This is maybe not the forum for this, but I think it could be interesting. This is a geargeargear kind of post
I'll try to keep the boring details to a minimum...
So, as I get a bit more gear and a bit more ambitious in recording setups, it gets more and more tricky to get it all to behave well together and to easily switch between different gear....eventually I start to realise I need a mixer.
At it's very very simplest, a mixer is something that takes a number of signals and 'mixes' (or 'sums' to be techy) them to 1 mono or 1 stereo signal. Your DAW can do that and thats the general setup of it (you only have a stereo signal coming out of your interface to your speakers, no matter how many tracks).
A very very simple mixer looks like this:
That takes 8 mono signals and gives 1. Not very useful as hardware as a DAW does that (sounds the same).
Ok, so what do I want? We probably all know what a more complicated mixer that you might buy in a shop looks like. It has a load of channels where you can connect each mono (or sometimes stereo) track and fade, pan, add effects as an insert or send. They are all mixed together and you have a master channel where you can do the same thing to the mixed result. Like the mixer in your DAW.
Even more complicated mixers have all kinds of routing options - group signals and send them to seperate group channels, have all kinds of send/return effects, create feedback loops etc etc...
Unfortunately, most of the mixers out there are very expensive and just didnt have what I want.
Cue the madness!
I'm building a mixer. Well, so far I have built 1 channel of a mixer, but thats the plan. The idea is that in the end it will look something like this (plan view):
There are 16 individual channels and 4 group channels which they can be routed to. There are also '500 series buckets' (dont need to know what it is - it makes things more flexible and I can integrate my gear better by having empty 'buckets' rather than built in effects)
The indivdual channel is a bit different from that picture, its gonna look more like:
2 Sends (1 selectable pre/post), channel mute, pan, peak indicator, 100m fader and something called 'Squeeze'.
And to go really crazy, the circuit we have put together to do that (ommiting the 'Squeeze' for now) looks like this:
We've built 1 channel on a strip board and it sounds as expected.
Now the reason I'm making this madness and not just buying something is two-fold:
1. I have some outboard gear (500 series) which I would like to integrate better. We are making this mixer so that each 'stage' is handled outside by jack connections (rather than hidden on the inside like is normal), which means you can connect the thing up pretty much how you want and the routing options become....insane.
2. I didnt want EQ or preamps etc (this stuff can go in the 500 series buckets) to keep it flexible.
3. There are a couple of mixers sort of like this. They cost around £30-50K :O. My idea is that most of the mojo from a mixer is from preamps, EQ and summing, so that sections such as these channels we are building now should just be transparent. That can be done extremely well cheaply. Also, this mixer can be slowly built over time and so long as there is
- the master section, at least 1 channel and a power supply, it will work.
Ok, madness over. Questions?
.
No really, I just thought I'd brain fart on the forum and tell you what has been taken up a large portion of time lately....
