VIDEO 101

Sound

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Introduction
What is Sound
Pickup Patterns
Lavalier
Handheld Mikes
Boom/Fishpole
Wireless
Parabolic
VU Meters
Automatic Gain
Fader
Equalization
Mixers
Line/Mike
Connectors
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Sound > Control > Mixers


Here's a simple mixer. It has six input faders (lower left) so you could mix together six different sound sources.

A device that mixes two audio signals together is called a "mixer." Pretty much a no-brainer there.

Mixers have two or more faders that will allow you to adjust the incoming volume level of each audio source.

Sound Mixing:
There's only one really important rule here--but it's critical: At any given point in time, only ONE audio source can be dominant. It can be voice, music, sound effects, whatever--as long as only ONE is loud (full volume). All others must be quiet (in the background). In a given piece, the dominant audio source might change several times. For example, the narration might stop and then the background music would get louder and become dominant. But at any given point, only ONE is full volume.

In the example below, the music and narration are BOTH dominant. It's a problem. The solution--fade the music down.

To the left is and example of how a mixer might be used: In the example we have two audio sources: music and voice-over. If we mix them at the same level, it quickly becomes clear that the music is too loud and drowns out the voice-over. So we use the mixer to reduce the volume of the music until it no longer drowns out the voice. (Click PLAY triangle)

It's not uncommon to have a mixer with 16 or 24 faders to control lots of incoming audio, but the process is the same as in this simple example.

 

 

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Michael Trinklein