Recording - October 2012 - 68

In last month’s installment of Fundamentals, I discussed the path of an audio signal as it travels from a sound source through a preamp and to an audio recorder, through the various stages of a professional audio console. Continuing on, this month’s chapter investigates the signal’s route back from the recorder and through the console’s monitor path toward the control room loudspeakers.

During mixing, however, only a single path is typically required. The reason for this is obvious: there is no need to send a signal to a recorder when you are simply mixing what has already been recorded. Why is it important for you to understand the differences between record and monitor paths? Because signal-flow problems occur in almost every recording session. Murphy and his law seem to always show up just when the highpriced session guitarist is about to play the best solo ever. When searching out a problem, effective troubleshooting requires the quick elimination of unrelated signal stages. For example, if you cannot hear a microphone in the control room monitors, yet you see its signal on the recorder’s meters, you can eliminate the record path from your troubleshooting. The problem has to occur on the monitor path because you know the signal has made it as far as the recorder. The monitor path starts at the recorder. Just to state the obvious, a recorder is any device that records and plays back audio: a tape machine, a computer-based DAW (digital audio workstation), or a standalone workstation. In traditional studios, the recorder is often an independent entity patched to a mixing console. In today’s digital studios, however, the console is often virtual, coded into the same DAW software that contains the recorder. For the sake of understanding signal flow, it is best to imagine the mixing section of your workstation as separate from the integrated recorder. Keeping things isolated in your mind engenders greater troubleshooting skills, and teaches you how to work with more flexibility when moving to a traditional studio environment. By Eric Ferguson

Chapter 10: Signal Flow Part 2
“Two paths diverged in a console...” (apologies to Robert Frost) Here’s a critical audio concept that must be understood: During tracking there are always two separate signal paths. The first, which I call the record path, was discussed last month, and includes every stage encountered on the way from source to the recorder. The second, commonly called the monitor path, entails all signal stages encountered between the recorder and listening devices such as loudspeakers and headphones. In all recording scenarios, regardless of the complexity of the equipment involved, these two separate paths exist in one manifestation or another. Monitoring modes Regarding signal flow, all audio recorders offer the same two operational modes. A recorder can either play back previously recorded material, or it can pass the signal present at its inputs to its outputs. The concept is simple: when you want to hear what has been recorded, the recorder must be in playback or repro (reproduce) mode. When getting sounds

Figure 1: On a split console (left), record-path and monitor-path channels occupy different parts of the mixer layout. An inline console (right) saves space but increases complexity by putting both sets of controls and I/O into the same channel strips.
68

RECORDING October 2012

Recording - October 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - October 2012