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[Justice C. Bigler]

If you have inserted the Dugan channels post fader there is not much else to do. The only other real control is weighting which can change the relationship between the mics, giving more "weight" to certain mics.

Mac

What is the effective difference of inserting them pre or post fader? I think I have them set as pre fader right now, and each channel as an equal weighting of 0.

[Jordan Wolf]

What is the effective difference of inserting them pre or post fader? I think I have them set as pre fader right now, and each channel as an equal weighting of 0.

Justice,

Post-fader gives you control of contributions to the automix...since it's meant for speech, I'll use the example of someone sneezing/coughing - you can pull that mic out of the Automix, and it will not allocate gain to that mic until you restore it to the mix.


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[Justice C. Bigler]

Post-fader gives you control of contributions to the automix...since it's meant for speech, I'll use the example of someone sneezing/coughing - you can pull that mic out of the Automix, and it will not allocate gain to that mic until you restore it to the mix.

So what is it doing if it's set to prefader?


Which way do you think would be better for an orchestra playing Tchaikovsky?

[Mac Kerr]

What is the effective difference of inserting them pre or post fader? I think I have them set as pre fader right now, and each channel as an equal weighting of 0.

They really should be post fader. If they are prefader the mic still changes the automix even if you have taken the mic out of the mix. By being postfader not only are you protected from muted mics affecting the other mics in the Dugan, but by mixing the mics for a balanced mix you are also getting the weighting right.

Mac

[Hayden J. Nebus]

Have you tried grouping similar channels into multiple gain pools on the Dugan? (Little a/b/c buttons)

This essentially turns the unit into2 or 3 independent automixers.

If you group the gain pools by section you might run less risk of a louder source hijacking the mix.

[Justice C. Bigler]

Have you tried grouping similar channels into multiple gain pools on the Dugan? (Little a/b/c buttons)

This essentially turns the unit into2 or 3 independent automixers.

If you group the gain pools by section you might run less risk of a louder source hijacking the mix.

No, I haven't done that. Didn't even notice the a/b/c buttons.


But we're up and open now, and it seems to be working. So I'm not going to change anything now. I'm already past thinking about Nutcracker and thinking about the symphony recording I have to finish this weekend.

[brian maddox]

They really should be post fader. If they are prefader the mic still changes the automix even if you have taken the mic out of the mix. By being postfader not only are you protected from muted mics affecting the other mics in the Dugan, but by mixing the mics for a balanced mix you are also getting the weighting right.

Mac

To expand a bit on what Mac is saying here.  By inserting postfader you are able to essentially change the 'weighting' of each microphone simply by adjusting the fader level.  Since we tend to want to turn up what we can't quite hear and turn down what is too loud, this ends up being extremely intuitive in practice.

One thing you will notice though is that your mixing moves are more exaggerated.  That's because when you turn up one of the channels, the automixer essentially 'turns down' all the others.  The net result is that very minute fader changes with have significantly more impact.  I actually find this behavior to be a major benefit.  Since the amount of fader travel necessary to make an impactful change is minimized, i am able to make MUCH quicker adjustments on the fly. 

I've not tried to use a Dugan in an orchestral setting, but i would suspect that it could be very effective.  That being said, the Dugan algorithm is going to naturally exaggerate volume differences between instruments, so this would only work well with an orchestra that is well disciplined in it's volume changes to begin with.  To put it another way, if that one oboe solo is just a tiny bit too loud acoustically, the Dugan is gonna make it seem even louder.

In summary, i've found the Dugan has become an almost essential part of my toolkit in recent years.  But like all tools, it takes some time to really get proficient with it.

[Justice C. Bigler]

Our orchestra is pretty well behaved. They have a good conductor, and all know the music really well since they have all been playing it for umpteen years. And my mixing for these shows is pretty tame. I usually set a good balance and let the orchestra make the big volume changes. I might push up the over all volume a bit during the fighting scene, but other than that I don't really do a lot of mixing for the show. My main thing is I want to hear all of the voices, the inner parts: 2nd violin, viola, the bassoons, etc...Not just the 1st violins, trumpets and piccolo and celesta.

I've found the Dugan automixer to help cut down on some of the extraneous noise from having 14 mics open at once, and also lets me push the overall volume a bit higher without hitting feedback, which the Artistic Director likes since he is almost deaf any way. This Dugan experiment was just that. An experiment to see how it would do and sound with an orchestra, which it seems to sound fine. It's not like there's a bunch of mics that auto mute and unmute every few notes, it's actually very subtle. I don't know if Dan Dugan has any thoughts on using his automixer for music versus speech, etc... or if he think a different algorithm would be beneficial to music, but so far it seems to work fine.

I guess I'm still not super clear on what the effective difference is between running prefade and post fade for the auto mixer inserts. When I swapped everything to post fade I may have heard a slight change in the overall sound or volume, but not quite sure how to describe it. Maybe the post fade is a little bit cleaner/tighter?


(PS, Brian, are you bmaddox over on the Smoking Meat Forums?)

[Mac Kerr]

I guess I'm still not super clear on what the effective difference is between running prefade and post fade for the auto mixer inserts. When I swapped everything to post fade I may have heard a slight change in the overall sound or volume, but not quite sure how to describe it. Maybe the post fade is a little bit cleaner/tighter?

The big difference is when you bring the fader down. If the Dugan is prefader when you bring a fader down that channel is still part of the automix control channel. If a musician hits a mic that is down all the open mics will go down in level. If the Dugan is postfade that won't happen.

Mac

[brian maddox]

(PS, Brian, are you bmaddox over on the Smoking Meat Forums?)

I'm not.  But now I want to be.  😀

Smoking Meat forum?  That's what I'm talking about!

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