In this third installment, we are will start learning the nuts-and-bolts of actually doing a Surround mix. Doing Surround mixing is so simple it will surprise you, but so much fun you'll wonder why it isn't illegal. And just one more warning: Once you've mixed Surround, you can't go back!

This week we are going to build a Surround mixer. We are going to start from scratch and build a custom Surround mixer using Mx51.

The main screen of Mx51 is familiar to anyone that has worked in a studio. The top part of the window are your tracks....think of them as tracks on a tape. The bottom of the window is where we will construct the Surround mixer.

In the bottom of the window you'll see a "Component Toolbox."

The Toolbox provides us with all the components we need to build a mixer. We construct our mixer by using the mouse to drag components off the Toolbox and drop them onto our mixer desk. We usually start by dropping an input fader. The input fader is the component labeled "IN." To drop the input fader, put your mouse pointer on the "IN" button of the Components Toolbox.

Then, while holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse pointer out to the gray area of the mixer desk. While you are dragging, the mouse pointer will turn into a silhouette of a fader, with a white box that says "INPUT."

When you let go of the mouse button, it drops an input fader and creates a new input channel for a mixer.

Pages

1 2 3