Who needs a mixer? Not me

Mixers are so 1998. Actually, I don’t really know when they became obsolete, but it has certainly been years. I haven’t used a mixer on a session since 2003 when I moved my studio “inside the box.”

Mic preamps

Of course we need mic preamps. In most situations we only need one or two at a time, and many interfaces come with built in mic preamps. In addition, there are a number of companies that make very nice banks of eight of them, in a convenient rack-mount format. This is necessary when recording a drum kit or a group live-off-the-floor.

When it comes to analogue electronics you want to get the best you can afford. If your budget in $1,000 you could get:

1. A good mixer with eight mic preamps, 4-band EQ on each channel, four aux sends, four subgroups and 100mm faders on each channel, but how much of that $1,000 is invested in the mic preamp?
2. On the other hand you could buy a bank of eight mic preamps with a digital output to connect to your interface. With the only extra circuitry being the converters, you’re bound to get a better quality device for the price.

So if you need eight mic preamps, why buy a mixer that also has a lot of stuff you don’t need?

In the photo to the above right, you can see the rig I used to record some of the bedtracks for Showroom’s album. MOTU 828mkII, PreSonus DigiMax and a Line 6 Bass POD Pro. This set up is a a lot more portable than a mixer and a bass rig! And it’s especially important because we did this recording in the drummer’s bedroom.

But mixers look cool

I agree completely. If I had lots of money and lots of space I’d think it would be awesome to have an Audient ASP 8024 or TL Audio VTC. But large format options aren’t realistic for most of us. And the quality we can get from a rack setup will be noticeably better than a mixer based setup on the same budget. If you want the knobs and faders, take a look at Mackie’s MCU or Digidesign’s Command 8. Or have everything you need (and some bells and whistles you don’t) with the M-Audio Project Mix I/O or the Tascam FW1884.

Say good-bye to latency issues

I’ll use MOTU’s interfaces as the example here. They include this great software called CueMix that lets you control all the inputs on your interface before the audio signals make the trip to your computer so you can monitor your inputs with virtually no latency. Amazing. Why do so many people set up complicated systems when once again things can be done inside the box? Other interfaces from PreSonus, Apogee and RME have similar systems.

With MOTU’s system you can set up four completely different stereo mixes so you can have individual mixes for the drummer and the other performers during tracking.

If you have hardware synths or guitar amp modeling modules such as a POD, you can leave these hooked up to the inputs of your interface (like you would a mixer) and they are ready to go when you are.

Why make things complicated?

I see lots of complicated set ups in pro studios and in people’s bedrooms. It can be very frustrating working in larger systems where, by their very nature, there can be so many places for problems to occur. If you’re new to the whole recording business, don’t let someone talk you into buying a mixer. Chances are they’re just conditioned to the mixer being an integral part of the set up. But it’s not anymore. To me it’s like suggesting you should buy a stand alone CD recorder. There was a time when it made sense, but that time has passed. -mc