Mister Mixer
I’ve drawn up two typical audio signal chain diagrams to illustrate how most people would be recording podcasts. Before getting into the finer points of signal processing, I thought it would be useful to discuss the use of a mixer in this chain.
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1) MIXER BASED MONITORING |
2) MIXER BASED RECORDING |
In the monitoring (1) diagram shown, the audio signal goes from points A/B to Y/Z via the mixer. The mixer is used to amplify the individual input signals (microphone, CD/DVD, etc.) and “mix” them together to go to the main outputs. In many cases, the will be an additional stereo output (left and right channels) used to get the mixed signal to a recording device (2). That record output path will mirror what is going to the speakers (as shown in the diagram).
Mixers are an excellent way to simplify the recording and editing process as the resultant audio file recorded will only be stereo, although this also limits the ability to edit any individual microphone signals in post production.