| Mixer Lessons |
Ever wonder what all that stuff means? Well here you go. Seeing as there seem to be some gear newbies on this forum and considering my last post concerning recording equipment. I decided it would likely be a good idea to give out some low down on mixers sort of as a FAQ so people can get this subject "cleared up" as someone put it.
So, without further ado, here is the vital information on mixer stats. If anyone has anything else to add, please feel free. Or corrections or anything. I'm only human and I can always be wrong. I always think I'm right though.
Channel, Input & Buss
A Channel is one vertical forward and backward row of knobs on your mixer. Each knob and button and fader on this vertical row is different and performs a different function. Sometimes channels are also known as inputs. A channel is what you plug an instrument into. Channels and inputs are not strictly the same thing. One channel may have two inputs which use the same channel. Often times however, advertisments for mixers use the words channel and input to mean the same thing so that it seems like they have more channels than they really do.
A Buss is one horizontal left and right row of knobs on your mixer. Each knob or button or fader on this row is exactly the same. The word buss comes from the word... bus
meaning something which transports something somewhere else. Buss is just an alternate spelling, so I will use bus instead. The row of volume knobs would be considered a bus. Sometimes they are sliders instead of knobs. One single volume knob is also considered a bus just as the entire row of volume knobs is considered a bus. In fact the just as the words channel and input are interchangeable, so to are the words bus and knob. If I say "the volume bus on channel one" that means the volume knob for the first channel. Technically the bus also includes all the fancy electronics that do the work and not just the knob, but in practical use the words are interchangeable. So each channel sends its signal through lots of busses. The volume bus and EQ busses for example.
There are many busses in the world of electronics. The cable which connects your mouse to your computer and the mouse plug to the inside of the computer is probably called the PS/2 bus and it might be the USB bus. USB actually stands for Unversal Serial Bus. You could also call it the mouse bus. Inside the computer most of your information eventually has to travel through the PCI bus. The PCI bus is what you plug sound cards (and other cards) into. The cable and plug which connects your screen to your computer is called your video bus. In a mixer every channel sends it's signal through lots busses before the signal comes out. A bus is what you use to control manipulate, change, alter, re-route and redirect your signals. Without busses you wouldn't actually be able to do anything to your guitar signal. You wouldn't be able to change the volume or make it sound less muddy by taking out low-mid frequencies. The mixer would simply mix the sound for you without asking you what you want
and that'd be that and you wouldn't have any control over it.
Gain
Gain measures the amount of signal increase in a ratio. The ratio is input-to-output. In other words if the volume of the input signal is 3 and the output volume is 12 then that's a gain of 4 since 3*4=12.
You can think of gain as volume. But it's not just volume strictly speaking. There are two places to "turn up the volume" on your mixer. There's the gain knob and there's the volume knob. The gain knob is the first bus on any channel. The volume knob is the last bus on any channel. Gain happens before EQ and anything else. After everything else happens, you tell it how much volume to use.
Gain is generally used to get the proper signal strength for the microphone and dictates how close the singer needs to be to the microphone. Volume is used to "finalize" the mix and make minor adjustments to the overall sound compared to other instruments.
Impedance
Impedance (in practice) can be thought of as the opposite of gain.
Dictionary.com defines the word impede as: "To retard or obstruct the progress of." Some synonyms of this word would be hinder, resist, slow and block. That is exactly what Impedance is. Impedance is actually specific to electronics and it's technically more intricate than my explanation but this serves to give you the basic understanding. Impedance is represented by the letter Z and you will often see this notation on guitar amplifiers.
In the world of musical equipment there are two basic types of impedance. High-Impedance and Low-Impedance. These are known as Hi-Z and Lo-Z respectively. Hi-Z means the signal is greatly resisted and Lo-Z means the signal is not resisted much at all. A microphone produces a very weak signal and an electric guitar produces a very strong signal. A microphone needs to have a very small amount of resistance for it's very weak signal so that it can be loud enough to be heard. Therefor microphones use Low-Impedance or Lo-Z plugins. A guitar needs to have a very large amount of resistance for it's very loud signal so it doesn't distort the sound or blow the circuits. Therefor guitars use High-Impedance or Hi-Z plugins.
Balanced & Unbalanced
The detailes of balanced and unbalanced cables are a bit too technical to get into right now. Suffice it to say that most of the time you will want balanced cables. A long time ago, all home stereos used unbalanced cables and all pro-audio gear used balanced cables. Generally speaking, a balanced cable is less noisy than an unbalanced cable. These days, however, lots of home theater equipment is beginning to use balanced cables because it's much cheaper now. Unbalanced cables use one wire for the signal, one wire for the ground and sometimes wire for a sheild. Balanced cables use two wires for a signal and one wire for a ground. If you look at an XLR jack on a microphone cable you'll notice it has 3 prongs. All XLR microphone cables are balanced cables. You generally won't have to worry about this aspect of cabling.
FX & Aux
These are two special busses found on most mixers. The FX bus stands for the "effects bus" and is used to add special sound effects to your singnal. This includes things like distortion, reverb, chorus and flanger. If your mixer has this option there will be two special plugs in which you can plug your effect - an FX send and an FX return. The FX send sends your signal into the effect, and the return receives the newlly affected signal back from the effect. After you plug in your effect pedal, you can use the FX bus to turn up the volume of the effect on that channel. So for example, you plug a distorion pedal into the FX send & return jacks. You plug your guitar into channel one. After this, you've got two options for your guitar sound. If you leave the FX bus turned all the way down on channel one, you will have a clean guitar sound. Or you can turn up the FX bus more and more and slowly add distorion to your guitar sound.
Aux: This stands for auxillary. The word auxillary basically means "extra" or other. The auxillary bus is often used for various random things that you didn't think of before. For example... if you have two auxillary busses then you could send one auxillary bus to a tape deck for recording, and you could send another auxillary bus to a CD burner for burning. The options for where you send the auxillary signals are almost endless... auxillary just means that you have an extra way to send the overall mix to another additional place.
There, hope that helps.
So, without further ado, here is the vital information on mixer stats. If anyone has anything else to add, please feel free. Or corrections or anything. I'm only human and I can always be wrong. I always think I'm right though.
Channel, Input & Buss
A Channel is one vertical forward and backward row of knobs on your mixer. Each knob and button and fader on this vertical row is different and performs a different function. Sometimes channels are also known as inputs. A channel is what you plug an instrument into. Channels and inputs are not strictly the same thing. One channel may have two inputs which use the same channel. Often times however, advertisments for mixers use the words channel and input to mean the same thing so that it seems like they have more channels than they really do.
A Buss is one horizontal left and right row of knobs on your mixer. Each knob or button or fader on this row is exactly the same. The word buss comes from the word... bus
meaning something which transports something somewhere else. Buss is just an alternate spelling, so I will use bus instead. The row of volume knobs would be considered a bus. Sometimes they are sliders instead of knobs. One single volume knob is also considered a bus just as the entire row of volume knobs is considered a bus. In fact the just as the words channel and input are interchangeable, so to are the words bus and knob. If I say "the volume bus on channel one" that means the volume knob for the first channel. Technically the bus also includes all the fancy electronics that do the work and not just the knob, but in practical use the words are interchangeable. So each channel sends its signal through lots of busses. The volume bus and EQ busses for example.There are many busses in the world of electronics. The cable which connects your mouse to your computer and the mouse plug to the inside of the computer is probably called the PS/2 bus and it might be the USB bus. USB actually stands for Unversal Serial Bus. You could also call it the mouse bus. Inside the computer most of your information eventually has to travel through the PCI bus. The PCI bus is what you plug sound cards (and other cards) into. The cable and plug which connects your screen to your computer is called your video bus. In a mixer every channel sends it's signal through lots busses before the signal comes out. A bus is what you use to control manipulate, change, alter, re-route and redirect your signals. Without busses you wouldn't actually be able to do anything to your guitar signal. You wouldn't be able to change the volume or make it sound less muddy by taking out low-mid frequencies. The mixer would simply mix the sound for you without asking you what you want
and that'd be that and you wouldn't have any control over it.Gain
Gain measures the amount of signal increase in a ratio. The ratio is input-to-output. In other words if the volume of the input signal is 3 and the output volume is 12 then that's a gain of 4 since 3*4=12.
You can think of gain as volume. But it's not just volume strictly speaking. There are two places to "turn up the volume" on your mixer. There's the gain knob and there's the volume knob. The gain knob is the first bus on any channel. The volume knob is the last bus on any channel. Gain happens before EQ and anything else. After everything else happens, you tell it how much volume to use.
Gain is generally used to get the proper signal strength for the microphone and dictates how close the singer needs to be to the microphone. Volume is used to "finalize" the mix and make minor adjustments to the overall sound compared to other instruments.
Impedance
Impedance (in practice) can be thought of as the opposite of gain.
Dictionary.com defines the word impede as: "To retard or obstruct the progress of." Some synonyms of this word would be hinder, resist, slow and block. That is exactly what Impedance is. Impedance is actually specific to electronics and it's technically more intricate than my explanation but this serves to give you the basic understanding. Impedance is represented by the letter Z and you will often see this notation on guitar amplifiers.
In the world of musical equipment there are two basic types of impedance. High-Impedance and Low-Impedance. These are known as Hi-Z and Lo-Z respectively. Hi-Z means the signal is greatly resisted and Lo-Z means the signal is not resisted much at all. A microphone produces a very weak signal and an electric guitar produces a very strong signal. A microphone needs to have a very small amount of resistance for it's very weak signal so that it can be loud enough to be heard. Therefor microphones use Low-Impedance or Lo-Z plugins. A guitar needs to have a very large amount of resistance for it's very loud signal so it doesn't distort the sound or blow the circuits. Therefor guitars use High-Impedance or Hi-Z plugins.
Balanced & Unbalanced
The detailes of balanced and unbalanced cables are a bit too technical to get into right now. Suffice it to say that most of the time you will want balanced cables. A long time ago, all home stereos used unbalanced cables and all pro-audio gear used balanced cables. Generally speaking, a balanced cable is less noisy than an unbalanced cable. These days, however, lots of home theater equipment is beginning to use balanced cables because it's much cheaper now. Unbalanced cables use one wire for the signal, one wire for the ground and sometimes wire for a sheild. Balanced cables use two wires for a signal and one wire for a ground. If you look at an XLR jack on a microphone cable you'll notice it has 3 prongs. All XLR microphone cables are balanced cables. You generally won't have to worry about this aspect of cabling.
FX & Aux
These are two special busses found on most mixers. The FX bus stands for the "effects bus" and is used to add special sound effects to your singnal. This includes things like distortion, reverb, chorus and flanger. If your mixer has this option there will be two special plugs in which you can plug your effect - an FX send and an FX return. The FX send sends your signal into the effect, and the return receives the newlly affected signal back from the effect. After you plug in your effect pedal, you can use the FX bus to turn up the volume of the effect on that channel. So for example, you plug a distorion pedal into the FX send & return jacks. You plug your guitar into channel one. After this, you've got two options for your guitar sound. If you leave the FX bus turned all the way down on channel one, you will have a clean guitar sound. Or you can turn up the FX bus more and more and slowly add distorion to your guitar sound.
Aux: This stands for auxillary. The word auxillary basically means "extra" or other. The auxillary bus is often used for various random things that you didn't think of before. For example... if you have two auxillary busses then you could send one auxillary bus to a tape deck for recording, and you could send another auxillary bus to a CD burner for burning. The options for where you send the auxillary signals are almost endless... auxillary just means that you have an extra way to send the overall mix to another additional place.
There, hope that helps.
That is a great writeup on mixers. You covered a lot of bases and kept the lingo simple enough for simpletons like myself. Many kudos and thanks for doing that!
| You do a great job of explaining |
You do a great job of explaining some technical things in a way that's easy for people to understand. I think it would be cool if you continued this one on,and explained how to unity gain a mixing console, What to watch for when using fx loops (bus), ect
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