How to use a mixer's internal effects processor

hi is bruno loose here for glb productions thanks for joining us for this video in this clip what I'm going to show you is how to use the internal effects processor that's found on many modern mixes as mixer design develops you'll find that a lot of modern mixers they have internal effects that are just as good as if not better than some of the older outboard effects and rackmount effects units so it's worth giving these units a try especially for live sound where where the quality of the effect is not absolutely critical they're often more than enough so let's have a look at this now the mixer that we're going to use for this video is a Mackie CF x12 now as you can see in the master section of this mixer it has a built-in effects processor it says there eMac digital stereo effects processor these effects are found on many mixers including many entry-level mixers that have the letters F X in their model name and as I mentioned in the introduction these effects although they cannot compete with expensive rackmount units they often more than good enough for live sound and the other thing is they come free with a mixer so why not give them a go these units are typically set up as follows you will have a knob or some way of choosing the effects now they usually come with at least a dozen different effects you can see here this comes with a bunch of plate reverb some room and hole reverbs it also comes with a bunch of delays a chorus flanger phaser and so on there will always be a way to route the effects to this processor and then to get the output of this processor into your main mix and figuring that out is often the hardest thing when it comes to using these so let's look at our mixer as a whole and work out how to do this now for the purposes of this demonstration I've plugged the vocal mic into this channel here okay if you zoom in to the aux end section of this channel you can see that there are two separate effects ends now makya is you know they put the aux end section above the EQ the reason being that you once you adjust these they're pretty much set whereas you're probably adjusting the EQ continuously throughout the game as you can see the first one is labeled FX 1 ext now ext stands for external effects send the second one if X 2 is labeled int that stands for internal effects and internal being the internal processor over here so if you want this channel to be able to access this processor you need to turn that knob up ok we'll turn this one down and you need to turn this up usually I turn it to unity gain and leave it there unless there's an overpowering reason to do otherwise now let's look at the effects processor itself now looking at the effects processor you'll see that there's 4 knobs across the top this is what they do on this particular mixer effects to send is basically the overall master send to this processor so if you want your channel send to get into here that needs to be turned up once again I usually set it to the unity gain or 12 o'clock position and leave it there this knob as you can see says 2 main mix so if you want the effects from here to go to your main mix you need to turn this up you then have two knobs that allow you to send your effects to the monitors now the reason that they give you separate controls for this is that a lot of singers and musicians like to hear more reverb than would be appropriate in the front-of-house mix so they give you separate controls for that that's the knob that allows you to choose what effect you want let's set that to a let's put it to medium Hall for now below you have variations on the theme wide and bypass allows you to bypass the effects completely all right now let's see how this works what has now happened is that I have connected the output of the mixer directly to the video camera so that you can hear what would be going to the front-of-house mix as we mentioned we have the channel send turned up over here alright we have turned up the send on our source channel we have turned up effects to send which is the send to this processor and we have set our processor to a medium hole setting the only thing that remains is to raise this knob as I raise this knob you will be able to hear the whole reverb come in check one two one two one two if you want to change the reverb let's say large Hall check one two check one two you'll also notice that the reverb at the moment is really really short okay if I want say a longer reverb time I can turn this up check one two check one two what about Cathedral let's see how that sounds check one two wow that's a big space isn't it let's check out some delays check check check now now with the delays the time controls the time of the delay lay shorter delay check check one two check check longer delay no delay check check one two two and and really long really long delay um um I'll just bypass that so that it's not so distracting that the differences between the delays have to do with the way in which the effect is regenerated check one two two delay to who you can hear here more delays check one two two and check one two to bypass the effects unit once again chorus is it sounds a little bit like two people playing or singing together slightly out of tune set to chorus check one two check one two now again if you want more chorus you would turn that up flan Jing is a more extreme form of chorus check one two check one two phaser even more extreme the wide switch makes it sound really wide check one two can you hear that without the wide switch with the wide switch in other words the wide switch gives you a really really big stereo image and I suspect that half the audience won't be able to appreciate that so as you can hear these internal effects are really really simple to use and sometimes they actually sound pretty decent the trick is not overusing them for live sound if you can hear the effect it's probably too much okay so let's say that I was using that whole reverb all right now I would say that in live sound this is probably too much so I would reduce that check one two two two two that's probably how much I'd use for a singer all right obviously every venue is different and every venue has its own natural reverb now as you can see here I thought just for kicks and giggles and my father used to say we'd show you a different mixer this is a Yamaha mg one two four CX and in Singapore at least this is a really really popular entry-level mixer I know a lot of clubs pubs churches and bands use the mg series of mixers they're good value for money and as you can see here they also have a built-in effects section so let's take a look at how you would set it up for one of these yamaha mg series mixes now to begin with I just tell you what my setup is as you can see I have plugged a microphone into this channel it is on the mg series use the on as opposed to the mute protocol so you need to switch the channel on I've raised the channel fader routed the channel to the stereo bus and raised the master fader and you of course are listening to the output from the mixer connected directly to the video camera now as on the Mackie you can see here within the channel section just zoom in to let you see that a bit more easily this mixer only has two aux ends unlike the Mackey's four you have one aux end here which is suitable pre or post fader usually for stage monitors and you have the effects send now the effects n in this case is fixed post fader and it automatically routes to the internal effects engine unless you route it otherwise okay now let's have a look at the effects section itself as you can see it has a program select knob so it lets you select between various reverbs choruses so on and so forth depending on what you want it has a parameter knob unlike the Mackie which had if you remember it had two knobs to vary the parameter this only has a single one has a knob for you to route the effects to your stage monitors and this is the big difference below it has a fader now this is in my opinion a more versatile setup than with the Mackie with the fader you get all the benefits of returning an external effects unit to a channel it also allows you to PFL and mute your effects as necessary so let's see how this effects engine works like on the Mackie there is no effects master knob right as soon as you turn up the channel send its routed immediately to the effects engine so all you have to do is turn up the channel send turn on the channel for the effects and bring up your fader and there you can hear we have a reverb once again adjusting the parameter knob will give you different settings let's have a look so shorter reverb longer reverb this is all - then you have room one two and a series of this is what they call stage seven is a plate reverb and then you have nine nine is called Cara okay echo minimum echo maximum echo as you can hear this is actually a delay sometimes they will label sometimes they will label a delay as echo because a lot of people don't know what a delay is 10 is a vocal echo check 1 2 11 is a chorus more chorus and less chorus 12 is also a chorus I can't really tell I think it's a little bit less 13 is a flanger 14 phaser 15 is something called auto wall and 16 is Distortion so presumably this is the Darth Vader setting yes Luke I am your father and thank goodness back to one one of the things that you'll notice about this reverb engine is that there is a pause as you change the presets I'll just show that to you so here we are on one check 1 2 3 4 5 as you can hear there was a slight pause as I swap to the second preset apart from that there's no real other differences between this and the Mackie just remember that in all cases you have to route the signal to the effects processor and they will give you some way of returning it to your mix either with a knob in the case of the Mackie or in the case of this mixer a fader well that concludes our tutorial on built-in effects processors also known as onboard effects units just remember that these units have come a long way in the last 10 or 15 years whereas in the old days it used to be just maybe a spring or a plate reverb built directly into the mixer now with modern digital technology you can have 24-bit effects on board and as you can hear you can have a whole suite of different effects from reverbs to delays to choruses - even making you sound like Darth Vader so I do hope that you've learned from this don't discount onboard effects especially for live sound where the quality of the effect is maybe not quite as important as its cost effectiveness because remember you can spend you know five hundred or thousand dollars on an expensive outboard the effects processor which today you could probably buy yourself a nice amplify or even a nice monitor speaker with this is bruno loose for glb productions thanks very much for watching I'll see you soon

Channel: GLB Productions

Views: 396,362

Keywords: Live, sound, reinforcement, effects, audio, mixer, Yamaha, Mackie, CFX12, MG124CX, Mixing Console, reverb, chorus, delay, echo, karaoke, processor

Id: p77y0SFT088

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 22 2013