Should I buy a physical mixer for my DAW?

W

wisebaxter442

New member
Hi there,

Just setting up a little home studio just for myself and am quite keen on having some physical buttons to play with as I can imagine that being a lot easier than using a mouse, especially as I'm on a lappy.

The thing is I've just bought a Focusrite Scarlett 2/2 as I heard the preamps are nice, so does that mean that getting a mixer is pointless as I won't be using any of it's inputs? If my guitar and my vocals are going through the audio interface, I won't be able to add any of the effects to those tracks from the mixer (reverb etc) will I?

Is there a product on the market that allows me to just map the physical nobs to controls on the plugins etc? Something that doesn't have any inputs maybe? I could do the mixing using software...or would you still say it's worth getting an outboard mixer to do that?

This probably all sounds noobish. I'm still a bit unsure when it comes to mixing as I've never got that far with a DAW before.
 
Last edited:
sounds like you want an external controller rather than a mixer

you might consider any of the various korg devices or something from presonus or cubase/yamaha
 
Last edited:
hollandturbine said:
Project studio mixers are kind of redundant these days because we are no longer limited by such low track counts.
Click to expand...

Obviously you are not into saving time. A controller surface is not redundant and very useful and most digital ones can be expanded to more channels than whats on the surface with a click of a button.You will save time on your projects if you have a controller mapped to your daw. Its a must have. The time saving makes all the difference. It's a lot faster to adjust a fader then having to use your mouse every time. When it comes to mixing you will balance tracks faster then just using a mouse. It is easier and faster for automation. It's a hell of a lot faster sliding your fader or twisting knob to record automation. etc.
 
a mixer is redundant (read device for mixing real analogue audio streams in hardware); a control surface is not
 
Thanks for that list Bandcoach, much appreciated. Yeah I can't see how the novelty of having actual dials could ever be redundant. Is it the case though that using a mixer to mix down tracks gives a better result than using software, as in, they give a better quality mix? I'd like to quote a source I found online.

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]In order to maintain signal resolution when multiple channels are mixed, a digital mixer needs headroom, just the same as an analogue mixer does. While analogue headroom is the ability to handle higher voltage signals without clipping, digital headroom means having a signal path with enough bits to handle the large binary numbers that are generated when numerous 24-bit signals are EQ'd, boosted in level and mixed. In practice, this means having a 32-bit data pathway inside the mixer, something that Emagic's Logic has had for several years now and which Steinberg has recently introduced in its premium Cubase VST32 package. Even so, the width of the data pathway doesn't tell you everything about how the mathematics of mixing are handled, and because a software mixer relies on the host processor for everything, the designers are more likely to take processor-efficient shortcuts than the designers of hardware digital mixers who can apply all their DSP resources to the task in hand.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]A hardware digital mixer will generally allow you to have fully parametric EQ on all channels and aux returns, whereas a software mixer usually provides EQ as insert effects to be used when needed. Like all plug-ins, EQ uses processing resources, so there's a limit to how many channels of virtual EQ you can run at once, especially when running other plug-ins at the same time. My personal opinion is that EQ is greatly over-used, but I'd be the first to agree that it ought to be available at all times if needed[/FONT]
Click to expand...
 
This appears to be very old (sometime in the late 90's/early 2000's)

The principles are still the same but the implementation within any daw is far better than at the time this was originally written

As for mixing in the box (in your daw) vs via hardware; the issues now are that getting your signals out of the daw means that you may as well just mix in the box (as the conversions will alter the signals before you begin to mix) (just my opinion here)
 
Last edited:
Yep. Basically there aren't really any excuses left to blame those tools (besides good monitoring, which is still pretty expensive) - the software side, even the free stuff has gotten so good that it's all skill now to get things right.
 
I hope I didn't make a mistake by buying the M audio mini 32 already. Maybe I should have bought a keyboard controller with more dials, knobs etc..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top