Okay, so on to auxiliary awk sense, this or any other input channel goes through to the main fader, and then out to the main amps and speakers. But this or any other input here can also go other places too. In this mixer, we have four oxygens, that can send differing amounts of this channel up to someplace else. on here on the outputs here we have these orcs outs, oxygens right here, these correspond to these knobs right here. So if I was to bring this up here, then this would siphon off some of input shell one out of this guy right here. If I was to turn orcs to around the missile be sending off some of this out of this output.

So each oxen here sends a different amount of whatever is coming down this channel here, out of this box, one here. So let's imagine a label it down here, as this is going to be the vocal monitor. So in other words, we've connected this output here of augs one. And this is going out to a monitor that feeds the monster on stage that AV vocalist can hear. And likewise, the second one here, is going onto a stage to add drum monitor. So you can see that these two guys are being connected to a monitors on stage, a vocal monitor, and add drum monitor.

Now I've cheated up here a little bit, this is a channel strip, labeling everything that's coming into these channels. It's normally at the bottom of screen, but I just screwed it up here so that we can kind of see this cross matrix cross matrix thing is going on here. So imagine we have a master mixes set up here with our vocals on one drums on two. Now if the drummer wanted more guitar in his mix, then I just follow along here and say, okay, and guitar, the drummer wants more of that. To his mix, so you bring it up here. And now this guitar is going out of ox two, which is feeding a drum mix here.

What about the vocal, maybe one a little kick, snare and hi hat. Then you go along here kick, snare and hi hat and you boost up here. And maybe the vocal said I need a little bit more high hat and a little less kick then you do a little more high hat and a little less kick. So you just go to the channels and send a little of them down either orcs one, the vocalist master mix, or walks to to the drummer's monitor mix. So do you see how extended is a really great way to send part of your signal out to someplace else? And it on a you know a midsize to a large size mixer used wouldn't have just two accents here you might have six 810 or more.

So monster mixes are major application of all walks mixes, but there's also another big one as well. So imagine I wanted to use augs one here to send this out to a reverb unit. And in fact, that's exactly what I've done. I've taken this output here, which oxen one, and I brought it into this reverb unit. And here's what we can do. Suppose bring up this acoustic guitar here.

If I send this out box one, see what happens we start getting signal over here. A lot. A medium map or not. So in of itself, I mean, we've got input into our reverb unit, but really nothing's happening and here's why. We're sending it into the reverb unit, but nothing's coming back out of that reverb and this is why we call this an effects loop. And to complete an effects loop, here's what we need to do.

This might be a little bit messy, but we'll grab these two cables here. Red and a blue on this snake. And I'll get the other side of this guy and I could bring this back into the mix of some somewhere nicely. And as a few places we could bring this back and Cody's want to do is 11 and 12. It's already a stereo channel. So let me bring this up here.

So we can see we have a loop going on here, we have to send going into our verb unit and then that's returned back into here. And if I bring this up, let's get these cables out of the way we should be hearing reverb. Sure enough, we do. So with that affects the loot out through an oxen and then back into our mixer here. We can adjust the amount of reverb on this acoustic. The very cool thing is that we can now share this effect across all of our channels.

So So that snare drum right here you can see that as oxygen has been sent out of the into our verb, we can have differing amounts of reverb across all of our channels. By the way, there's a potential problem here if you ever wanted to send this reverb return back out here again, it probably won't take off right now but if you bring that up that would take off his what is the reverb is coming in here, you're sending it off, and it comes back through here and then you're sending it off and you're gonna get a feedback loop here, so probably a better place to return this rubbish might be over here in one of the dedicated effects store. returns. So auctions are a way to siphon off different amounts of each channel and send them somewhere, they might be sent to an app, an on stage monitor, to an in ear monitor transmitter, or to an effects device that gets returned back into the mixer somehow, in a mix that had six exams, we could maybe set them up to have two effects ends, and four monster mixes.

So you can see how you can put you can eat up or extends pretty quickly, which makes the case of what I said before, in which you split your inputs from the stage, split them, they come out to your main mix and another split goes up to that specialized master mix up to the side of the stage, specialized monster mixing consoles, typically, they may have up to a dozen or more or extends which allow for more independent monitor mixes on stage. So in the case of a typical, you know, small mid sized mixer might have six o'clock sense maybe I was in a small club or church and wanted to org sense perfect sense for reverb and delay that would leave for more or sense for independent monitor mixes. What that means is that while I could have as many onstage monitors or ear monitors I want I could only have four independent mixes brought out if your bass player and drummer can live with the same mix.

Then you can just have one ox and go out there and daisy chain the bass players and drummers monitors together if the guitarist is okay with that mix to then just run another line from that orcs same orcs mix or daisy chain does monster monitors together. Most onstage monitors have an in and out that allows you to daisy chain several of them together. So go now you have an idea of what auctions are all about. let's actually look at their controls. I said before that controlling org sense is just kind of a matter of doing a cross. Maybe So for example, if I wanted to have more reverb on the snare then I would go across this niche channel here and then bring up that orcs, whatever orcs that is that is sending out to an orc send out the reverb and it's coming back into the mixer somehow.

If I wanted to bring up say the lead vocal in the drummer's Muslim mix, then I would go across the lead vocal here and then bring up whatever ox is sending and feeding that drum is Manasa mix. Now you might notice that on a lot of mixes, you also have a master level for each oxen over here that means that while the hero all that was say, if this was the extent of the drama, these are all the individual ones, so if you wanted to bring up more guitar, and bass in the dramas Manasa these the individual levels going out to the dramas maza and this is the master level that either raises or lowers the entire or extended fees, the drama software Rama says, Can you bring down my overall monitors like like that would have happened, you could actually do it right here. Now in terms of an effects unit, imagine you're sending a bunch of channels all sent out here and this feeds an a, an effects unit and that affects you is peeking at the affecting, you could back off that overall stand right here.

So it kind of makes sense, right? The orcs and masters here are a way to adjust the overall level being sent out to either a masa mix or an effect sent. Now in the case of this particular mixer, we have four boxes in total. The couple up here are called oxes. And a couple down here are called effects. But you can have four separate outputs up here I think whereas it oxen and also effects sense here.

Also one and two and effects and three and four here, but in a pinch you Like I said, you could use them for one master mixes. In the case of this mix, it actually has some built in effects here that are internally wired into effects too. So for example, I could have add some effects to my vocal and had some echo. So obviously, I could send this book or out of box one, and two, three and four, but in this case, effects two is going to be in detail. Your mixer might have built in effects, you know, maybe it has none. But through this discussion, I hope that you now kind of come to grips with orcs and mitts who made users monster sense and effects loops now say loops, and the configuration is an effect send out to an effects and then it comes back into the mixer.

Now a talk of auctions wouldn't be complete without a discussion of pre and post fader sense On this console, you can see that our accents can be either configured in either a pre fader send, or a post fader send. A pre fader send siphons off the signal before it hits the fader and a post or a fader same since it after this fader. To demonstrate this pre and post, then I've set up an effects loop. And all extent to this is the same going out to the reverb unit and it's getting returned back here into this stereo return. So, on my first channel, you can hear that's my first channel right here, I can go over here to awk center and if I send that out, then I'll be hearing reverb that's because it's going out of here and returning right here. Now there's one other point of valleys remember before we were talking about the orcs and masters, so if I was to bring that up, I could kill that by bringing The oxygen master here or not so much.

I want to show how he killed that. But I'm saying that if you were to bring this up and go, hey, how come that's not going out tomorrow verb, you could check that, yeah, the cables are good. But if you went across there and the master was down, and that's, that's why you wouldn't be hearing. So you can see that signal flow coming in here, going through the master coming out here, I could prove that's coming out there because pull that out. And nothing's happening right like that back in. And then that loop is set up.

And all that old sense set up this way, post beta means that any changes I make to this will have a corresponding change to this books. In other words, this often comes out up to this guy. So if I was to bring this guy down, aha, then the amount going up that box out of the oxen would be cut by half as well. By bring that down bring that up, then the same change to my dry vocal we made here in August because it's post post this beta. In other words after this beta, if I click this in here and so to pre beta then his what's happened is that this is sent off before the Spanish So in fact, I could kill the spider and bring that guy up here. So you can see these two guys they're completely independent of each other WhatsApp is pretty bad in post beta, this box and tracks tracks with it because it's post beta, if it's pre fader and this box and we'll send out a metal.

Does that kind of makes sense? post by We'll track like you're grabbing this, it'll track with the fader. And pre fader will, will not. So while we've been given this choice and what's in it for you, I'm glad you asked. Here's the reasoning behind all this, if you're running an auction as an effect sent and post is the way to go. If you were to bring say down a backing vocalist in the mix, then this guy would track with it and the reverb would come down to set your effects send to be post beta, and everything will be good to go pull someone right out of the mix and their effects and we'll go as well.

It'll get killed, everything will work out well. But can you think of the other uses of oxygen? And that is Marta sense. Can you think of which is the best way to have an oxygen set for Moses? pre or post beta actually preferred is the way to go when using oxygen as master mixes and here's why. Imagine that you've been working with your lead vocalist for the last 10 minutes setting up their Master mix and it's perfect motor mix the her she's loving it.

And you know the blend of all the instruments with the drums and piano. She's loving life. It's about Showtime now. And as you're listening to the main mix, you suddenly realize that the drums are too loud out front, no problem you pull them down here. But guess what if you're on extends to your vocalist Monson makes what post beta, then her drums is going to be going down as well. She's going to give you the stink eye.

All of a sudden her perfect Muslim mix is messed up. That's why you want to make sure that your monitor mixes are set to pre fader and not post fader. Does that make sense? If your perfect master mix to your lead vocalist surfers set up on orcs number one, this was your most essential lead vocalist, if you set it up just absolutely perfectly, and this is set up to be post these faders then any changes you make Yeah, will affect her Martin mix at the same is after the spiders instead of to pre then any changes you make down here won't affect her at all. Heck, I mean, if you had to slap to pre you could bring all these guys now and it won't affect her mix at all You probably be fired, because there's nothing I mean, reading the main speakers anyway you kind of get the idea there.

So, to review, each channel has a number of options here you can send different amounts of each shout out the options here, which is something that could either go out to an effects unit, which would then have to be returned someplace if you want to hear that effect. Or the oxen could feed say an app and onstage monitors or in ear monitors. So pre and post settings allow the orcs and the beak to come either out before the fader or after setting a pre fader is best mosses so that your fader moves down here won't disturb any more awesome next, and it's Setting of post beta is best for effects of the amount of effects will track or ride with the final level. Now, the next feature that I'll discuss may or may not be on your mixer, but it's when you really should know about in the familiar with a nested subgroups.

Subgroups are way to sub group together a bunch of channels into, you know, a handy one or two faders here, so instead of moving a whole bunch of faders, like this, you can group them together into just maybe one or maybe two. This mix is a 12 inch, or sometimes known as a 12 core, meaning it has 12 input channels going into four subgroups, each near a 32 dot eight would be 32 channels into eight subgroups, you kind of get the idea. In the case of this little mix that we have 12 into four into the main mix here, this might be called a 12 core kind of Mix it up, so that you can see that each of these channels have little buttons that allow you to assign this particular channel to a particular subgroup. So, let's imagine this if I brought up the kick, snare and hat and assign them to subgroups one and two, I could do that.

And then assign subgroups one and to the left. And right. Now, I can adjust all of my drums just with these guys right here. So I want to bring the guitars up on these subgroups here. So I can assign 12343 times. So I need to let you know I have the drums all the time.

If you want us to adjust, say just the bass guitar, then you could adjust it over here. But if you wanted to adjust the overall level of detail You can either grab these guys and do it manually there or across here, you can just do it all at once. So the whole idea of subgroups is to better manage a bunch of channels onto a more manageable one or two groups. I mean, I say one or two, because it really depends on whether you want to keep a mano, was there a mix? In the case of these drums, let's imagine we wanted to bring them into one and two, right here. And these were assigned to left and right within a set, when you sub to a pair of sub groups that are then assigned when you see this, that everything's kind of happening in steps.

Assign an input channel to a subgroup, then a subgroup needs to be assigned to the main mix. So this first sub group here is assigned to the left hand side, and this one is assigned to the right hand side. That means that if we were to say panda hi hat the left and the right, we may be able to preserve that. So if you want to subgroup let me just bring that down. If you want to subgroup, a number of inputs and preserve the stereo panning, then you do need to set them up to go to a pair of subgroups. And then in turn, those subgroups need to be panned.

Hard left and hard, right, these have buttons here. Some subgroups may have a pan pot here that you'd have to put up all the way to the left and right, so we're good with drums here. Let's imagine we want to sub guitars down to just a mono subgroup, and then add vocals onto this guy here. Here's how we do it. These guys here are going to be sub down to three. And then over here, we want to assign this to both the left and the right.

Like you can pan up All the way to the left, which is the left hand side, a dis subgroup, and that'll give you a bit more better signal to noise ratio. So you can see these, these are the groupings that as of now, the first three have been subgroups. So to the first couple here and because we have a little bit of creative panning here, I mean, it's this is a full drum kit with Tom's all panned out, you know, across the stereo spectrum. This would be you know, a lot better example got a really simple example right now, but because we have a little bit of panning of drums, we'll place them out here into our subgroups, and the subgroups we send out left and right and not why we have stereo drums. The guitars over here we're going to send them two three and four.

Notice that three and four and the way you assigned to either three or four is by using these pan pots here because the the trees on the left hand side will pan or the left side All these guys here will be panned right here and make sure that you assigned this to the main mix by either if there was a pan pot here panning up the middle or pressing these buttons left and right so now I have all my guitars coming up here on the in a monitor subgroup and I could do exactly the same thing here with the lead and background vocals assigned to three and four panels to the right this time. We'll bring this guy up here assigned to down the middle by left and right to the pan pot and put in the middle. So now we have stereo drums. All back.

Very cool way to make use of subgroups to kind of sub your mixes. And of course, if you had a much bigger console with like 32 channels down here, it's a lot easier to grab a couple of subgroup faders here instead of like eight or 10 individual inputs for say all your drums your kick, snare top snare bottom, hi hat four times two overheads, a ride a lot easier to subgroup those guys over here so you can have control over your drums, just with a couple of fingers rather than a whole bunch of them. It's a little confusing to explain, but basically if you want to preserve your stereo imaging over on the left hand side here, then grip to a pair of subgroups, which you then send off to main left and right mix. If you're just doing in mono then just use the channel pen inputs over here to assign to the correct subgroup which then gets sent over to main left and right mix.

Now in terms of stereo imaging in live I mixed a little differently than I do on records in recorded song, you can be sure of where the listener is, they're either in right in front of speakers like this, or else they're using headphones. Because you can be sure of this, you can really experiment a lot with your stereo imaging, that's kind of cool to place the high hats way off, you know, to the right hand speakers like that. But in a live situation where there's a couple hundred feet between the lecture right stacks of speakers, then a hard pan of the high hats often means that half your audience hears the high hats and half of them don't so in live situations, I can typically pan Don't, don't pan things out to wise, and you know, mono isn't such a bad thing. Okay, so um, with everything I've explained over in the input channel here, let's move over to the right hand side of the console, which can kind of be a little less standard.

Now, as I've said before, the left array of input channels right here, it's pretty standard for mixer to mix them in some things might be in a different order, the EQ Might be up here. And the oxygens might be down here, but they're pretty standard. But in the master section over here, things can be a little different in terms of where they are, but several common themes arise. Now, we've already said that subgroups normally live over here. In fact, many larger boards will have more inputs on the right hand side here, so the master section will kind of live in the middle of the board. We have a master fader here, which is the that's the main level out to the front of house speaker.

So if your boss says to turn it down, is where you make him happy. Now, there are normally some stereo returns that are just kind of like another set of inputs that except line levels that don't need EQ or effects and it's like a kind of like a dumbed down version of a stereo input. They can bring in maybe a CD player or audio from your video department feed or maybe just to return effects and there are a lot of uses for these stereo returns and they normally come up here somewhere On the mixer section, so, for example, these two stereo returns here, that could be the input from, you know, a CD player or from your DVD audio or something like that. If they come up here, then you can just adjust them right here. These guys don't need EQ and effects and they just basically need a place to come in with a level control here.

We have orcs masters that we looked at a little bit a while ago. And you also might even have some orcs returns that are basically just like a stir return as well. The one section to make note of is the solo and the headband section. That as you are mixing a live show, there'll be times when you want to listen into any particular input to see if there's an if there's any buzz on it, or maybe listen to a vocalist in isolation to hit you know, see if you can hear any problems. If you're a rehearsal time with no one else out in the audience. I mean, I routinely bring things down listen to things through the main speakers, but show time, you know, you really can't do that you need a discreet way of listening to a channel without interrupting or messing up your, your main house mix because there are a bunch of people out there listening and most mixers, you have a solid button that beats some headphones so that you can listen in on any particular channel, maybe subgroups, you know, a lot of mixes will actually allow you to solo down into Mata mixes so you can listen into an ox mix.

And that way you kind of can get an idea of what a performer is hearing in their, you know, in a monitors for example, in rehearsal time, quite often I'll go up on stage and I'll walk around if there's on stage monitors or walk around behind the back and vocalist and listening to you know, kind of what they're doing. But if someone's got a nemesis, quite often the only way to check what their mix sounds like is soloing their own extents and you can do that a lot of mixes. So, depending on what mix you have, you will have varying things that you can say So, the most simple ones is just soloing input channels. But like I said, it could go all the way down to auctions, and subgroups and all sorts of stuff. You can see all over the board there are these little solo buttons sometimes.

So they're sometimes called pre fader, listen, or P FL. Just press any number of these guys here. And you can see that there's a indicator here that we have some stuff solid. And then you can hear whatever is so up on some connected headphones, that are larger mixes, you might have solid buttons all over everything, everything from auks masters, to effect returns, lots of places where you can solo solo signals on larger mixes. I won't go into too many details in this mixer as it really might be different to yours. But basically, we have the we have controls to listen on on different paths and mixer depending on what's being solid.

By the way, some mixes also have the ability to talk back a talk system will normally have like a little gooseneck mic up here, like that or maybe just a regular input on the back of the mixer. So you can talk to the musicians on stage. You can route this talkback mic down any oxen which normally feeds your onstage masters. It's really great. You know, for instance, you at soundcheck, you can just pick up that talkback mic, press talkback button and say something like how's the mix down there that will come through the master mix, saves you a trip down the stage and the musicians can then talk back to you through any open stage mic and then you can kind of work that out. Now, by the way, there are a couple of different types of solar a pretty common p FL or pre federalism will solar the input up in your headphones before the fader so even if the levels way down, you'll hear it clearly in your headphones.

In place listening is another way the solar sound will sound dislike it would be in the main mix. It was solid In other words, the fader position and pan position will be reflected in your headphones in that salad. Now, one last mention of the mix that's pretty common, and that is matrix mixes. Matrix mixes it kind of like extends from the subgroups. And main mix is a mixer where we have two mono matrix mixes or a stereo one if you wish. But let's imagine that we have two mono ones called A and B.

You have a lobby outside the main room where you want to pipe your main music out. You also have a green room or maybe a cry room in a church with a mums and babies listen to the sermon, you could then connect the matrix out on the back of the mixer and feed both of those rooms, and then decide what you want to feed them. In the case of a good lobbying cry room. You could just set it the main mix. I mean, you could do some pretty cool things here with maybe a talkback mic plugged in with spare channel that doesn't even get applied to the main mix, but goes through to a subgroup who's only four function is to be fed out a matrix sent to your lobby. I mean, you could do things like you know, make announcements to people in your lobby.

While not even coming out of the main speakers. There are there are many ways to route signals. In a typical mixer, just put your thinking cap on. And if you have a specific need nine times out of 10 especial application can normally be fixed with Oxfam or matrix. So I guess that's pretty much what's happening in a typical mixer from the front panel. Let's look at the rear panel.

I say rear panel, but a lot of mixes have these connections actually up on top of the mixer. In any case, many of these Jacks on this panel are made up of the inputs. Typically, you'll have the couple that are set up right here at balanced XLR mic input that will be fed from a stage box, a line input that can also come from the same now if it's going to be a massive long run from the stage, then make sure that it's a balanced line, either and then Allow like this guy here or you can use quarter inch cables. As long as I have the tip ring and sleeve that's a balanced line here. If you connect 100 foot a quarter inch cable like this guy that is unbalanced, then you're just inviting a bunch of interference and buzz down that line. So remember, that quarter inch connector that is balanced has to have two signals and a ground with that extra line right who might they call them trs or tip ring sleeve.

It's just a tip sleeve. So tip ring sleeve there that's balanced. It's just a tip slayed like this tip and sleep and it's unbalanced. actually speaking of CRS, or tip ring sleeve. This connector here is an insert point. It takes a special cable like this guy here that takes a tip ring sleeve on one end and two unbalanced quarter inches on the other end.

This cable is the Special one, because it does this, you connect the TRS side, the one with the three connectors right there, place it inside that insert, and it interrupts the signal just like if you kind of hacked into this channel, and allows you to insert something between these guys right here. A classic example would be something like this, like a compressor, or noise gate, you plug it the input right here, the output right there. And then this guy has now been inserted on that channel, it's just like, you just place it right in the middle right there. Now, by the way, I'm not sure which is which, in terms of this, but just experiments one way or the other. So that's now in line with that channel. So here's the deal.

If I pull this out here, if you just place an insert channel in here, and without these connected here, it would actually just kill the signal because there's nothing in between here. So you take a character like this and that and then that would actually comply. The connection I'm not saying you should do that is kind of useless. This is the same as if this was out. But kind of gives you an idea that if you have an insert cable, and there's absolutely nothing connected aside, if you plug something into it, bang, it'll just it's like cutting this channel in half because the connections not been made right there. Insert something like compressor OR gate across there.

And you'll complete that connection. And you can add compression to that particular channel that I went. We won't go through specific compression examples right now. We'll do that a little bit later on the mixing section. So that takes pretty much careful the input channels here. We then have a bunch of connectors that have to do with things like or extent.

I mean, we saw them a little while ago, connect out your monitor amps, and onstage monitors all your in ear monitors right here. And then you can use these guys as monitor sense. I mean, as you go through here, you'll start just kind of guessing what some of these guys are man insert. That's it. Great setup here. So you use these breakout cables like this, plug this in here.

And if you had two of these, then you could break into your main outs. And I was assuming that a place to set a stereo compressor across your main mix by using to insert cables in here strapping a compressor across your main out. I mean it's really going to be different depending on what what mixer you have. But you know, several common things will come up things like tape outputs, tape input type output like this, you could take the left and right and place it into a recorder. And in return that recorder back here under the tape input. I won't spend too much time going through each and every jack right here because you know, frankly, it'll be different on your particular mixed up but I hope that we tackle the main parts of the mixer so that if you see something like like maybe a subgroup insert, you'll know kind of what it does.

We'll get into that. So saying input channels EQ, oxygen subgroups, matrix mixes, insert points. And your mix will have some combination of that kind of that same stuff. I'm always amazed that the biggest mixes that I've ever seen, I just cause some permutation of the little mixer that I played with as a kid. And even if there is some brand new whiz bang feature, it's kind of related to some form of routing that you know, I'm already familiar with, we've tackled kind of there. So I hope that with this makes it so you can go back to your read your particular mixer manual, and understand a little bit more clearly.

So all this is pretty easy if everything's working perfectly, but if you really want to make the meat mediocre box, you'll need to be how to solve problems and troubleshoot. when everything goes out. And trust me, it will go south. Let's go ahead and move on to the troubleshooting section.