#21

Have you looked at the KMI K-mix? You can do quad panning and use the available touch surfaces to move a sound around in quad (or more). Not sure if it’s what you’re looking for but it could be!

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#22

What the general consensus on the Befaco Hexmix? I started working on a design for a minimal mixer, but actually this fills most of my needs (although you need the expander to do send/return), which is less minimal! https://shop.befaco.org/en/assembled/752-hexmix-assembled-module.html

#23

This is my current solution, I run the top mixer (a simple passive mixer with kill switches) into the Rakit 5 Channel Mixer. But I’d really like some simple EQ, and send/return for pedals.

#24

I’d help out how I can with a community mixer, even if it’s just tossing money at the project! :joy:

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#25

inputs are grouped in twos w/ two knobs & a stereo/mono switch, in stereo one knob is lvl & one is pan, in mono they are independent levels for each channel

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#26

I like this! I had the thought that perhaps there could be 16 mono inputs with individual faders, and a stereo/mono switch that would either sum everything to one output or odd channels to L and even channels to R.

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#27

Some of them do, yes, or trackballs used in much the same way.

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#28

I work in film sound and we do a lot of surround sound panning. The physical controller of choice is a joystick because it is intuitively analogous to pushing the source of the sound around within the room. I also own and have used the beautifully made and great sounding Poltergeist.

The Poltergeist uses big knobs to direct the sound around the edges of the room. The knobs are not continuous, so they don’t seem at all intuitive for continuous pans. The device works well when panning using CV, for example a ramp/sawtooth shaped LFO will spin the sound seamlessly around the room. A joystick, like the Planar, can be used to steer the sound around the space. For me the Poltergeist is not a great quad mixer. It’s a great box packed with (48!) VCAs, that requires remote control with CV source which typically would be a joystick. It has solos and mutes, switchable stereo or quad out, and a stereo input. It seems to be designed to be the mixer, for live performance of relatively simple quad material.

The bare minimum requirement to create a quad mixer would be 4 XY joystick CV controllers and 8 VCAs to work.

I’ve never used the Buchla 204, but it appears to have, in addition to the basic panning capability, input levels controls, input kill switches (or are those joystick defeat switches?) It also has 8 outs for the 4 joysticks’ X and Y CVs and separate normalled CV inputs to the 8 VCAs. I’d like to see a simple quad mixer that more closely recreates that lovely Buchla 204 for eurorack levels that could be standalone, or could fit into a skiff or palette. It would be nice to be able to link the controls such that joystick 1 (and 3) could also control input 2 (and 4) with an offset or an inverted offset so that a single joystick could direct stereo inputs into a quad space. Of course it would be patchable to accomplish this or any number of other ways to link or mangle CV data to control the panning. mmmm!

9 Likes
#29

It strikes me that rather than designing a specific product that’s basically some variant on the 16n or whatever, providing a clear means by which people could layout and build the different component elements of a mixer while keeping the specs in check would be a useful resource.

Mixing is personal.

1 Like
#30

My idea for a very simple mixer are something like this.

eg 12 channels
8 channels with just a pan knob (use 2 for stereo, most stereo sources have there own volume knob)
4 channels with just a volume knob for mono sources. Possibly also adds some gain.
Mute switches.
Stereo outputs.

#31

These aren’t exactly minimal mixers…

Here’s the AMS/Neve DFC Joystick panner module:

If you look closely you can see the two motorized touch sensitive joysticks in the Harrison MPC. Those are the best panners I’ve used:

I own this to pan sounds in my home film sound studio:

12 Likes
#32

This is a very interesting read, especially as you work in surround regularly. Thanks for sharing all this.

My question for you is in terms of playability. One of the main differences I can distinguish between mixing for film and mixing for a live performance is the live performance need have some element of improvisation between sessions, where as film is panned, mixed, and done. What would a performance quadraphonic mixer afford that a studio setup wouldn’t necessarily afford? Modulation? Internal routing of signals? Maybe we’re veering off the minimal path into the maximal path at this point, but food for thought.

3 Likes
#33

It’s a pleasure to share what I know about surround. You ask a good question about the difference between live performance mixing, and mixing for automation, with repeated passes until it’s deemed exactly right.

In either case catching the gestures of the human mixer and translating that into top quality audio results is the critical thing. For post-production the other priority is repeatability and ease of updating the automation with new controller moves. For live performance, automation is not a top priority. Flexibility and controller accessibility are paramount. Allowing for happy accidents and complex results of simple moves could be another performance priority.

The Poltergeist is compact, it has really nice solo and mute buttons, it can be used to control volume and quad panning of 4 input signals, and those controls can be VCed, too. It has controls to vary the pan law and the overall rotation of all the channels and to diffuse the sound more or less. So it is a self-contained very flexible box with many features for spatial mixing. The main drawback for me is that while the knobs are good for smaller moves around the room, they don’t lend themselves as well to large sweeping movements without an external CV controller like a joystick or LFO, etc.

My ideal performance mixer for quad would be much closer to the Buchla 204. Having 4 joystick controllers may seem like overkill, since we only have two hands. But to be able to move between input channels immediately by grabbing a different joystick would be great for performance, as would ganging multiple VCAs to a single joystick controller with various offsets. Imagine a Maths or a pair of Cold Macs between one or two of the joystick VCs and the VCAs of various channels!

6 Likes
#34

I’ll throw out some quick sketches just to get the conversation going, haven’t put a lot of thought into these, just trying to work out what is ‘minimal enough’. But I do think console tape is important :smiley:

Audio Mixers
Audio Mixers3240×1878 144 KB

34 Likes
#35

exactly. not to just dump all over this but its like 2 posts into an idea and a mess. Half the people seem to actually want what could be called a minimal mixer, while half this thread is people who seem to actually want almost fully-featured mixers built in dollhouse size with 3 inputs.

while the idea of building blocks that are customisable is nice in principle, thats not really how mixers work and one would have to break things down basically to the point of being nothing, in which case you might as well just learn how to read schematics and roll your own on a protoboard. then again if someone wants to make 4 component chainable PCBs that all fit together somehow I’ll happily shut up.

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#36

a combo 1 + 3 would be :heart_eyes:

one option for us would be accepting that the perfect minimal mixer is a myth and instead collaborating on a subset of components and circuits that are easily recombinable on a single board design

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#37

just so yall know i’m at the pcb drawing stage of an open source hardware/software mixer that is kind of designed for folks on this forum. i’ll make a thread about it once things are farther along in the prototyping process. its an 8x6 matrix mixer with cv control and digital storage of presets that you can sequence through. hardware and software is sort of based on the aleph digital architecture (minus the dsp) and mutable instruments frames. it has an oled screen but only a few menus. this is a desktop design as well. intention right now is to build a case out of translucent acrylic panels and have the oled under the panel like some of the diy norns builds.

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#38

What’s the size of something like this?

#39

imagining a version of buchla 204 with a cold mac (or two) between each pair of joysticks. :heart_eyes:

1 Like
#40

should be right around 12"x8" ~ 300mm x 200mm. i tried to shoot for the monome grid size but it would have to have mini pots which i didnt want. its still a good small size while being able to use normal size knobs and have good spacing between them.

2 Likes