Do I really need a mixer?

Hey everyone,

I've been a P5 user now for about 6 months and I'll be making the jump to S5 here in a short while.

I see alot of Sonar users have hardware mixers. I have heard that using a hardware mixer is better than mixing with a mouse. Why I don't know. With P5 you don't need a outboard mixer, it's built-in. Plus it's not a full-fledged recording host like Sonar. The only benefit I can see to having/using a hardware mixer is that it's more of a "hands-on" feel, like that of a traditional mixing console. Other than that, assuming you had the appropriate audio interface with multiple in/outs, I can't see why someone would pay for something they kind of already have, does that make sense?

Let me put it another way: If you're a one-man band, how would a mixer be beneficial?

well, first, you're not really talking about a mixer, you're talking about a control surface. A lot of people swear by control surfaces, and can't get along without them. Personally I can take it or leave it. I've got a BCF2000, and I hardly ever use it. It's serving as a second Midi in for me, for all intents and purposes. I do all my automation in Sonar with the mouse. More accurate that way.

I think a lot of people use control surfaces because that's the way they got used to doing things before DAWs. You can take the boy out of the tape studio, but you can't take the tape studio out of the boy

Now, a small-format analog mixer can be useful in a DAW situation both for the preamps and as a control room matrix (i.e., it gives you a hardware fader to control your main volume.)

You can of course also get digital mixers that can serve both purposes at once.

Nigel,

As you "grow" your home studio you will find you need a software or a hardware mixer...especially if you do vocals...you will want to monitor yourself while recording. You will have to decide what is better for you. Many here "grew up" with hardware mixers(including me) and loath mixing with a mouse. I on the other hand actually prefer doing everything in software an my Tranzport is what I have whittled my tactile control needs down to after trying several other products. You really need to match your gear to your needs. Are you mising something that you can't do with your setup right now? Find a product to fill that need. What soundcard are you using? How many in's and out's? Via what interfaces? Does it have a software mixer? These are all questions that will help you decide what you need once you anwer and analyze them. There are many here who have travelled the road and I can tell you, there is more than one successful path.

There are a lot of uses for an external hardware mixer. Here's some examples that I use mine for.

1. External Gear routing to inputs. Ok, my sound card has 4 analog inputs, my studio has a bunch of analog sources that I would like to route to those inputs....much more than 4. So with the mixer, I can combine those signals together onto a single input if I choose. I can have all these devices plugged into my mixer and at the press of a single button have it routed to any of the four inputs. No need to be playing around with pugging and unpluging cables. On this same flexibility I can route tracks to my external mixer, then do external processing on it and then route it back into Sonar and record it onto an input in Sonar. All this is done without having to move any cable connections.

2. Latency free input monitoring. This is a concern if you are recording vocals or any other instrument where there can not be a noticeable delay. Some say, you need a fast PC and a low latency sound card to overcome this problem. Even with those things, there are multiple micing techniques I use where I can have the Mic signal delayed up to 8 mS just so my phase with the other mics are ok....so with an 8mS delay on the mic already, what does that leave me for some latency that my sound card and host app add to the mix? Nowhere to go. This is one of the reasons I say ASIO DM is needed in Sonar.

3. Seperate mix setup for Cues and Control room mix. Ok, let's say you're recording a vocal track. The singer needs to hear the music tracks along with his own vocal. Now me as the engineer, I have a need to just focus in on the Vocal track. So with a multi mix setup I can solo the vocal track, so me as the engineer can hear the vocal track and just the vocal track. This will obviously throw the musicians head phone mix where they won't be able to perform without any backing music. So an outboard mixer allows me to set up 2 different mixes, each are dedicated to the different needs of the musican and the engineer/producer.

4. Using outboard FX's in my mixes. You may be happy using all software plugins in your mixing.....but then how much hardware gear have you used? Have you used hardware compressors? Have you used an actual Lexicon reverb in mixing, or have you just used a software plugin claiming to sound like a Lexicon reverb? Have you used an analog EQ, or just used a plugin that claims to sound like an analog EQ. Well, I can tell you that I have and I've been able to easily A/B them using my hardware mixer and 90% of the time, the hardware wins hands down as far as sound quality.

On the same use, I also recently bought a Damage Control Demonizer. I have recorded some clean direct guitar tracks. Now I can route that clean guitar track to my external mixer, then insert the Demonizer into that mixer channel and adjust the settings on the Demonizer which is a real tube analog preamp......If I didn't have this external mixer then I would be trying to use an AMP Sim plugin trying to be a real tube preamp. It's not the same thing.....but, I actually have the options of using either or with my setup.

5. Hands on controler. My external mixer is a Yamaha 03D, so along with the 30 inputs and 10 plus outputs, all my faders can be switched over to be a "midi remote", so now I can control the faders within the software with hands on mixing. So all my software faders and external hardware faders can be controled with a single device, and are easily switched back and forth with the press of a single button.

6. Multiple routing to multiple devices. My mix can be routed to a DAT recorder, an external CD recorder, and also back to an input on my DAW and I can record the same signal to all of these devices at the same time. Try doing that with software and see how much effort you have to go thru as well as pluging and unpluging cables.

In summary what an external mixer gives you is "Flexibility" to do whatever your heart desires with a wider range of devices that can be used in your recording and mixing work flows.

I agree... Red points out the major flexibility options that a mixer gives you...however, all those things can be done "in the box" as well...just as you pointed out, it depends on the number of I/O you have. I run two DSPF cards and with two A/D/D/A converters(such as an ALesis AI3) I can get 16 in/out plus two SP/DIF in's and two set's of stereo ins. I can route those in the box via my control software for the DSPF's(of which there are several options...I use LUI). You can configure them as 2 24x8x2 mixers or one 48x8x2 mixer...all "in the box". Red's point about quality is also true...but most of us can't afford all the hardware gear so we have to settle for the 80% solution...A lexicon software verb vice the "real thing" as in his example. In most cases, for a project studio, the differences won't matter. I think it really comes down to how you think and what your workflow model is. You have to match the gear to you. I went all "in the box" a few years ago and haven't looked back. I would prefer to have audio cards with lots of in's and out's, pick my own converters and do all mixing and routing in the box. I think the EMU 1820M is one of these type of cards that is "current generation"...although I love my DSPF's so I really haven't been shopping.... I wish Yahama would make a 96/24 version in PCie and I'd be set for another 10 years...

ORIGINAL: nigel T

Let me put it another way: If you're a one-man band, how would a mixer be beneficial?

the mixer helps to be able to eq the sound while your recording ---- also put any fx's through the aux's if you like to record with fx's -- some people do but most leave it dry--- after you have all your audio recording a hardware mixer doesn't do anything -- .... so if your a one man band u might want it for those reasons --- you can get a 2 or 4 channel mixer for cheap-- maybe a Behringer

now control surfaces as mentioned in other above responses -- u dont need them but they are fun --- basically a control surface controls the stuff like faders and eq's that are in sonar -- rather than doing it with a mouse -- -- all kinds of different control surfaces out there -- some good -- some bad -- basically you get what you pay for in MOST cases -- some people cant live with out them --- some people could care less

I have a mackie universal control surface -- its fun -- I like it-- could have bought a cheaper one for what I do with it -- mostly use it to fast foward and rewind -- and adjust volume tracks

many have spoken of zero latency monitoring.
My first prosumer card was an Aardvark Q10. Zero latency monitoring built into the card.

Please explain this to me then. Let's say you're doing an overdub on a vocal track. Let's say for instance the original vocal track is routed to your sound cards output #1. Your Vocal Mic is routed to input#1 and your have the monitor switch on so that now that input gets routed to Output #1. How do you get a true auto input functionality.

For Auto-input here are the guidelines:
1. During Playback you only hear the previously recorded track....and not the input signal on the microphone.
2. When you press stop, you hear the input signal from the microphone.
3. When you press record during playback, then you no longer hear the previously recorded track any longer, you hear the input signal for the duration of the record.
4. When you come out of record, it switches back to what was previously recorded at your cursors current positon.

Please explain how you handle that, because that's the way I'm use to working, and if you're able to do that with "Zero Latency" monitoring with just your sound card, than I'm interested in hearing how.

Thanks

Thanks for the Reply Andy. Actually what you described sounds like what is referred to as the "Donut Method". Yep, I've been using that for years. You basically cut a hole in the middle of what you would like to punch into.

it will all not be able to function that way inside SONAR(or any DAW AFAIK).

Have you tried Steinberg's Cubase or Nuendo with ASIO direct monitoring selected? Have you tried Samplitude? We already know Protools can do it, because they can integrate the software more closely with the hardware.

One further question to see if I'm completely understanding this, because my sound card doesn't seem to function this way.

For this situation since we're not using an external mixer, we can only have 2 of the sound card outputs connected to each speaker right? So this means you have to have your input monitoring section on your sound card routed to those outputs, and to also hear what was previously recorded, you have to have all the other tracks in Sonar routed to those 2 same outputs. For this to work, it sounds like your sound card would have to have some kind of bus, so that you could hear the 2 different signals at the same time out the same outputs. My sound card doesn't have that. When you enable the input monitoring on the sound card, then that's the only signal that will go to that output. So I'm a little confused here if you're only using a the soundcard for this type of situation and don't have an external mixer, so you can monitor multiple sound card outputs at the same time.

{Edit} Ahhhh, forget it that is exactly what my sound card does.

SPDIF will work fine but I don’t think you only want 2 ins and 2 outs.

If you connect via light pipe then you will have 8 ins and outs. The bit depth is at 24 bit and the sample rate is at 48 kHz.

and you can use 2 light pipes for 16 ins and outs and 3 light pipes for 24 and so on.

But you need a ADAT card in your computer.

You can get 16 channel ADAT cards pretty cheaply.


PS. Of course this will only work if the 03D has got the ADAT card(s) in it, and I’m not sure how many channels its card(s) can support but it will be certainly more than 2