Tech Note #2: Mixing in Software

Software mixers and plug-ins are one of the big reasons computer based recording systems are winning favor with artists and producers everywhere.

The software (on screen) mixer itself works pretty much like you would expect a mixer to work, faders change the level of tracks, you have auxilary sends to send to reverbs or other shared effects, and there are insert points for inclusion of signal processing in a specific channel.

Automation
The software mixer's automation system is modeled after the finest designs on quarter million dollar hardware consoles, with all the convenience and accurracy of a thoroughly designed interface. In fact, Digital Performer's automation is even more accurate than those other sytems, since it can be as precise as the sampling rate of your project (44.1 thousand times a second or better). Also you can graphically edit your automation moves, which is both more precise and is very economical on data. In the example below the inital few lines of the vocal were sung very softly, but suddenly got much louder. So we use the volume graph version of the automation to raise the level of the track to compensate.

This automation is so accurate you can deal with individiual syllables of words, or breaths, attacks of instrumental parts, whatever, there are no limits.

Dynamic Resources
The other main great thing about the software mixer is it is created to match the needs of your project. If you have a 3 track project, you get a 3 channel mixer. Got a 45 track monster project? You get a monster 45 channel mixer! All of the main resources in the mixer (number of inserts, number of aux sends) are dynamically assignable, that is if you need more than the 4 aux sends the mixer starts with, just create another one. Need a 6th insert point? Add it!!! Amazing...

Insert Points
Insert points are at the very beginning of the signal chain in the mixer channel. Here you insert plug-ins to provide processing dedicated to that one mixer channel only. A plug-in is essentially a software version of what used to be a hardware effects unit you had to buy, some of which were really expensive (there used to be a whole bunch of reverbs you could buy in the $5000 and up range!) and you needed more than one (or two or three) of them to be flexible enough to accommodate all situations. You also needed about 10 compressors, limiters, a few delays and a couple multi-effects processors. No wonder studio time was expensive!
Plug-ins have changed all that now. Because they are just software code, you can use one limiter program in as many channels as you would like. Need a limiter on all 24 channels? No problem, just drop one in there. In the hardware days you would have to have picked the most important 4 channels and limited only those because you only had 4 limiters in your rack! Besides being useful they look cool and are easy to adjust because they have graphic interfaces which pictorially display the effects of the parameters you are adjusting. Here are some examples

The above graphic cycles through many of the very cool plug-ins we have for the mixer.

Auxiliary Sends
Like everything else in the software mixer, auxilary sends perform the same functions they did on their analog counterparts except you can have as many (or few) sends as the music requires, and are completely automated.

Panning (Left/Right Placement)
Panning is also completely automated on every channel using the same 'line and dots' interface as shown above for track volume. You can do some amazing things with automated panning; can you say "trippy"??? Sure, I knew you could!

In short, virtually all the limitations you had with hardware mixers is now removed, and there is an added extra bonus: since the "effects units" are just software modules now instead of physical units, you no longer have the possibility of those units introducing hum or buzz due to wiring/grounding issues or picking up airborne interference. Reverbs are hiss-less and 100% clean no matter how many you use! It's a beautiful thing!