How to connect a mixer to an audio interface

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're talking about a problem that probably many musicians have encountered: how to connect a mixer to an audio interface, for live or studio purposes.

Today there are in commerce several types of mixers with audio interface function, capable of transfereing the data directly to our DAW without passing through an audio interface: some of them can even split every single channel to a separate audio track, while others can export only to a left and right track.

The reality, though, it's that 80% of the mixers around doesn't have an usb out, therefore we will need to plug them somehow to our audio interface in order to record through them.

Why would we need to pass through a mixer?
Simple: to use more microphones than the inputs in our audio interface, for example we can use an 8 track mixer to mic a live drumkit (or a live band, or our rehearsals if we feel fancy), make a relative mix on in and connect the left and right output tracks to our audio interface to record it in our daw.

What we need in our interface it's basically just 2 TRS line level inputs, so we need to go with a regular jack from the 2 MAIN OUT outputs of the mixer (left and right) into the 2 line inputs of the audio interface.

Now we need to take care of the gain staging: before turning on the mixer, set the gain knob on each track to zero and the "main mix" level to unity (12 'o clock).
Once the mixer is on, slowly rise the gain knobs of each track until the recorded levels arrives at around 0db in the output meter, but without clipping.

Now take a look at your DAW and adjust the gain knob in the audio interface to make sure the input level is not too low nor too high. Once you find the optimal level, that is not clipping but that can record everything clearly, the gain staging is done

So far we have talked about connecting a mixer to a 2 input audio interface, but there are mixers that have also separate audio outputs, and audio interfaces with many

Now you're ready to record, enjoy!


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