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Recording Mixing Console
Any device used to combine multiple inputs to a single channel of recording media, or to re-combine multiple channels of audio into a lesser number of potentially final channels.
Recording mixers started as simple passive devices, such as the one used by Contemporary Records, through which the combining of up to 6 microphone inputs was done passively into two outputs and the microphone amplification was performed at the 2-channel input stage of tubed Ampex tape recorders. These days, its not uncommon to find nearly 100 programmable/recallable channels of electronics combined into a stereo or 5.1 mix.
Its also quite common now to bypass the device altogether and perform the combination of dozens of “virtual” channels in a DAW all through what is termed the “mix buss”, in reality a complex synthesis of selected existing digitally-represented waveforms into another more complex digital waveform. While called a mix, this is in fact a re-synthesis, a re-calculation. There are varying opinions as to how this re-synthesis measures up against a mix done in the analog domain.
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