How to Bring Sound Together
Audio mixing is a vital part of professional audio from live performances to studio recording. It's what separates a musical experience from a bunch of individual performances that happen to occur at the same time.
What Should You Look for in a Mixer?
The first thing you should do when looking for a mixer is figure out what you're going to use it for. Then, once you know what you're doing, you can take the time to figure out which features are going to be important for your projected use case as opposed to anyone else's. Some of the things to look at are:
- I/O and Channels: The more channels your Yamaha mixer has, the more individual sources you can manage from your console. For many mixers, this is the defining feature. A USB interface can also help with digital mixers as you can then use USB flash drives to load presets and other programs.
- Routing: The more instruments and microphones you have to mix, the more important routing and internal buses become, because that increases the overall flexibility.
- EQ: It always helps to be able to at least manage your low, mid-range, and high frequency levels, and sometimes you may need even more capability.
What About Live Sound?
People have different needs when mixing live music than recording, and so they are going to look to different Yamaha mixers in order to get the job done. It is possible to do everything with one mixer, but in cases like you're likely to need a much more capable device because you won't be able to tradeoff one feature against another as easily. Some of the things to consider for each are:
- Studio Mixers: For recording in the studio you want features like quality mic preamps and lots of line inputs. You also want the ability to add external effects processors and also an EQ that can handle the delicate tweaks you want to get the right sound for the recording.
- Live Sound Mixers: When you're mixing live, you need features like a power amplifier that can drive your speaker stack from the mixer. You also need ruggedness because once the mixer is gone, so's your show. You do need to make sure you have enough connections though; remember that stereo keyboards need two inputs, one for each channel.
Using a Mixer
Whether you use an analog console that relies on vacuum tubes, or a multi-effect digital mixer that can run the whole show from a USB connection without human intervention, a mixer is a vital part of any stage show or recording studio. In many cases, it's the board that really drives the show.