MALIK ARSHAQ
Mixers in a
A very common misconception amongst many is that a
mixer is an essential part of a home studio. A mixer will
only be required if you plan on recording a lot of instruments
or a whole band simultaneously, or if your studio up set
also functions as a jam room. If you only plan on recording
yourself or not more than a couple of inputs simultaneously
then a simple DAW + interface set-up would be appropriate.
For example, if you're a singer-songwriter or EDM producer,
it makes no sense for you spend money on 24-channel mixer.
After looking at all your requirements, if you've come to
conclusion that your set-up definitely does require a mixer,
here are the things that you will have to consider before you
make your choice.
Your choice of mixers may vary based on the exact nature
of the purpose that you require it for, based on whether you
need a mixer purely for jamming and rehearsing purposes,
or if you want a stereo mix from the master to recorded into
your DAW or if you want multi-track multiple instruments
simultaneously into your DAW. A basic 12 or 16 channel analog
mixer should do the trick if it is to only serve the purpose of
jamming, just plug in your instruments, hook up a couple of
monitors to the mixer's outputs and you're good to go.
If you're looking to record into your DAW, nowadays, a lot of
mixers come with USB or Firewire ports to connect to your
computer. With most of these mixers, you will be able to get
a stereo output of your overall mix. The problem with this is
that you will not be able to make changes to the individual
tracks as you will only have a recording of your whole mix,
i.e multi-tracking will not possible. This severely limits the
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possibility of editing your mix once it's recorded. Therefore,
it is absolutely necessary to have all your effects for each of
the tracks patched in before recording itself and to maintain
a well balanced mix as changes can't be made once it's been
recorded to your DAW. In case your mixer does not have a
USB or Firewire connection to hook it up to your computer,
you can also route its output to your interface and then record
it into your DAW.
Mixers that allow multi tracking through USB or Firewire
are really flexible as they enable you to record each
individual input separately. This way you can edit each
instrument as you please, post- recording. If you need to
record a rehearsal session or live-track with your band
that you might want to mix out later, you seriously should
consider getting a 16 or 24 channel mixer that permits
multi-tracking.
Most analog mixers have pretty straight forward controls and
options, a gain knob for each channel to control the amount of
pre-amp gain that you'd want to supply to each input signal,
phantom power supply, a high pass filter ,an EQ for each
channel with three bands, highs, mids and lows, most mixers
have two knobs to help you control each band, one to control
the level of the frequency and the other to let you choose
the exact frequency range you are cutting or boosting and a
fader for each track to control the amount of each track that
you're sending to your mix. A lot these mixers may have a few
built-in effects like reverb or delay. Few mixers also have a
compressor for each channel.
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