Is a small mixer necesssary?

[Smoulders]

Hi there

I just wondered if someeone might be able to clear up the following for me.

Let's say, you have 1 synth and 1 sound module in your rack and and you run Cubase on your PC with an audiop interface that has several inputs. What would be the point, or advantage to buying a small mixer and incorporating this into the system.

At the moment, I can happpily mix any incoming levels within Cubase within the sequencer. Are there any advantages to adding a mixer into the equation apart from the obvious hands on control?

I have seen setups where any audio instruments and mics are connected to a mixer and then the direct outss of each channel then connected to inputs of the audio interface. The levels are then mixed on the mixer rather than in Cubase. But, why not just connect straight into the individual inputs of your sound card (assuming you have enough), mix within Cubase and not bother with the mixer. I am aware that the hands on control of a real mixer is obviously a bonus, but is there anything apart from this?

Thanks very much for your time.

Kind regards

Smoulders

[DavidK]

You got it.

For your situation it is not needed.

One of my modules has a low output level ( Jv1010), so the mixer can be used to increase that. It also can add eq if you want it.

[tourettes5139]

I mainly use my mixer to get some more (albeit not incredible) preamps, and also to handle monitoring duties, like switching between monitors, headphone sends, etc. They are also useful to do latency-free hardware monitoring.

[Smoulders]

Right...thanks guys. About your monitoring situation Tourettes, could you clarify that please? Whats the advantage of using a mixer to monitor through rather than just monitoring the output of Cubase through outs 1 and 2 of your interface?

Thanks again.

[corban]

Monitoring through a mixer enables you to send aux sends to the headphones so the musicians can have a different mix than the person in the control room. It just gives some flexibility.

[Smoulders]

Thats great. Thanks. I reckon you'd be able to acheive the same thing with just an audio interface though surely? If for example you had multiple outputs, you could route different parts within Cubase to those outputs.

Thanks for your help. Im just trying to figure out exactly how useful a mixer would be for a relatively small setup. It seems like if you have a decent Audio interface with multiple ins and outs, you can do everything with that and your sequencer, even send different headphone mixes via your multiple outs (unless I'm wrong on that)

Cheers guys

[corban]

You definitely could do that IF you had the soundcard with multiple outs to do it, as well as the capabilities in your software to send aux sends to your soundcard.