Digital Mixing Engineer

Instructions

Ever fancied working in a recording studio or wondered what all those knobs & buttons do on a mixing desk? Well here's your chance to learn with this fully featured 12 channel digital mixing desk. The band have finished recording so let's get mixing... Getting started: Get playback started by clicking the green triangular button on the right (it will turn into a red stop button) Note there is only 1min40sec of music so if it all goes quiet unexpectedly you'll have to stop and restart. Now click the "ON" button for a channel, I suggest the guitar (marked "Gtr") as it runs though the whole track, and turn its fader up so you can hear it comfortably (You may have to adjust your computers volume level too). Some good speakers or headphones are recommended. Now click the "SELECT" button for that channel and you'll see the knobs align to that channels settings and the display show a blue line and the selected channel name. You can now make adjustments to the selected channel's sound using the knobs. To adjust the knobs, click and hold and move left/right. The first 4 columns of knobs are all "EQ" or equaliser (or tone) controls. There are 4 bands (4 columns), the first and last are 'shelving' filters with 'freq' (frequency) and 'gain' (to cut or boost that frequency). The middle bands are 'bandpass' and have an extra knob 'Q' which adjusts the width of the band of frequencies being cut or boosted. The blue line on the display is a frequency response graph and gives a visual representation of what you are hearing. (and helps explain 'shelving' & 'bandpass') The two red knobs add Reverb and Echo to the sound (on some channels I've put a different effect instead of echo) The 'Pan' knob "moves" the sound toward the left or right speaker. Hopefully you are getting the hang of this so now try switching on all the channels and turn all the faders up a bit to get a rough mix of all the channels. You can adjust the EQ, effects & Pan of each channel separately by first 'Selecting' that channel and then adjusting the knobs but with everything playing it can be hard to focus on just one instrument. This is where the 'Solo' button comes in. Click on the Solo button for a channel and all the other channels mute, allowing you to concentrate on just that instrument. Click it again or click 'Solo Clear' and everything returns to normal. Note when you solo a channel it is automatically 'Selected' but you can then select another channel, meaning you might end up twiddling the knobs of a channel you're not listening to! (this can happen on real mixing desks too). The three 'Fader Bank' switches on the bottom right switch the faders between 'Main' - the level of each input, 'Reverb' - the level of reverb on each track, & 'Echo/FX' - the level of echo (or other effect) on each track Channels are: 1 - Kick (or Bass) Drum 2 - Snare Drum 3 - Hi-Hat cymbals 4 - Tom toms 5 - Overhead Left (overhead microphones placed 6 - Overhead Right (over the top of the drum kit) 7 - Bass Guitar 8 - Guitar 9 - Keyboards 10 - Lead Vocals 11 - Backing Vocal 1 12 - Backing Vocal 2 Finally, you can save your settings and re-load them another time. Press 'S' to generate a Save Code (copy it from the list and paste it in a text editor and save) Press 'L' to load your code (copy from your saved file and paste) Press 'R' to reset the desk to default Here's my effort! es