Mackie 24.8Bus Owner's Manual - Page 30

RECORDING and meticulous setup. Creatively, you must blend the tracks so they at least sound like music again; technically, you must take into account the sound of home and car speakers, mono compatibility, 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 according 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, keeping 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 labeling. 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 consider: 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 compression, 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 input 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 throughout 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 generally 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 device, 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. Text continued on Page 35 28