![]() Using Aux Sends to Create Monitor MixesĪs mentioned previously, some mixers have output jacks for the aux sends, allowing you to send signal to external devices. For example, all of the channels on the MG10XU have access to the same FX processor “bus.” (A bus is an audio path that brings multiple signals to the same place at the same time - just like a city bus takes a lot of people to the same work location in the morning.) Even though all the channels share the bus, you use the aux send knobs to independently control the amount of effect for each individual channel. It’s important to realize that the channels on a mixer share aux sends. If we turn up both knobs, the signal from that channel goes to two places at the same time. The main LEVEL knob (the one on the bottom) still controls the amount of signal going to the left/right mix. When you turn up this knob, signal from the channel is routed into the mixer’s internal FX. This is an aux send dedicated to the mixer’s internal FX processor. You can see at the top that there is a knob labeled FX. The illustration below shows part of a channel in the MG10XU. Just like the valves on a water main, one channel can feed many aux sends. An aux send is like a small “tap” used to divert a bit of the signal - just like a plumber uses a valve and piping from the water main to get water into your kitchen … although, of course, once that valve is added, it can be connected via piping to anywhere in the house. Using this analogy, you can think of a mixer channel as the main pipe - the one that takes the signal from the vocal mic to the left/right mix. It’s particularly apt because it implies that an audio signal is like water. You’ve probably heard the term signal flow. It would be silly to take the left and right outputs from the mixer and connect them to a reverb unit because (a) it would be impractical, and (b) you’d get reverb on every channel - probably not a good thing. The channel it’s connected to is already feeding the vocal to the left and right speakers. Suppose you want to add reverb to a vocal microphone that’s plugged into your mixer. In the case of the latter, there will be physical output jacks on the mixer (usually on the rear panel) that enable you to connect whatever external devices you want to receive this signal. In other cases, aux sends are “external,” meaning that they feed signal completely out of the mixer to another device altogether. Aux sends are sometimes labeled with different names such as “effects send ,” “FX send ,” MON (short for “monitor”) or even “foldback,” but they all work the same way: They serve as a secondary output from a channel that routes the signal to a place other than the main left and right speakers.ĭepending upon the mixer, aux sends may be “internal,” meaning that they send a signal to an onboard effects processor like the one in the Yamaha MG10XU. That’s the primary purpose of an aux send. However, there are times when you may also need to send a signal somewhere else - like, for example, to an effects processor such as a reverb or delay unit. This makes a lot of sense because we want to hear those sounds in the PA system. When doing live sound, microphone inputs are typically sent to the left/right or main mix. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at these important controls. In the first of our two-part series on using reverb and delay, we touched briefly on aux (short for “auxiliary”) sends and returns.
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