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Chapter 6: Mixing and Automation
ProMix 01 Getting Started Guide
•
Apply effects
—this really depends on your application. In the
studio, you’ll probably have time to experiment with effects. In a
live situation, however, where the show must go on, you may not
have time to experiment. At venues with irregular acoustic prop-
erties you may spend all your time trying to make a bad sound
sound good. Adding effects at this stage may just complicate the
situation. Anyway, ProMix 01 effects can be used to simulate the
reverbs and echoes of natural sound environments or as special
effects, for original exciting sounds.
•
Patch in a dynamics processor
—if the lead vocalist tends to
move toward and away from the microphone, you may find it dif-
ficult to set an average fader level that allows him to be heard
throughout a song. In a live situation, compressing the lead vocal
will allow you to increase the level of the vocals in the mix without
the risk of feedback. To eliminate crosstalk and improve separa-
tion between drum microphones, patch in a noise gate. This is use-
ful on the snare and hi-hat microphones, which are usually close
together. Noise gates are also useful for gating out noise from noisy
guitar amps and effects pedals. To prevent power amplifier and
speaker overload, patch a limiter into the stereo output.
•
EQ library
—use the EQ library to store custom EQ settings that
you’ve found work best with certain instruments or microphones.
The preset EQ programs provide a good starting point and refer-
ence for making adjustments, with EQ settings for a whole range
of instruments. Once you’ve recalled a preset program you can tai-
lor it to suit a particular application, and then store it for future
use. You can also use the library to copy EQ settings between
channels.
•
Mix scenes
—allow you to recall stored mix settings with just one
button press. Mix scenes are great for applications where mix set-
tings are used over-and-over again. Such as night-after-night
sound checks, theater scene changes, and multi-performer/band
events. If you work on several projects at a time, you can store the
current mix scene so when you return to that project, you can start
again right where you left off. Mix scenes also allow you to exper-
iment freely. You can store several trial mixes and then listen to
each one in turn and choose the best.
•
Stereo pairs
—make it easy to control stereo input signals. By
linking adjacent input channels, EQ, fader, and ON/OFF adjust-
ments made on the odd/left channel are automatically reflected on
the even/right channel, and vice versa.
That just about covers mixing basics and some ProMix 01 specific fea-
tures. Although not a complete guide to audio mixing, it should be
enough to get you started. For more information, check out the pub-
lications in your local music bookstore, or try a good technical book-
store.
