About Live Sound Mixers

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Gary Vandy from garyvandy.com here at Studio Center. Let's talk about live sound mixes now. All mixers are basically the same, they all have a certain signal path. Once you learn one, they're basically going to all wind up doing the exact same thing. They may have different labels on the different components, but basically a mixer will take microphones and direct signals, mix them together so that you can put them through speakers. Most mixers start out with a preamp where the microphone is plugged in to a snake, the snake is plugged in to the preamp and that's the beginning of your chain. The preamp would actually have a volume control on it where you can raise or lower the volume that goes in to the next section of the mixer channel. Next section of the mixer channel could be the EQ section where you would EQ the sound, put filters on it, make it sound better, pull frequencies out you don't need that might be causing noise from the stage. Then after that you probably go in to a Q section or a fold back section depending on the mixer. In Europe it's called fold back, here it's Q. That could mean the Q system that's on stage so the musicians can hear themselves.. That's like a little side mixer, it pulls the signal out, allows you to change levels and allow the people who are performing to hear what they need to hear in order to get the performance that they want to get. After that, generally there's a solo section, a mute section, which you're probably going to use only if you know, if you know the music it's always good to mute the channels that are not being used at the time just to cut down on the ambient sound coming in to those channels. After that you're going to have a bunch of faders. The faders are what actually what you're going to do front of house, so that the people who are in the audience can hear the level. That's where the balance that's going out in to the room is actually set. So they're basically all the same, just remember once you get your sound you may have to go back and start all over again, that's the way it works."