studio 32 problem

D

digital death squad

New member
i recently bought an alesis studio 32 mixer to use with my roland 1680 and today was the first time that ive tried to use it to do a serious recording. when i got it i checked every channel and they all worked fine and it appeared to be in good working order but when i used it today i got all types of bleeding from other tracks. i didnt think that it was possible for this to happen. i plugged the mic cables into the mic ins(duh) and used balanced(trs) cables to go from the direct outs of the mixer to the 1680 and and when i played back the 7 tracks i recorded, 1-6 were drums and 7 was a guitar scratch track,on tracks 1-4 i could hear the guitar bleeding through.i tried everything i could think- of the guitar was already on the other side of the house and you couldnt even hear it if you stood right outside of the room it was in the ,i put the guitar directly into the mixer using an art tube mp and still it could be heard on tracks 1-4 and if i turned up the gain of the guitar on the mixer i could see the green led(-20 db) light up on trcks 1,2,and 4. what am i doing wrong? any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks,

dan
 
Make sure that your tape return monitor signals are not feeding any of the submix chanels.But if you are using the inline
tape monitor chanels as the board is designed
to do, this sould not happen.
Let me know how you make out couse I am
thinking of buying one too.
 
Well, first of all I fail to understand why you are running the output of the ART preamp to the mixer. This is a totally unnecessary step.

Second. You may be having some cross talk on the mixer. The point that I will make here is, what do you expect from a cheap mixer? :D
 
Hey Sonusman,
Why wouldn't a guy run a mp to the mixer?
Could you give an example of the proper way to use it. I don't have much experience with mixers but,why do you consider the 32 a cheap mixer? I use a 24 and other than a little coloring I find it to be quite functional and pleasant to work with.
 
I had problems with bleeding between the AUX channels and the main's in a Studio 32. I took it back where I bought it (still under warranty thankfully), Leo Pro Audio. They could find the problem so they burned in an entirely new board, now the problem is solved, and the mixer sounds pretty good.
If yours is still under warranty I strongly advise you to have it fixed. If any of you just bought one of these, check it carefully for any bleeding.
 
i guess you wouldnt run a mp to the mixer because technically you should just run it to the recorder. you want to keep you signal paths as short as possible. the only reason i ran the mp to the mixer was to by pass the pres on the mixer. i was using the monitor outs of the studio 32 to feed the headphones for the guitarists and using the headphone outs on the 1680 for the drummer so i had to run the guitars into the mixer or there would have been no guitars in the guitarists headphones. the guitar tracks that were being recorded were only scratch tracks and quality was not very important. anyway the bleed is gone now. i dont know what happened it just disappeared. must've ran off when i threatened to kick its ass.
 
You know Jason001, I live by the rule of if you don't have something meaningful to say, shut your f*cking mouth. Think about it.... :D

As to the question about running a outboard microphone preamp to a mixer, I really didn't feel that the question needs to be answered. It is so obvious why you don't need to (but, then again, you bought a piece of gear that you didn't know the proper use of, so maybe not).

Your "special" answer...

Why be redundant?

That is the answer, a question. See if you can answer it before reading on. If it is obvious, quit reading now and move on to another post. You have passed recording 101.


Okay, you didn't pass the entrance exam for recording 102. Not totally unexpected, just means you didn't do your homework. Remedial class starts now.

The purpose of a outboard mic preamp is so that you don't have to use the mic preamp built into a mixer (and in the case of an Alesis on board mic preamp, this is a good thing).

The common proper way of using an outboard mic preamp is to plug your microphone into it, then run the preamp's output straight to the recording machines input of the track you want to record on.

What purpose would running the output of a mic preamp serve by running it to a mixing board first? (especially a cheapy less than $1000 dollar mixing console) You would just be adding more wire, ANOTHER MIC PREAMP, and circuitry to the signal, thus corrupting and coloring a nice audio signal that the outboard preamp will provide.

As to the Alesis consoles. How much do they cost? About $500-800? Dude, I paid $6000 ($7000 with the meter bridge) for my Soundcraft Ghost. About the same amount of inputs and mic pre's and aux sends. A few extra goodies. Anyway, the point is that my console hardly compares to REAL recording consoles used in major studios. Sure, it has a few of the features, and it basically sounds pretty damn good for the money. But IT IS A CHEAP MIXER TOO, AND IT COST A HELL OF A LOT MORE PER CHANNEL THAT ANY ALESIS CONSOLE DOES!!!

You get what you pay for. There is no way that a Alesis console will have as good of specs, or the quality of workmanship, or quality of design, or extent of features when compared to even a Mackie, much less more established recording consoles.

So that is what I mean about it being cheap. It is. You got what you paid for. Nothing more. It is only as good as it is, which isn't all that great. Sort of versatile, cheap, and compact. That is what you paid for. It is bound to have little annoying problems because at that price you didn't pay for a quality mixer that is suitable for nice music production. Basically, it is a toy mixer. A cheap way to learn how to use a mixer. A cheap way to do a little mixing. But certainly not a mixer that is going to offer a pristine signal path. Hell, my Ghost console is far from transparent to the audio, but a hell of a lot more so than any Alesis, or Mackie, or Studiomaster, or Spirit Folio is. The Alsis consoles just don't cost enough to provide quality components. The price per channel is not enough to provide the quality design of a real recording console.

There. I have come out of my "specialness" to respond. Was this what you expected? :D

Ed
 
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