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MrBassMan
New member
Could anyone tell me what the difference is between a 4 bus mixer and an 8 bus one.......
Thanks
Thanks
regebro
Insane Genious!
A "bus" in a mixer usually refers to the amount of submix channels it has. In a 4-bus mixer you select each channel to go to one or two of the 4 submix channels, and then you mix these 4 submix channels together to stereo.
An 8-bus simple has 8 of these channels instead of 4. With an 8 bus you therefore can mix say, 32 channels onto 8, where 1-2 is the drums, 3 the bass, 4 the lead vocals, 5-6 guitars and 7-8 other stuff. That way you can change the levels of the drums without having to touch all the sliders for the different drum channels.
A bus mixer is also useful if you want to record many sources at once to a multitrack, you then record each bus to a recording channel.
Well, that's the short version, at least.
An 8-bus simple has 8 of these channels instead of 4. With an 8 bus you therefore can mix say, 32 channels onto 8, where 1-2 is the drums, 3 the bass, 4 the lead vocals, 5-6 guitars and 7-8 other stuff. That way you can change the levels of the drums without having to touch all the sliders for the different drum channels.
A bus mixer is also useful if you want to record many sources at once to a multitrack, you then record each bus to a recording channel.
Well, that's the short version, at least.
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MrBassMan
New member
Thanks for the response....I think I get the picture.
Does that mean that on an 8 bus mixer you are mixing 24, 32 or howeve many channels doen to 8 outputs? Or does each channel still have it's own output and the bus is used to combine a number of channels to record onto a recorder with less tracks than you have channels?
Hope that makes sense....
Does that mean that on an 8 bus mixer you are mixing 24, 32 or howeve many channels doen to 8 outputs? Or does each channel still have it's own output and the bus is used to combine a number of channels to record onto a recorder with less tracks than you have channels?
Hope that makes sense....
regebro
Insane Genious!
Yes. You do have 8 outputs on an 8 bus mixer (at least all bus mixers I have seen has outputs for the busses), but on many mixers you also have direct outs, or inserts which can be used as direct outs.
TexRoadkill
Audio Bum
MrBassMan said:
Exactly. There is also the master buss so you can sometimes add 2 to the total number of busses. Some mixers include that in the number of busses.
A common practice during mixdown is to send similar groups of tracks like drums, guitars, backing vocals, etc to stereo buss groups so you can add compression or other effects to the whole group and also be able to adjust the volume of the whole group in the mix. Then that buss is assigned to the master buss so it goes out to the mixdown recorder..
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MrBassMan
New member
Right, I think I get it now! Thanks for the explanations.
Just one more question.....I promise! If I was to get a 4 bus mixer like the Behringer Eurodesk MX2442A (just one of the many I am checking out) Iwould only be able to record 4 tracks at a time, even if I was to have an 8 track recorder?
I'm sorry to ask questions which are probably very simple but I do assure you that i'm not just expecting answers to all my queries on a plate. I have been doing hours of research, the problem is that reviews in magazines and on websites often don't explain what the terminology they are using means, this is fair enough in some ways as you shouldn't be buying lots of equipment if you don't know what you're doing but it doesn't make it easy, even for those who are upgrading. Hence the questions!
Just one more question.....I promise! If I was to get a 4 bus mixer like the Behringer Eurodesk MX2442A (just one of the many I am checking out) Iwould only be able to record 4 tracks at a time, even if I was to have an 8 track recorder?
I'm sorry to ask questions which are probably very simple but I do assure you that i'm not just expecting answers to all my queries on a plate. I have been doing hours of research, the problem is that reviews in magazines and on websites often don't explain what the terminology they are using means, this is fair enough in some ways as you shouldn't be buying lots of equipment if you don't know what you're doing but it doesn't make it easy, even for those who are upgrading. Hence the questions!
regebro
Insane Genious!
No, you could still use direct outs for the remaining 4 tracks, or skip the mixer altogether and go directly into the recorder for these tracks.
