A look at the American Audio Q-SD mixer

0:00 It's from American Audio and it's known as the Q-SD

Alright folks, in this video we're going to look at this guy here. It's from American Audio and it's known as the Q-SD. It's a mixer, but it's a mixer with a tiny little bit of a difference. So I'll pause the camera and we will have a closer look. Hold tight. Right, here we go. By the way, if you can hear any noises in the background, say hello Ryan! Goodbye! Ryan's watching the telly. Right, first of all, this is the area where... You have, well this is basically the area for your microphone. You have two microphone inputs, you've got two microphone volumes, that's one, two, bass and treble and basically all the buttons here so when that's lighting up it basically means that the microphone is mute. That's your microphone input, that circle there you can fit a Canon or XLR input, that's quite important and in the centre

There's a hole. Now that is there for an actual jack input, which is basically one of those. Oh, there it is. So you can put that in there as well. I'm just showing this. That's the headphones. Now also, bearing in mind, just make sure you push it in properly. Some people, they actually say, oh, I can't hear my microphone because you're not pushing it in properly. Make sure it's in correctly. It's not to do with this mixer. It's every single mixer. That's quite important. Right, what have we got here? We've got on channel one, we've got phono, which is a vinyl turntable, auxiliary, line and at the top, I'll give you a close-up very shortly, but there's something there called SD. Channel one, bass, mid, treble and gain. Your gain is your master volume for that specific channel, okay, or a gain. That will basically increase and decrease the actual input into this particular slider.

Exactly the same with number two. You have phono, which is vinyl's second vinyl turntable. Auxiliary 2, line 2 and SD, exactly the same features here. Channel 3, auxiliary line and SD. Channel 4, auxiliary line and SD. And then here you've got, where are we now? Here, sorry. I'm looking at the screen as well. You've got the master output. Now the master output is slightly different to individual gains. Individual gains... We'll increase and decrease the volumes on their specific channels. The master will increase and decrease the volume on all of those channels. So for example, if these channels are say there, like that, as you decrease the volume, all of the volumes will come down without you touching these particular volumes. As you increase, all of these volumes will go up as you switch this up.

2:45 Start, means, specific mixer

If you start messing around with the gain on here, only this one will go up. If you mess around with the gain here, only this one will go up. That is quite important. Okay, that's your basic crossfade and you can assign the crossfade, channel 1, 2, 3, 4, channel 1, 2, 3, 4. Cue start is basically if you have the connections from the particular mixer into your twin CD player, then instead of pressing start on your CD player, Start the track by just using the actual sliders. Okay, what we've got here, zone, this is basically for your booth output so you can have some monitors, cue mixing, so what that basically means is if you're at cue it means that you will only hear the music through your headphones and there's loads of shouts in the background and as you slowly, not at me thank goodness, and as you slowly increase the volume or increase from

7 o'clock through to 5 o'clock, that basically means you will start to hear the music that's playing through the main PA as well. Cue level, what that means is that that will increase the actual volume on your headphones but this is the area that we're going to concentrate on mainly. Now this is the fun bit, this is what I actually like about this specific mixer because no longer is this now a mixer, this is actually a player as well. So what we have here, if I just press that and pull that out, that is an SD card. You'll find that in any, I suppose most cameras etc. Now this particular unit will take anything up to a 4GB card. So, what have we got here? Well this theoretically is like a CD player. It's not exactly like a vinyl, well I suppose it is like a vinyl turntable, let's say if you had an album, a long play on it.

5:05 Plus minus, switch, minus plus

More so, it's like a CD player. The reason being is what you can actually do. You can transfer from your PC any music you want, put it on this particular card and then it will read it and you can play it through this specific mixer. Now, like I said, each individual channel has got SD above it. So theoretically what that means is that you can have this area here go through any channel. At all. So for example at the moment I've got that twin CD player there, I've got this channel here through channel 1 onto line, I've got this channel here through channel 2 onto line and then if I want to I could switch that to SD now channel 3 will be working or should I say this will be working through channel 3. There you go so if I press play put it down like so

So watch, if I now switch that to line, it'll go off. Now watch, with the volume up here, if I switch that to SD, there you go. And exactly the same over there. If I switch that off and the actual channel 1 over here, if I switch that to SD, there you go. So what that basically means, like I said, we can have any of those channels on the SD, on the card. So what features have we got here? Exactly the same features near enough that you would find on a normal CD player. You've got your cue, you've got your folder search, your track search, you have key lock, you can change the pitch range from plus or minus 4, plus or minus 8, plus or minus 16, pitch bend, search etc and seamless loop. In my mind what I do like about this, let's say for example you're a mobile DJ and you're doing a wedding or any function and someone let's say for example has given you a playlist. Well what you can do, you can go on your PC, you can hopefully find most of the playlist, you can bung it on the card and then once it's in this particular mixer you have not got to worry about trying to dig through all your CDs because your playlist will actually be inside your mixer.

So I've always said, well when people ask me what should I take, I've always said if possible, when you're going to a function, try and take three entities of music. In other words, that's one, that's two, and let's say if we had a tabletop CD player, that one under there, something like that, that's three. The reason you want to take three, ideally if you can, is if one stops working, at least you've still got two. That's very important. You don't have to take a third entity because it's actually incorporated in the mixer itself. So that is quite neat. Now, in my mind, the sound quality is fine. The pitch control, I don't see any problems with that at all. It's not as though it's slow or it's slacking or you move it down and it takes a little while to get to the speed you want it to.

But I will, over a period of time, be giving this a bit more of a going over and also taking it on the road. So there you go, there's a little insight there to the American Audio Q-SD. It's got the SD card and it's a mixer and it's all in one. Practice and enjoy.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.