description below. Again, if you are looking
for links for the microphone, the stand, the cables that we use, the audio mixer, anything like that, we have a ton of helpful
links as well as a blog post with more information on how
to set up everything up down in the description below. And if you wanna see more
videos like this in the future, please like and subscribe. Thank you so much for watching. (bright upbeat music)
