What Is A Mixer Used For?

that was a great link thanks, but im still having troules with connections,

i mean, how do i hook all this up in the first place, do i hook the mixer up to a keyboard, or record the keyboard to my track recorder and then hook the mixer to the recorder?


thanx
 
It depends on your setup. A mixer can be used to mix anything that needs to be mixed.

Have 20 singers doing backup that need to get down to 2 tracks? Mixer to the rescue! Have an 18 piece drum kit that needs to be recorded to 4 tracks? Mixer to the rescue! Have a 24 track song that needs to have effects, eq, and compression added in different degrees to different instruments and crunched down to a stereo 2-track mix? Mixer to the rescue!

The poor things are used for just about everything! With digital recording a lot of mixing is done in the computer, but digital recordists frequently use mixers as an inexpensive source of microphone preamps and line level inputs for MIDI devices (like synths and drum machines.) The mixer lets you get just about any signal ready for the computer.

Ah- I see: what mixer and recorder do you have? What are you wanting to record?

Chris
 
i have a behringer eurocrack mx 2642a and a tascam portastudio 424mk111, i guess what i really want to know is how to put the mixer to use with anything i record
 
Does your tascam have "Tape Outs"? I have an older tascam that has individual outputs for each tape track. I had great success running the tape outs to the inputs of the mixer. The I ran the channel outputs of the mixer into the inputs of the 4-track. I'm not familiar with your mixer, however.

If you have those tape outs, you'll love having that external mixer. I enjoyed having better preamps and cleaner mixer channels than the tascam provided- though for the price they aren't bad.

Chris
 
how do i go about to start mixing, does the song have to be already recorded and then i mix, or do i mix and record at the same time?

thanx
 
Song needs to be recorded first. Lay down up to 4 tracks, then hook the tape outs to your mixer channels 1-4. Use the mixer's EQ and faders to mix your tracks together till they sound balanced. The manual for the tascam should have a fairly good breakdown of the recording and mixing process.

Hmmm...excpetion to that is if you are recording lots of things at once- then you mix and record at the same time.

Chris
 
if i post a pic of my mixer will you explain a little about what and where im suposed to connect to where and what?
 
I suppose the simplest application to a >8 channel mixer would be as a "selector switch" for a number of inputs, as on most home receivers. Most have a knob to select the source, be it FM/CD/Aux etc. that gets sent to the amplifier and then the speakers. The mixer can function this way by only selecting the channels you want (or turning the volume down if it's a shitty mixer with no channel on/off switch... :) ) or it can {get this}

MIX

the sound sources from several channels into a stereo pair, or a mono signal with control over the balance of individual channel volumes and control over the placement of each channel in the stereo field.

Multi-bus mixers offer a "submix" which is a subset of all the available channels to be routed to a separate output for separate processing.


OK- checked your pic. That one looks like its got 8 mono inputs probably with mic pres and 4 stereo inputs (for signals like those coming from a CD player/synth/tape deck/ etc.) but I can't tell much else about it except those sliders look pretty short.
 
LUTH said:
i need to know how to make use of my mixer, what am i supposed to do
Click to expand...

What exactly do you need it for? Doesn't your tascam have a built-in mixer? Start by using that, or learning how to use that.
 
Luth you really need to do your homework and THEN come in with more specific questions like "How come I smell smoke everytime I record from the ouputs on my power amp?"

Your questions are so basic that your asking us to write you a beginners manual on recording. Read the beginners manuals then come back and we can help explain things that dont quite make sense.
 
Yeah, a mixer is a tool. It wouldn't make any sense to go to a hardware store and say "what do I do with my hammer?"

The answer would be: "what do you want to do?"

Either that or "hit things."

And in the case of the mixer,

the answers are:

"what do you want to do?"
and
"mix things";)
 
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