How to use an analog audio mixer

hello and welcome to how to use an analog mixer brought to you by Matt Eckhart audio production service and me audio procom today we are going to be going over the basics of how to use an analog mixer using a small format mixer people ask me what is a mixer mixer takes many audio sources like mics instruments CD players mp3 players computers and combines or sums the inputs down to one or more outputs to feed a PA system or a recording device so today we're going to be using the Mackie mix 8 as an example the Mackie mix 8 has four sections the i/o section the mixer section with channel strips the master section and the tape section so these are all features that are on a lot of mixers but not all mixers are the same some have more and some have less this particular guy has 8 channels it's got two ends here 1 2 3 4 ends there in the form of two stereo ends and two RCA ends right here for those types of connections but let's go read section before we really get in and use it alright so let's start with the i/o section short for in and out this section is how you get a mic or line signal in or out of a mixer in the input section there are microphone connectors balanced quarter-inch connectors or unbalanced quarter-inch connectors there's also the mic preamps called gain or trim we'll get to those in a minute when we start using them in the out section there are balanced or unbalanced quarter-inch outs those can be used for going out to your main speakers the control room out or CR out can be used for going to your studio monitors an auxilary send sends individual inputs to a particular output and the headphone out of course pretty self-explanatory there the next section we'll go over is the mixer section where sound is adjusted for level tone and stereo balance using these controls consists of the volume knobs for level the pan knobs for sending signal either to the left to the right or up the center going to both the auxilary sends used for stage monitors or external effects those are the knobs that correspond with the augs and output I showed you in the i/o section when you turn up one of those knobs sound leaves directly from that send and is controlled by that knob the mixer section also has equalization the EQ knobs cut or boost their preset frequencies to shape the tone to your liking or to help you balance a room those frequencies are 80 Hertz 2.5 kilohertz and 12 kilohertz those represent the lows mids and highs that's the end of the mixer section the tape section is a section that helps you route sound that goes in to the RCA ends to the main volume out or to the control room out and then it also has a two-track out to go into a two-track recording device now we have finally the main slash master section the main slash master section consists of the control room or headphone volume the main mix or main out volume and the auxilary master volume these are all overall volumes the main mix is an overall volume for the level controls the control room out is the main as a control volume control for the control room output and the augs master is an overall control for the auxilary knobs on each channel you'll also notice that there are meters in the form of those red yellow and green lights and those let you know how loud your main output is and when you are within the overload limits of the red light lights up you are doing what's called clipping and that is bad so you want to stay away from that if you see red on your meters you want to turn down on the main level or you'll want to turn down the gain on your input channel but we're gonna go over that when we use it there in the master section it also has the phantom power button or the 48 volt button when you push that button in you can use a condenser mic with that and those are great so now that we've seen all the different features on this mixer let's go ahead and use it the first thing that you want to do you always want to turn down your volume knobs make sure that everything's down before you plug anything in same thing with your gain levels here and stuff like that next thing you're going to want to do is plug it right in to power this particular mixer uses a wall wart it's gonna plug that in over here and it doesn't have an on button so when you plug it in it just turns on the first thing that you are that's first thing but the next thing you'll want to do is you're going to connect your mixer to your speakers or to your recording device you can do that by simply going to the main out here and patching in one and two and these guys are going into the speaker system I'll be using today for example now let's go ahead and plug in a microphone we've got our mic here it's all plugged in using a microphone connector you can see this right there like so just take that plug it in and then you plug it in to channel one you then start testing your microphone and turning up the gain knob right here or trim knob until you either set it at unity which is the U or what some people call nominal or you can set this until you test it one two one two hey hey one two one two till you see that red light coming on now remember that red light is bad so what you want to do is turn that gain back a little bit one two one two so that we don't see that red light anymore now that we've got our got our input level set we can turn up our main mix level and then turn up our level for channel one a hey one two hey hey and you'll notice that it is hitting the green and yellow lights if I turn it up too much hey-hey-hey-hey can't actually hit the clip level until we turn this up way cut one two hey hey one two and there we could finally hit the clip so we want to avoid that so that's how you plug the microphone in if you would like to and set its gain structure if you want to shape the tone of the mic notice how basic it sounds simply roll off some of the lows hey hey one two yes yes more vase let's base more vase less base if you want to add some highs one two hey hey more highs less highs more highs less highs and that's how the equalizer works if you are running a stage monitor with a microphone you would then take your auxilary knob and turn that up to the desired level once you have that connected here out of your hogs stand out so the next thing we'll do is we'll go ahead and we'll plug in and play some sound from a computer I'm gonna go ahead and reset this I take my mini cable you really this guy to dual unbalanced quarter inch plug that in to my computer and then what I like to do is I'll take the left and right in two separate channels and I will pan them to the left and to the right that gives us a nice wide stereo image and press play on your audio then you should be able to turn that up and get some sound you can see it hitting our meters here like so now if you need more volume you can use the gain knobs while going into this to get yourself some more input strength then when you turn these volume knobs up it won't require you to turn them all the way up to ten like so so that's how you plug in a computer the same thing goes with an mp3 player you can plug it in here like this like so you could plug it into the stereos when you plug it into the stereo and you'll use one channel instead of two like I'm doing and that will save you some channels although in my opinion plug them into two separate channels with separate pan control gives you the best sound so once you've done that you basically got your mixer level going and you've got your level set and say you turn up your volume and you come to some feedback one of the big things with feedback is gain structure so if you turn up your a sound system of your mixer and you start to get feedback one of the things that you can do is you can turn the gain knob back a little bit from where you had it set to help stabilize that or you can reduce the volume level that you're sending to reduce feedback or in the frequency range that is feeding back you can make a cut which is taking away that frequency to balance that out that is the basics of how to use an analog mixer I'm also going to include some photos of the connectors that are on the Mackie mix 8 and the cable connectors the you will see when you go to plug in your audio sources and hopefully found this really helpful thanks so much for watching

Channel: meaudiopro.com

Views: 144,878

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Keywords: how-to, mixer, analog mixer, mackie mix8

Id: iykJ5Oxg43Q

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2016