Synthesizers w/ a mixing console???

D

DjPlasTech

Guest
i am a electronic music producer who is currently building up his home studio and going to school for recording arts, learning to become an audio engineer. i am going into in depth signal flow with the consoles and since i love to mix with actual hardware and not software faders, i'm at a crossroads. almost all hardware synths now adays come with stereo outputs. of course they do, the patches you create sound terrfic in stereo. but the problem is consoles are desgined for mono inputs. yes most consoles do have stereo in's, but even the high end boards only have a few of them. Now if i am running 5 outboard synths and 3 or 4 software synths and i want to do a mixdown, that's going to be a pain if i have to mix every channel for every synth. know what i'm saying? what i'm asking is... in what way can i set my console up for synthesizer tracking and mixing sessions making it practical and easy, like doing a mixdown for a band or something of the sort. do you get what i'm asking??? if not just let me know and i'll reword my problem as best i can. thanks
 
There are several options.

A lot of gear that have stereo outs also offer mono only on the left channel if you so desire.

If you have 5 synths you can also run them into the mixer as stereo pairs, i.e. Synth 1 to channel 1 and 2, channels panned hard left and right. Synth 2, channel 3 and 4, panned hard left and right.

The hard panning gives you the true stereo output, then you can move that image by changing the pan of the groups accordingly. Then again you can just use the left channel of each pair if you want mono, while still having the stereo option at your fingertips.
 
And digital desks let you strap the channels into pairs for this purpose.
 
i'm not really talking about a specific console, i'm just open to suggestionss for what consoles are out there. currently i'm mixing down tracks in school with an analog 8 bus soundcraft ghost. i would have a ***** of a time hooking my synths into this and doing what i want to do. in another month or two i'm going to get behind some digital boards and then eventually a couple nice ssl's. i'm not too sure what digital boards offer since i haven't worked with them yet, but i'm open to suggestions for all boards. i know i can plug my L and R out of my synths into seperate i/o's but that is a pain and it takes a up a lot of room on the console. if there are other boards like somebody was saying above that would link these channels together that would be better than nothing. i'm most likley going to get an interface, possibly a motu, (the 12 in 12 out) and am curious to which console would suit my stereo synth needs best. i'm guessing the stereo link is the best i'm going to get, but if anybody has any other suggestions please let me know. thanks
 
Have you thought of making use of a sub-mixer, and/or patchbays?

I used to be in your shoes, but changed my setup to make things easier. I got rid of my 8 bus soundcraft, got a "smaller mixer" for sub-mixing, a couple patchbays, and the Tascam FW1884/FE8. Now it is much "smoother" for me when mixing.

I have all my synths coming up to a patch point so that I can patch whatever I want wherever I want (effects, outboard, etc.) when recording. I also have them sub-mixed to a stereo pair for monitoring purposes during any sequencing.

For me the Tascam made mixing "in the box" easier to swallow because I can still push/pull faders. Plus it doesn't hurt that the Tascam is setup to "call back" my mix settings within my software.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top