FIGURE 10-3 is a close-up of a channel strip from a mixer. These vertical strips are duplicated for every input channel your mixer has. If your mixer supports sixteen channels, your mixer will have sixteen channel strips, identically one after another from left to right. This takes up most of the space on a mixer. These channel strips make up most of the real estate on your mixer. They're also the reason that professional studio consoles are so massive — they contain many, many separate channels.

FIGURE 10-3

Mixer channel strip

From top to bottom you might find these common elements, which are labeled in FIGURE 10-3.

• Aux Section: This is where you mix in effects that are on the auxiliary channels.

• EQ Section: This is where you can adjust the equalization of the sound balance between high and low frequencies of a signal.

• Pan: This knob adjusts where the signal is placed from left to right of the stereo image.

• Mute: This mutes the channel from the main mix.

• Solo: This mutes every other track and solos the selected track or tracks; you can use this on multiple channels to isolate a few signals together.

• Bus Assignment: This sends the selected channel(s) to a bus output and bus fader.

• Channel Gain: This is where you set the volume of each track, using either a rotating knob or a vertical slider; channel gain is used for setting volume levels after you record, not during the recording.