Audio signal flow: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:27, 6 January 2015

Revision as of 19:32, 6 January 2015

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Let's begin by tracing the signal path from the splitter to the audience. The signal leaves the splitter, typically via a multichannel balanced snake cable, and travels to the Front of House position. Here, the still-mic-level signal enters into a microphone preamplifier, which boosts the signal voltage to line level. For this example, the microphone preamplifier is built into a mixing board. It is typical for a mixing board to include a line trim after the preamplifier. This allows the amplitude of the now line-level signal to be adjusted. This may be done for artistic or technical reasons. A typical application for the line trim is attenuating signals that were intentionally amplified too much by the microphone preamplifier. Over amplifying the signal can cause the preamplifier to distort, which can under certain circumstances produce a desirable sound.

After the line trim, the signal is processed by the mixing boardsboard's EQ, filter, compressor, limiter, de-esser, delay, reverb, and any other signal processing features the mixing board has available and that the mix engineer chooses to use. The processed signal is then sent to the mix buss, where it is combined with all the other signals coming from the stage. The balance of signals is controlled by faders.

The mix is then routed to one of the mixing boards outputs, and flows into a loudspeaker controller. This device processes the signal to optimize it for the sound system installed in the performance venue. It then flows into a rack of amplifiers, and then to the speakers.