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the sound of home and car speakers, mono com-
patibility, human perception changes under
different listening conditions, matching similar
product in your market, not to mention tonal
and level balance between songs, and meeting
the criteria for tape and disc mastering.
MIXING SETUP
Clean and align your mixing machine accord-
ing to the manufacturer’s instructions. If it’s a
digital machine, sacrifice a full floppy disk in its
presence to ensure smooth operation during
mixdown.
Group all your inputs in some sensible way, keep-
ing drums, vocals and synths next to each other.
You’ll probably have to repatch some of your
tape returns to do this. Lay a strip of 1/2" white
tape across all the console input channels for la-
beling. Put 1/4" strips of tape vertically along
each fader to mark levels.
Pick a Model
Get copies of music you’d like to approximate in
your mix, and patch the CD or DAT machine into the
external jacks on the console. Then you can A-B your
mix against your model at the flick of a switch to see
if you’re really getting that snare sound or not.
Consider Compression
You can mix an entire project without a lick of
compression; many engineers do. The dynamic
range of a CD can certainly handle it. But con-
sider: most people listen to what you mix under
less than ideal conditions. There is background
noise and road noise, and most people don’t
listen as loud as you mix. A little gentle compres-
sion, whether on individual tracks or on the
entire mix, can reduce the dynamic range a bit
and pull your mix together. Also, if you want to
simulate what your mix will sound like over the
airwaves, you can compresss the heck out of it,
like they do. They use very fancy compressors,
but any compressor will give you an idea of what
will happen. This is good for checking things out,
but not for your final mix.
DOING THE MIX
Assuming the console has been normalled, all
you have to do to get ready to mix is to engage
the FLIP and L/R MIX switches (unless you are
using the submasters to group channels) on
each of the input channels and select L/R MIX
as your Monitor Source. Pull all the channel in-
put faders down.
There is a tendency for levels to creep upwards as
you add more and more tracks to your mix. One way
to keep a handle on this is to set the L/R master
fader a few dB above unity, and to set your initial
monitor levels pretty high. As you get closer and
closer to your final, you can ease the monitor levels
down and easeup the master fader to unity, which is
where it should be.
If your multitrack tape machine will do it, put it in
the loop mode so it will just play the song over and
over. Start mixing a group of tracks that run through-
out the song, maybe drums or the rhythm section.
Set the panning, level, EQ, reverb and delay,
and bring in more tracks as the mix begins to
jell. Don’t make any level marks on your fader
tapes yet, but as the mix comes together, try to
note which sections work without a lot of fader
moves. Look for what appears to be the loudest
part. Sometimes turning the Control Room Level
way down, so the mix is very quiet, will reveal
what sounds are clearly louder than others.
Now take a listen to your model on CD or DAT.
Make some adjustments in your mix to put it
closer. When you think it’s getting reasonable, find
that loudest section that you located, and pull the
master fader back to get the levels close to normal
on the main meters. Then go to the section that
works by itself and start making little marks on
the fader strips. You’re getting close.
Listen to the model again. Start making more
marks for the moves. Repeat until it sounds like
a hit. Serves four adults.
Using External Processing
Compressors, gates and equalizers are gener-
ally inserted into the signal path. They are
referred to as
“serial devices,”
used in series
with the signal path.
All
the signal goes into the
device, then out and back to the mixer’s signal path.
Reverb, echo, delay, aural excitement and
spatial enhancement are usually set up as send/
return devices. These are referred to as “
parallel
devices
.” Some amount of signal is “borrowed”
from a channel via an AUX Send, sent to the de-
vice, processed and returned to the mixer as a
new, wet signal via the AUX Returns, to be mixed
with the original, dry signal.
Insert Devices
A compressor/limiter after EQ will compress
differently than one inserted before the EQ. A
compressor/limiter inserted before a master fader
will limit consistently, but one after the same
fader will effectively have its threshold moved by
the fader level. None of these choices are right or
wrong, they just have different effects.
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RECORDING
