Handbook for Sound Engineers

830 Chapter 25

25.3.3 Multiple Effect Feeds

Currently, there is a whole gamut of electronic toys
applied to mixdown to achieve specific sounds: Harmo-
nizers®, delays, flangers, phasers, automatic panners,
artificial reverberators of various sorts, and so on. These
all need to be fed from their own effects mix paths.
Similarly, studio foldback mixes have grown more
profuse with changing music and increasing musician
sophistication and awareness of studio techniques;
consequently, the number of auxiliary mixes within
modern consoles has risen quickly. A rationalization of
this is to make those auxiliary mixes multipurpose,
usually by allowing them to be switchable between
prefader and postfader feeds on their appropriate
sources. A smaller number of buses are needed in this
way; during the recording process the emphasis is on
many foldback (prefade) feeds for the musicians in the
studio and maybe one or two toys to spice up the moni-

toring. On the other hand, during the overdubbing and

mixdown phases very few foldbacks (if any) are needed

but every bus will be set to postfade and laden with

effects. Additionally, in broadcast it is commonly neces-

sary to talk back down some or all of these mixes indi-

vidually; such a feed is called an interruptible foldback,

or IFB. Large modern consoles for live applications

often have many stereo foldback auxiliaries, driven by

the trend toward the (usually wireless) in-ear head-

phones beloved by performers.

25.4 Dawning of Multitrack

Multitrack operation is when a number of separate parts

of the recording are laid onto separate tracks on a

recording machine and subsequently remixed down

onto another machine (be it mono or stereo) or even

interim bounced onto spare tracks on the same machine.

Figure 25-12. Small mixer system showing auxiliary functions.

Controls PFL switchMain fadeFoldbackEcho sendMain busPFL busFoldbackbusEcho send

bus

Input 1

Input 2

Input 3

Input 4

Echo

return

Talkback

mic

Talkback

To studio

To output

Monitor

selection

Tape mon 1

Tape 2

E/S

FB

PFL

Main