Understanding Audio Mixers: How They Work and Their Role in Sound Production

you may have noticed audio mixers have a lot of knobs on them, why well we will get to that but first, what is an audio mixer and what is its job.

Audio mixers can be simple, they can be complex, with lots of channels and routing opportunities, but first let's start off with the basics, what is an audio mixer.

We can start off with a person singing, now usually that person wants to be heard, by the crowd, so we give them a microphone and an amplifier, now we can hear them, but now they are joined by an acoustic guitarist, and they want to be heard to, so now they are both competing to be heard, next they invite a keyboard player, and maybe next a drummer, now everyone is competing to be heard, so now the answer is, an audio mixer, all of those instruments are now fed into each individual line input of the mixer via a mike cable, now with the singer, that cable would be connected to a microphone as would be the acoustic guitar, unless it is an electric acoustic guitar, where it would have a 6.5mm mike jack, the keyboard also has a 6,5mm audio mike jack so it to is connected by a mike cable, those signals are now mixed together, and the output of the mixer is fed to an amplifier and then the speakers to be heard, so now you can now hear them all blended or mixed together.

Now that is a very cut down version of what a mixer is, and I will go into that further, as time goes on.