If you're recording straight into a computer (and don't really care too much about the sound degradation, which is minimal now-a-days), you can buy a USB Mixer that really is just a controller for the virtual mixer in your program. A good compromise here though is a MIDI controller. Second, like others have said, it's a lot easier to be able to look at a board and know what knobs you need to twist and which faders you need to raise or lower and just do it instead of searching through a computer screen and then having to click and drag (which is also less accurate). Once you start to digitize that, you start to lose quality of the sound, so people put off going to a computer for as long as they can to preserve the quality of the sound. You're getting the raw sound through the mixer and to the sends. To answer your question about why we don't just use computers there are a few answers.įirst, the thing people like about mixers is that it all happens to analog electric signals. There may be a few other settings and sends but, these things make up the meat of a mixer. So for each submix, you'll have yet another column on the mixer. (He can also EQ the set as a whole, apply compression to the set as a whole, apply reverb to the set as a whole, send the whole set out using the submix sends, etc). Now he can change the volume of the subgroup without affecting the balance of the channels and can raise or lower the entire kit instead of each mic individually. Messing with any individual channel can really upset the balance so, what the engineer does is balance the drum channels then send them all to a sub group. Now, let's say that you need the entire set louder or softer. You'd spend a few minutes getting everything balanced between the mics (snare should only pick up snare, bass should only pick up bass, and the overheads should get a bit of everything). A drum is usually has at least 4 mics on it, so it's using 4 channels of the mixer (Snare, Bass, and 2 overheads). These act (and appear on the board) like channels but are really a bunch of channels added together. Now the singer has more of what he needs without affecting any one else. He needs to hear more of the rhythm guitar (which is in channel 3) so the engineer would turn up the send 1 knob on channel 3. For example, you're recording a band and your lead singer's headphones are on Send 1. Things like headphone mixes for individual people will be sent through the aux sends and each one can be balanced by the send knobs on each channel. They'll have a master mix (which usually gets sent into the control room and probably doesn't have a knob) but, there will be any number of aux sends. Most boards have outputs as well as inputs (how else would you hear whats going on). Now, repeat this column to the right for each input channel you have, and that makes up the majority of the board. Then you'll probably have a mute button (just cuts the channel out) and a solo button (cuts all other channels out). We'll get more into sends later on but, for now just know that for each sub-mix, send, and effects settings, you'll have a send knob for it on each channel. Then there will be your send knobs and your submix knobs. After that, you'll probably have a compression knob on the board and maybe a reverb knob on some boards. Then, on a professional board, you'll probably have a 7 band EQ (7 knobs controlling 7 different ranges of frequencies). There will be a knob for the gain settings on the microphone (mic signals are very small signals and need to be amplified before they can do anything else. Some boards have upwards of 24 to 30 of these channels but for now we'll just focus on one channel (one column of knobs sliders and buttons). Each channel takes input from one audio device (probably a microphone). First, there are the individual channels. There are a few different things they could be but, a lot of that board is repetition of a few basic things.
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