So the desk we're using for the mix today is a soundcraft series five, it's a very comprehensive desk, there's lots of features lots of facilities, it's got a great EQ section, it's probably one of the best desks that soundcraft ever made in the analog domain. Going through the channel and walk talking through this lesson, usually it's got two inputs got an eight input an A B inputs on two separate XLR. So we've set it all for the A inputs, which is where we've got the multitrack coming back in. At the top here, we've got a button to choose between the A and the B inputs, we've got buttons to choose whether we send phantom power to either the A or the B, obviously, we listen to multitrack. So we're not going to need to worry about phantom power. We've also got a phase reverse button, which is going to reverse the phase of 180 degrees, flip it out of phase on the channel, which we're probably going to use well hopefully we're going to be using at some point.

Then we've got something that soundcraft confusingly called an RNG button which actually stands for right This button is actually acts like a pad, and it changes the range of the game control below it. And then we've got the game control, which is this red knob here. And next up, we've got an insert in our switch, the insert sends the signal from the channel out to one of our gates or compressors, or any of the things we've got inserted on the channel. And it's a great feature to have a button to take it in and out of the circuit, because that we can tell if you have got a problem with a cable. You can take it out and then check it it's working. Next we've got the first of the EQ section and we've got high pass filter, a low pass filter, which can be switched in and out.

The high pass filter goes from 20 hertz up to 600 hertz. so quiet highway and the low pass filter goes from 20 k all the way down to one K. And people tend to use high pass filters quite a lot to take out rumble on mic stands. low pass filters, not so much taking off to the top end isn't usually so It must be able to, but it's very handy for things like either bass guitars, some guitars, just to get rid of real highs rather than trying to EQ it out. You can just roll it down until you get rid of saw any high fizzy noises that you're not particularly after. Then we've got the actual sort of main EQ section itself. This is a four way full parametric EQ.

And we say full parametric because it's actually you've got a cube control. So we can control the amount of filter how wide an area is covering on all the bands. We can also swap from a cue filter on the high and on the low to a shelving filter. So it's going to boost up the high end or cut it down from the frequency point rather than as peak. So we can choose between shelving by switching all the ways left or from a narrow queue to a wide queue. So a narrow boost or a wide boost.

We can choose the frequency you The bottom of the jaw parametric on the second knob. And the cut and boost is on the top center date on so you know when you're not cutting and boosting. So we've actually reset these there's a high, high mid, low, mid low, the low once again has got the shelving facility so we can just boost all the low end from the frequency point that we took or cut it. Last but not least at the bottom of the channel is an EQ in and out switch. Once again a very handy thing so you can actually listen to see what you've done on the channel and actually have you improved the sound. So you can switch the EQ and below the EQ section is the auxiliary section which is down here.

This desk has got quite a few auxiliaries it's actually got 12 the first two knobs are actually jewel concentric knobs. So you've got channel one and channel two, one on the top two on the bottom. This is really good for sending to stereo reverbs or if you're using it as a monitor So two stereo in in ears, and situations like that. So I've got one and two there, three and four there. And then I've got single, voxel resends, five to 12. Just on single nodes, they can always switch between pre and post.

Pre means that the level is not dependent on where the master fader is. So wherever the fader is, it's going to send out however much you send post, it'll only send out depend on the output of the actual fader itself. So if the fader is as I fade it down, it will send less to the auxiliary. So when it's at the bottom, it won't be sending anything at all. So we'll only be sending out at zero DB when the actual master fader of the channel is at zero dB. This is useful for things like effects in it so where obviously when we turn the snare drum down, we don't want the snare drum reverb to keep going.

So as you bring the snare drum reverb down, same with the you know, we got some delay on the vocal, we've got some echo effects going, we don't the echo effects will be going on once we've turned the vocal off. So it's very good for that sort of thing, the time we would use in pre mode is usually one between monitors from front of house. Well, obviously, we don't want our effects mix to affect the sound on stage, so that when we turn things up and down in the mix at Front of House, we don't want the monitors to be going up and down as well. So we'll set the channels to pre so that when we set the vocal in the wage, it'll stay at the same level until we actually change the control. So it's totally independent of the output played here. So we got our 12 volts Louis there.

Then we come to the routing section. And this desk has a left center right option as well, which is used a lot in theater. We're not going to deal with that. We're just going to use it in mixed mode, which is the second knob. So we're choosing to mix and we've got obviously got pan control to send it from left to right. We've also below got some buttons here we've got a separate monitor outputs which can be incredibly useful, which comes up on the faders.

Down here, we've got the left and right stereo masters here and we've got a mono master here, which we can use for all sorts of different things. Today, I think we might use it, we probably use it to add an extra couple of inputs. Now I could send what I wanted to those extra infills just for the fun, so I could just send a bit of vocals to them, and control them on a separate fader, which is kind of handy thing to do. And then I've got some subgroups, I've got eight subgroups, which appear as faders here, these can be sent to the stereo and can be panned either left or right. So they can either be as used as stereo pairs with a pan left and right, or they can be used as individual and pan to the center or wherever you want to pan them.

And then these are routed to the stereo masters. So I've got eight subgroups. Below that I've got the mute section, this got some computerized controlled, mute so I can actually see Little snapshots of the mutes and the vcas. Below that I've got the actual channel itself. This has got quite a good little peek led section so I can see what the actual channels doing at the channel as well as looking at on the CFL here. So I can pick AFL select the channel, the level have come up on the meter, but also appear on this little bar graph here.

Below that I've got the VCA assign buttons. VCA is voltage controlled amplifiers. And it's an incredibly useful way of mixing. It's one that I use a lot. Basically I can assign channels to a VCA fader. And what that does is I can use this fader to turn up and down entire channels, but it's not turning down.

It's not a routing thing like a wave subgroup is. It's actually using a voltage controlled amplifier in the fader to turn it up and down. So when the fader here is on zero, and this fader, one zero, I'll get zero out the desk but when I pull this down, five dp it'll pull the level down of any channel that's routed to the VCA down by that amount. So I can turn the entire drum kit down. So that means I can route things in a more musical way, which I'll demonstrate in a bit. So we've got the VCR sign here, and then obviously we've got a solo button at the front.

So that's kind of the channel strip.