what is a mixer, what does it do?

[electronicdreaming]

hi there , thanks for checkin my post
well i am in quite a situation. i want to get my accoustic/electric guitar recorded into cakewalk pro audio 9 on my cpu. i have no idea how to go about this. it needs to get plugged into the soundcard somehow, thats all i know. and obviously a standard cord isn't going to work!! on top of this, i have people telling me to get a mixer, and just run the guitar through that, and then from the mixer into the sound card. will this work?
i have a friend who wants to sell me a Eurorack 602A mixer for $50. should i get it? i just want to make music using cakewalk, fruityloops, my Alesis qs6.1, and my takamine guitar. so do i need, or could i benefit from a mixer? thanks so much. please help me!

[Krakit]

Get yourself a Midiman Audio Buddy. There's a guitar input that you can plug your ax into. Depending on your card, you'll need a cable with a 1/4" phono on one end, and an 1/8" on the other.

This is a preamp that will boost your guitar signal for your soundcard (which is what you need to do).

Do not plug the output of the Audio Buddy into the "microphone" jack on the soundcard. Use the "line input" jack instead.

This should make you happy.

A mixer is a consol that, simply put, has multiple inputs (usually in multiples of four) that allows you to control the volume and stereo positioning of the sources you plug into it. More expensive units have parametric EQ's and effect sends on them.

Since you're going in direct via soundcard (thanks to the Audio Buddy), you won't need one. There will be a virtual one in the software.

[electronicdreaming]

hey thanks krakit! sounds like that is exactly what i need! where can i pick that bad boy up at??? thanks again

[electronicdreaming]

hey nevermind i found it at my other post you replied to! thanks a LOT! have a nice day! -justin