How Audio Mixers Work – What is a Mixer & What Does it Do? | Live Sound Lesson

hi I'm Mitch Gallagher from Sweetwater you know some of the most common questions I receive are about mixers what a mixer is what it does what all those controls do in the front panel and it can be intimidating when you step up to a mixer for the first time there are all those controls laid out you don't know what each one does and you don't want to mess anything ZUP when you're mixing live sound or you're working in the studio [Music] so in this video we'll be introducing mixers to you I'll be talking about the controls the channel strip how the signal flows through everything that goes in to using a mixer to create a great sounding mix whether you're on stage or you're in the studio now the first thing to keep in mind when you're checking out a mixer for the first time is that although it looks intimidating with all those controls there's actually a lot of repetition there so we have a channel strip the signal comes in the top flows down through all these controls down to the fader at the bottom and then it's routed over here to the master section and back out to speakers or a recorder or wherever it may be going but each of the channel strips after that actually duplicates those same controls so once we learn one channel strip we've basically learned the entire mixer let's start at the top and look at how signal comes into a mixer like this one other thing to keep in mind is that we have analog mixers we have digital mixers and they really do the same thing it's just where the controls are located that may be different on an analog console like this Mackie Pro effects 12 V 3 all the controls are right here on the front panel and instantly accessible in a digital console some of those controls may be in menus you may have a single channel strip that is assigned to the different channels and so on but all the functionality all the concepts are exactly the same let's talk first about getting signal into the mixer at the top of each channel strip we have a jack for connecting our sources and on the first two jacks here we have combi jacks these accept both XLR as well as quarter-inch cables so you could connect a microphone a line level source like a keyboard or a music player or even a guitar into those channels on channels 3 through 10 we have separate XLR connections for our microphones as well as a separate connection for our line level inputs the input Jack works in conjunction with the gain control which is sometimes called a trim control to set the incoming level for that signal so let's check this out with three different sources with a microphone like the shure sm58 typically you'll have an XLR or a 3 pin jack and that plugs right in at the top here now once we have that signal coming in we can adjust our gain until we see the indicator light not all mixers will have that indicator light some of them will just have an overload light that look low red if you're putting in too hot of a signal but there'll usually be some way to indicate that you've got signal coming in to the channel now at this point there's no sound coming through the mixer yet the sound is coming into the top of the channel strip but it hasn't been routed anywhere to get sound out of the mixer we need to bring up the fader which is the volume control at the bottom then we'll also hit the left right switch in this case you may or may not have to do that depending on your mixer but in this case to the left right switch assigns us to the main output over here now we can see our meters are moving and you can hear the sound coming through the mixer we could also bring a line level source in using those same connections or using the line level connections here on the different channels so I'll plug in 2 channels 3 & 4 the signals coming from my computer and it's playing a drum loop now we set our levels in the same way we bring up our game control but again to hear the signal we're gonna need to push up our channel faders hit our left/right buttons and move up the main output now we can adjust things so we're getting a good strong signal on our meters typically what you want to do is set the gain control so that your faders are up to where you have plenty of room to move them both up and down this allows you to create an effective mix later and of course you're gonna adjust that gain control later if you're overloading you don't have enough signal you can always reach up and tweak that now this is a stereo source so we'll want to pan this left and right so we can hear the different elements across the stereo field to do that we simply adjust the pan controls on each channel move one to the right and one to the left our final input type would be instrument level which would typically be an electric guitar an electric bass or maybe an acoustic guitar to connect this on the Mackie we go back to our first channel which has a high z input now that high Z input is very important because the pickups want to see high Z in order to sound their best so in this case we plug into the quarter inch connection hit the high Z switch bring up our fader assigned to the left-right adjust our gain control to explore the rest of the town strip let's go back to our drum loop so I've got a plan for my computer here we've got our gain adjusted we'll bring that up so you can hear that it's feeding through our main outputs now we can mute this so we don't have to listen to it by simply hitting the mute switches we have other functions in this mixer as well for example in the Mackie we also have a compressor on board the first four channel strips the compressor compresses the dynamic range of the signal so the difference between the softest signal and the loudest signal is reduced this allows things to be much more even as they go through the mixer so we can turn that up here not every mixer is going to have a compressor in some cases you can insert that as an external piece of hardware and that's where this insert Jack comes in we plug in a Y cable one side of the Y cable plugs into the input of the compressor the other side of the Y cable plugs into the output of the compressor and brings a signal back in so it's a way to insert an external piece of hardware into our signal flow again you don't have to do that but it's something you may want to do if you have specific processing you want to apply to a signal below the insert Jack we have a low-cut filter in this case that's at a hundred Hertz this allows us to take out Rumble and unnecessary low frequencies in the signal that could reduce our Headroom so with our drum loop if we engage that we're simply cutting the bottom end now with the low cut filter you want to be careful that you aren't taking out signal that you actually want to hear so for example in this case it's taking out a lot of our kick drum you may not want that so we may not want to engage the low cut in this case but with a vocal there may not be anything below 100 Hertz we could certainly filter all of that out and clean our signal up even more the next section of our mixer is the EQ section and this is where we adjust the tone of our signals so if we've got our drum loop coming in we have three different controls for adjusting that we have high frequency at 12 kilohertz and this is our treble control we have a mid band at 2.5 kilohertz this is our mid-range control and a low frequency at 80 Hertz and this is our base control on some mixers you may be able to change those frequencies that gives you more flexibility for adjusting the sound but just having these controls allows you to really shape things to make them sound the way you want them to sound as well as to control feedback and other issues let's listen to the high frequency the mid frequency and the low frequency bands [Music] [Music] [Music] an important concept of mixing consoles is buses a bus is a signal path that allows you to route an incoming signal to another destination so for example we have our master bus when we engage left and right down here with this switch and feed the main output we're feeding the master bus in that case we're creating a mix by moving these faders and that's then sent out of that single output we may also have the option to route to auxilary buses in the case of this Mackie we have two auxilary buses one is labeled monitor and it's green the other is labeled effects and it's yellow so what happens is as we turn up the knobs for example on the monitor bus the signal is picked up from the channel strip we create a separate mix basically using those knobs it's sent here to the master and now that signal is routed out of the monitor send Jack a monitor sound like this might be routed to monitors onstage for musicians to hear as they're playing or you might send it to a headphone amplifier for musicians who are performing in the studio our second bus in this case is effects in the case of this Mackie there's a built-in effects processor so we can feed that using this bus we also have an external effect send if you want to use an external Hardware processor so when we bring up the effects send bring up our fader we're still assigned to left and right we can also bring up our effects send we'll hear a reverb from the internal processor being added to the master output [Music] now the effects sent is what's called a post-fader send that means that it's coming after the fader in the signal path this allows us to turn the fader down and also stop the feed into the reverb which is very useful on stage and in the studio if the effects bus wasn't post fader you'd still be hearing the reverb ringing through the master output a monitor send on the other hand is usually pre fader because you don't want adjustments you're making to the faders to change the mix that's being fed to your musicians continuing down our channel strip we have our pan control which we discussed earlier mute buttons and then we have our assignment switches now we've been using left and right to feed our main output but in the case of this Mackie we also have a second bus a sub 1/2 bus and we can engage that by hitting the one two switch we can route that sub one to bus to a separate output maybe a second set of speakers maybe to a recorder or we can actually blend that back in with our main so we could create a sub mix of all our our drums and have it on one fader and have that cascade into the main output by assigning it here the final stop on the channel strip is our fader which controls the channels volume as you see once we've learned one channel strip those same concepts apply all the way across the mixer now there are some differences in the channels here we talked about how on channels 1 & 2 we have mic line and instrument level inputs on channels 3 & 4 we have mic and line inputs on channels 5 6 7 8 & 9 10 we actually have stereo inputs so we could feed a single microphone in here or we could plug a stereo signal directly in and get both channels at once through the same channel strip very convenient for things like a music player or a stereo keyboard notice that those stereo channels don't have a compressor but they do still have our gain control EQ section our two buses pan and so on the final channel on a Mackey mixer is designed for music playback so we have an eighth inch Jack for a music player but we also have a USB input and we can engage that using the switch so the channel strips are the first part of the mixer the second part is the master section and that's where our master fader is a control room send for adjusting sound of speakers that might be in a studio we also have a headphone jack and accompanying volume control our main meters the 48 volts which engages phantom power so we could use condenser mic phones which require external power with this mixer simply engage that by hitting the switch next to that we have our sub 1 2 which is a second bus that we can either use independently or out into the main master output we've got a fader for that we can route it to headphones we could blend in the USB input and so on the third master strip over here is our effects return this is bringing the sound back from the effects processor it's where we adjust the returning level of our reverb for example we can choose to bus that to our monitors so our musicians can hear reverb on stage and then we have our aux master as well which we talked about earlier at the top of the master section is our Jack field monitor send effects send our main master outputs on both XLR and quarter-inch we've got control room outputs if we're using this mixer in a studio the sub output takes its signal from the sub 1/2 fader here then we have our headphones in a foot switch for muting the effects engine a mixer may or may not have built-in effects in this case it does the gig effects we've got 24 different types of effects we choose those by simply turning the knob and hitting the switch in this case we also have an effects mute switch which is a very handy function because when you're talking on stage between songs you don't want reverb on that signal at its heart a mixer allows you to bring multiple signals in process them in varying ways with effects with EQ adjust the balance between the different signals and control their routing the functionality we've learned with this Mackie analog mixer is the same functionality that applies to virtually all mixers whether you have an analog mixer a digital mixer a virtual mixer running inside your daun your computer all the functions are the same the EQ the busing the input the gain control the fader all identical functions whether you're on a huge studio console or you're on a super compact live soundboard if you have questions about mixers what they do how they work and which one might be right for you contact your Sweetwater sales engineer or visit Sweetwater comm I'm Mitch Gallagher from Sweetwater [Music] you

Channel: Sweetwater

Views: 346,079

Keywords: Sweetwater, cat:recording, cat:live_sound, mitch gallagher, what is a mixer, how to mix, how to, lesson, tutorial, mixing console, recording console, audio mixer, how to use a mixer, mixer, sound mixer, how to use mixer, mixers, music mixer, audio mixer tutorial, mixer tutorial, sound mixer tutorial, mixer sound, how to use audio mixer, mixer music, how to use a mixer for recording, mixer audio, how mixer works, what is mixer, how does mixer work

Id: oXFiXWbj7Jc

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019