This week we had a lab practical. The goal was to correctly patch, and get signal and other outboard effects to different tracks through the board. We were responsible for getting a drum mix, and vocal track through the board and into Protools. Compression of the kick, snare, and toms was required using 4 compressors: the 2 Distressors and the 2 Millenia. Reverb on the vocals using the Lexicon PCM91, and a second reverb on the snare using the SPX90. I started by looking at the output path selector on the digital channel strip in the computer, and made sure the outputs were set to what I wanted. There were seven overall tracks, so outputs A1-A7 were used. I patched out of Protools on the patchbay, and into Line 1 inputs, Channels 18-24. Over on the channel strips on the board, I set the faders at unity gain, and pressed in the Line 1 and Mix buttons at the top by the mix bus. To get the kick, snare and toms compressed, I patched the signal out of channel insert sends into the respective outboard gear, and patched out of the gear into channel insert returns. Now all instruments that needed compression had it. Reverb was next, and since it is a Send, I used the AUX sends. I patched the Lexicon into AUX 1 and the SPX90 into AUX 2. Do to this properly, patch the AUX sends to the inputs of the effects processors, and out of the processors into the echo returns section of the patchbay, and turned up echo return faders 1 and 2. On the channel strips themselves, in the auxiliary section, I dialed in the reverb signal on the rotary pots (Aux2 for the snare, and Aux1 for the vocals). I felt I did all of this rather quickly, and without any confusion as to where the signal flow was being routed. This week in labs, we started on mixing RawTracks 3, and this is a more fun song than the last two. I also noticed something right off the bat about this tune. In listening to it, I am very impressed with the way that this song was tracked, much better than the previous 2 we had been working on. There is great isolation of all instruments through the miking, and very little bleed. Gates will work really well for most of the drum tracks, while they won’t be necessary on others. We started by properly naming and grouping the tracks, and giving the song a complete listen through before we began cleaning up the tracks and editing. Next week we will start EQing and processing tracks for 2 mono and 2 stereo mixes, one of each in the box and out of the box.