Hi,

I get asked this question a lot. This time I thought I'd take a proactive position and post it.

Mixers are more than knobs that let you vary the volume.

1. They let you vary volumes without shaking the camera or getting in the way of the camera op.
2. You may need to do that a lot with some people. I ride gain even if one person is talking if their voice fades on the end of each line. You can only do this in a relatively quiet environment, otherwise you bring up the ambient noise.
3. Mixer preamps (good ones) sound better than camera preamps.
4. Good mixers have input transformers that scrape off RF before it get into your audio.
5. Good mixers have limiters that allow you to record hotter, keeping your audio further above the noise floor without distorting.
6. Good limtiers have EQ that lets you roll of LF HVAC noise before it gets into your audio.
7. Good mixers have mulitple outputs so you can feed more than one camera, or separate recorder simultaneously.
8. Good mixers make your sound better. If they didn't pros wouldn't use them.

Hmm, is this a sticky or what?

6. Good limtiers have EQ that lets you roll of LF HVAC noise before it gets into your audio.
IMO this is better done in post, where you can play around to avoid affecting the voice too much and you can play around with NR plugins that do a better job. Lo-cut however is useful in some situations to avoid overloading other parts of the signal chain.

That being said, you can probably get away with almost never using the locut, or always leaving it on (I've heard of one sound person who simply always leaves it on).

2- That being said, having a mixer is useful in many situations.

Hmm, is this a sticky or what?

I think so, nice job Ty - I didn't find it at all obvious why mixers were being used in this context when I started out.

Great post, Ty!

One other point (it's obvious):

Mixers let you use more microphones than you have input channels on your camera.

Beautifully said, Ty. One might summarize by saying a mixer is the ounce of prevention that saves a pound of cure in post.

Warm Regards, Michael

...One might summarize by saying a mixer is the ounce of prevention that saves a pound of cure in post...lOf course, that depends on who's operating it. ;)