Mixers/Consoles - 2 boards?

[hyperbuddha]

Our school usually uses a mackie vlz24-4 to run our twelve bodymics, sound cues (a computer) and various other mics. I recently found a (fairly) old soundcraft spirit live 4. I was wondering what the best way to plug the soundcraft into the mackie is so that another student can run the cues and other mics while I run the 12 bodymics on the mackie.

Thank you so much

[museav]

That all depends on how you are using it. It is pretty simple if all you have is a single mono or stereo house feed, it gets more complex if you use aux sends for anything.

Are you considering splitting the mics because you don't have enough inputs on the 24.4 or to split the operation? If the latter, is there a reason you can't do that on one mixer?

[headcrab]

Run signal out of the main outs on the soundcraft into the mackie. If you use the 1/4" jacks on the soundcraft, run that into either single channel line inputs or a stereo input on the Mackie. Pretty much any output on the Soundcraft into any input on the Mackie board should work. Just be careful that you don't feed a line level signal into a jack designed for mic level.

[jkowtko]

I think more commonly of having the vocal board feed into the "other stuff" board, primarily because vocals are usually mono so you won't have to worry about stereo effects and audio sources, etc until you're on the main board.

Another interesting thing you can do -- if you aren't planning to set up vocal mix groups -- is to divide your vocal channels based on EQ needs (i.e. females vs males, ear-mount vs forehead mount) and run each EQ type out a different bus into its own input channel on the main board. This will give you the equivalent of group EQ capability.

[museav]

If you are using aux sends for monitors, recording, ALS, etc. then you need other inputs for those. In some situations you may not end up reducing the inputs to the main mixer as much as you thought you would.

In all cases you are probably making mixing a bit more complex, in effect adding an interim step for many sources. For example adjusting an output fader on the Soundcraft will affect all associated pre and post fader levels on the Mackie while adjusting the related input channel fader on the Mackie will not affect any pre fade sends. So adjusting the output of the Soundcraft or the directly related input on the Mackie may seem the same but can actually have a different effect, something you have to think about when making adjustments to either.

I would also say that vocals often feed effects, vary more (or are more susceptible to unexpected variations) and are more prone to feedback, thus more direct mixing and fewer stacked gain stages might be obtained by mixing the most critical inputs on the main mixer. But it all depends on the application.