Mackie SR244 / SR324 Owner's Manual - Page 36

SECTION 4: APPLICATIONS - SR & RECORDING Applications The Mackie SR24•4 (and 32•4) mixing console was designed from the ground up as a mixer for either sound reinforcement (SR) or recording, or even both together. Section 4 will help you make the right patches to set up the SR24•4 for both applications and also offers a few tips on how to approach each job. About three-quarters of the staff at Mackie are musicians or sound engineers or at least knew a musician or sound engineer once, and they all seem to put in their two cents' worth whether we want it or not. It's true, this open policy has provided us with some highly inappropriate suggestions from time to time, but we've tried to weed most of those out and give you something useful here. In fact, if you would like to put in your three cents' worth, just write down your unique SR24•4 application (rotor pitch control in turbine-powered helicopters?) and mail it in to Technical Support. We'll try to keep the Chihuahua away from it. If you are not yet familiar with your Mackie SR24•4, or if you haven't turned it on yet, run through the drills in Section 2: Making Sound Come Out Now! That way you can be sure that everything is functioning properly and that you have no grounding problems. Then read through Section 3: Panel Layout, which should give you a good idea of what all the knobs and switches do. You may also want to look at Appendices A, B and C, which provide background information on general subjects, Mackie connections and the wacky world of proper grounding. SOUND REINFORCEMENT The SR24•4 was definitely designed with sound reinforcement in mind. Figured out where we came up with the name yet? Here in Section 4 we'll give you the basic plan and some specific ideas for connecting the SR24•4 for sound reinforcement. Take a look at the diagrams starting on page 9. They represent the most common "generic" typical SR hook-ups. In general, sound reinforcement connections follow this pattern: • Microphones, wireless mics, electronic instruments and other sources are connected to the MIC or LINE inputs on the SR24•4 rear panel. • Main speaker (house) amplifiers are connected to the LEFT and RIGHT MASTER jacks (or sometimes the MONO MASTER jack). • Monitor or other speaker amplifier inputs are connected to AUX SENDS 1, 2, 3 or 4. • Reverb and delay device inputs are connected to AUX SENDS 3, 4, 5 or 6. • Reverb and delay device outputs are connected to STEREO AUX RETURNS 1, 2, 3 or 4. • Tape recorders are connected to the TAPE IN and TAPE OUT jacks. Take a little time to set everything up sensibly. It's good to group your inputs and submix buses by instruments, stage position or whatever else suits you. Try to keep the drum mics next to each other, the vocals together and so on. Label your cables, color-code your windscreens, lay tape (to write on) across the bottom of the faders, make a cheat sheet, give yourself a break. It can be confusing enough mixing a big production without wondering which channel is which. Frankly, it's impossible to predict, describe and diagram all of the possible connection schemes that are possible with the SR24•4. Its flexibility is limited only by your ingenuity. However, we've taken a stab at taking you through a few typical set-ups: Band in a Club, Church Installation and 8-Track Recording. We also threw in dedicated monitor mixer and audio/video configuarations to sweeten the pie. 34