A BRITISH company, Optical Techniques of Thame in Oxfordshire, has filed
a European patent application (310 456) on an idea to use a desktop personal
computer as the nerve centre for a recording studio’s mixing desk.
Music studios use dozens of microphones. They feed sound signals to
a control desk which mixes them together into a stereo pair of left and
right channels. A recording engineer balances the mix of the sound.
In a conventional mixing desk, all the signals pass through individual
control units. In the new system, each control unit is connected to the
next, in a ‘daisy chain’. As a first sound signal – for instance from a
trumpet – enters the chain, its level and tone are controlled. The signal
then passes to the next control unit where it mixes with a second sound
signal – for instance a saxophone. The mix of saxophone and trumpet then
passes on down the chain until all the sounds are mixed together to emerge
as a composite sound signal.
The benefit is that where several channels receive similar sounds, like
voices from a choir, they can all be processed in the same way. Where the
sounds coming in are all different, they can be treated differently.
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