One of the problems I’ve had for a long time now is that I have multiple sound sources but want to have only one set of speakers and one set of headphones/headset on my desk. I don’t want to sit here with 3 of each. A couple years ago I had purchased some Bose speakers which had 2 inputs and a dial on the front of the speakers which allowed fading between the two sources. It was a workable solution for 2 computers. Add a 3rd or 4th sound source and it starts to feel … insufficient.

Fortunately I found a solution. I was at Frys taking a look at the computer speakers when it hit me. Why am I bothering with computer speakers, just hoping that Logitech or Creative managed to think past 7.1 and realize that some of us hardcore nerds have a lot of computers consuming valuable natural resources (coal for power!) and they all need to be heard. It struck me that musicians already figured it out… they’ve got this advanced technology called a “mixer”.

Yea go figure. Seems really obvious once I got past thinking about it as a computer problem.

So I asked a sales guy at Frys if they had any and he said… “Uh… no… go to Guitar Center.” Since I had no idea what a mixer would involve I figured I should buy brick & mortar based equipment so that I can get some friendly advice. In retrospect I think some internet searching might have been better since the apparently highly doped sales associate couldn’t get past the fact that I didn’t actually have any instruments or microphones. He instead tried to sell me this USB based gadget… which after I got it home was in fact really really cool… but not what I needed. I took it back the next day and ended up with this glorious piece of music hardware:

Yessssssss… I knew nothing about the equipment and showed up with a nerd paycheck which in the guitar center level of the music industry must mean a lot because I wasn’t flinching at any of the quite reasonable prices he was quoting me. I suppose if I was a starving artist scraping by from gig to gig then it all would be expensive, but… I’m not.

<3 you starving artists but… that’s just how it is. I’ll download your new albums on iTunes later.

So after thinking through the options I ended up with this 8 channel “long-lasting” mixer. It was fairly obvious I wasn’t much of a musician and didn’t know the equipment very well so I think “long-lasting” was more him trying to explain that it was quality product rather than an attempt at upselling me. I think this mostly because he was looking at me like I was insane most of the time and kept asking me to repeat what I was saying 2-3 times.

After a lot of explanations back and forth I have it figured out. Here are the basics:

• Each “channel” which would normally just be a single instrument will be either the left or right channel in a stereo world. That means that depending on your mixer you might actually consume 2 channels in order to bring in a stereo source (unless you use some kind of Y adapter that just squishes the stereo sound into a single mono channel).
• Some mixers have “stereo” channels.
• On the range of equipment I’m working with all the connections are done via quarter inch plugs. You’ll need to check per channel if you can use a stereo or a mono quarter inch plug. If you’re bringing in a stereo signal you’ll probably need to split each channel out into a mono quarter inch plug.

Once you get past that it’s really easy.

My mixer (click on the picture above) has two stereo channels (line 1 and 2) and six mono channels (lines 3 to 8). Of those the first 4 channels (1,2 and 3/4 as a stereo pair) also apparently have a special preamp so they get a gain knob.

So after getting all the appropriate converter cables and getting everything plugged in I cranked it up… and was totally surprised. iTunes pushing sound out to my little Bose speakers suddenly sounded a lot better. What? That shouldn’t make sense. Why would the sound seem better going through the mixer rather than going straight from computer to speakers? I’m still not entirely sure, but it does. My hunch is it’s these XDR2 preamps, but I’m no music expert so don’t quote me on that. All I know is everything sounds much better.

As an added bonus I now have this nifty feature on my desk. Makes me feel very cool:

Song: Gnarls Barkley, Charity Case.
Camera: Nikon Coolpix L11
Minor Editing: Quicktime Pro
Cat: Nancy Drew