Sound Design Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for sound engineers, producers, editors, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Some of my band mates say that having too many mics/instruments plugged into a mixer has a chance of overpowering the output to the power amp.
I say that the mixer is line level output regardless of the number of inputs being used. Whether there is a single mic only or three mics and four instruments, the mixer will have the same level of output to the power amp.
I'm right, right?
There seems to be some essential misunderstanding of gain staging here.
The output is the sum of the inputs, plus or minus the fader gains.
8 ins, 2 outs with all the faders pushed to the max will distort the outputs, for sure. You probably couldn't achieve the same amount of gain from a single input.
So… you just pull the faders back until everything stays in the green.
