2:56
Judging a mixer you cannot hear
On YouTube this video is called Buying a second hand mixer Listen to it without sound Vid going out to Robert from facebook
What this lesson teaches
This is a short follow-up prompted by someone asking whether a deal was any good, and it contains the single best test on this page - because it finds faults that playing music hides.
Listening for nothing
Playing tracks through a mixer tells you it works. It does not tell you how worn it is, because music masks exactly the sounds you need to hear.
So do the opposite. Leave the mixer on and the amplifier up. Play nothing at all. Turn the trims right up, and the master, so the system is at full gain with no signal in it. Then move everything.
Every channel fader through its full travel. The low, mid and high on each channel. The gain. The master. And the crossfader, which he singles out because it is almost always the first thing to wear.
What you want to hear is silence.
Why crackle means what it means
The controls are potentiometers: a wiper that slides along a resistive track. New, the contact is continuous. Worn or dirty, the wiper loses contact for an instant as it passes a bad spot, and that break is the crackle, fizz or pop you hear.
It matters because it does not get better. A fader that crackles today drops a channel out mid-set in six months, and it does it in front of people. At full gain with no music, those faults are unmistakable; with a track playing they are under the kick drum where you will never notice them.
Crossfader bleed
One more check while music is playing. With the crossfader hard over to the left, you should hear nothing at all from the right channel, and the same the other way round.
Anything audible from the far side is bleed, which means either a worn fader or something wrong further in. On a mixer you intend to cut on, that is disqualifying.
The mistake he makes on camera, which is worth copying from
He switches the amplifier off with the channel volumes still up, and there is an audible click through the speakers. He notices immediately and says he should have brought the levels down first.
He is right, and it is a habit worth building. Switching anything in the signal chain on or off sends a thump through whatever is downstream, and at high volume that thump is quite capable of killing a tweeter. Levels down, then switch. Every time, in both directions.
And again, haggle
Same as the mixer lesson. If they are asking a hundred, offer seventy or eighty. They will often meet you somewhere in the middle, and if the silence test turned up a crackly crossfader you now have a reason as well as a number.
Contents of the video
Alright guys, just chatting with Robert on Facebook and he's buying a, well not a new mixer, he's buying a second hand mixer. He wanted to know if it was a good deal. I said it's a good deal, if it works right. Now very quickly as well, this is not an old mixer but first of all you'll notice volume up and we've got sound coming through. Now when you go and buy a new mixer, ideally if you can check it out first. Now the first and foremost thing you're going to be doing is you're going to be having a little bit of a mess around playing music through it. That in a sense should be only half of looking at the mixer. The other half is this watch I'm going to do. I'm going to turn that off. Alright? Now alright, perhaps I shouldn't have done that. I should have had the volumes down before turning anything off because you did hear a click through the speaker. But you'll notice the mixer is still on.
Now this is what you want to do. Turn the trims up virtually all the way to the top. Now have a listen. What I'm listening for is any crackling or sound through the speakers. If you've got a bit of a that should tell you that these sliders, faders or more commonly known in the let's say electrical trade as pots. If you hear sound it means that they're starting to wear away and that's what you don't want to hear. You want to hear nothing. Do the same here with your low, your mid, your high, your EQ and also the gain, the trim. Also master volume. More importantly the crossfade because quite often the crossfade will be the first thing to start to wear away. So you don't want to hear any nasty sounds there. Also when you're playing music you want to make sure that when the crossfade is on,
The left hand side you don't hear anything from the right hand side. When the crossfade is on the right hand side you don't want to hear anything from the left hand side. Now mainly this video is about playing with the mixer without any music. Make sure there's music, the music is able to go through the mixer. In other words try first with some sounds. Take the sounds off and then have the mixer set as though it's ready to play some tracks. But do exactly the same. And what you're trying to hear ironically enough is nothing. If you can't hear any crackly or fizzy or poppy sounds then you've probably got yourself a good deal. And also if the particular person selling that mixer for example is selling it for say 100 euros, dollars or pounds, offer them 80. Offer them 70 because they might meet you halfway. So you might end up say just paying 70 for it or you might end up paying say I don't know 75, 80.
Practice and enjoy.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
This video is part of
Related videos
-
WHY Vinyl and WHY Is Now the Time to Go Old School
He admits at the start that this one might annoy people, and some of it should be argued with. The practical half is excellent. The claim…
