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Chapter 1: Welcome to ProMix 01
ProMix 01 Getting Started Guide
Digital Benefits
You’re probably already familiar with the many benefits of digital
audio, but what exactly are the benefits for digital audio mixing? Well,
an audio mixer has the job of combining audio signals from various
sources, at differing levels and impedances, usually into a stereo sig-
nal. And it must do this without introducing any new distortions and
noise. Analog mixers do a pretty good job, but even with the best
designs nonlinear effects caused by circuit components are
unavoidable.
In the digital realm, audio mixing consists of adding and multiplying
binary numbers that represent audio signals. The DSP (Digital Signal
Processor) chips used for these calculations never get their sums
wrong. So once past the A/D conversion, audio signals are immune
from signal degradation. With ProMix 01, noise, distortion, and
crosstalk are virtually eliminated. You’ll hear a new clarity in your
mixes.
Once in the digital realm, there’s little point converting back to ana-
log. ProMix 01 features an S/PDIF digital output for direct mixdown
to DAT and other digital recorders.
ProMix 01 Sonic Performance
ProMix 01’s linear 20-bit 64-times oversampling A/D converters pro-
vide a dynamic range of 105dB (typical). This means that an audio
program’s dynamic range, from low to high levels, is processed intact.
ProMix 01 samples audio at 48kHz, the professional sampling rate.
This provides a full spectrum frequency response of 20Hz–20kHz +1,
–3dB. For D/A conversion, the stereo outputs feature 20-bit 8-times
oversampling and the monitor outputs, 18-bit 8-times oversampling.
Oversampling and bitstream techniques effectively increase the inter-
nal sampling rate, so side effects caused by steep LPF filters, which are
used to filter out sampling frequency components during D/A con-
version, are virtually eliminated. Consequently, audio signal integrity
is maintained from input through to output.