Lesson 6 Introduction to the Console - Posted on 2012-11-01 by Joey Greco

Date 10/05/2012
Time in 10:00 am
Time out 5:00 pm

Today was a very basic lesson on consoles. Some interesting points I learned in this lesson was the difference between a solo bus and an aux send. A solo bus is used as a separate mix operating down a different path during the recording process. The aux send is another separate mix used for effects/modulation/headphones. My mentor, Andy told me that its important to give the client what they need to perform their best. If a vocalist wants more reverb in their mix, which is very common for most, the engineer can send more reverb into the headphones only without having to hear it in the control room. This helps the engineer hear a more precise recording/signal that is being captured. The console also provides control to the engineer about the spatial positioning of the mix/signal/etc. This provides the ear a basic rundown of how the track could sound, or a mix for the client to hear when they're not recording.
We also went down the board from left to right and top to bottom to brush over what is what on the console. I feel that the importance during this lesson was to understand the most common or most used features of a console inside recording studios. The console at Rax Trax was made before the digital age, so certain features on it are not used. However, Pro Tools has a digital mixer you can use. So learning about the mixing board and console via physical and in Pro Tools helped my understanding about basic functions.