Fill The Room · The practice desk

Run sound with no sound

Every source behaves the way that instrument really behaves — a kick is loud and steady, a quiet singer is low and moves around — and the meters, the clipping and the feedback all follow from the numbers you set. Set the gain wrong here and it goes wrong for the same reason it would in a room.

This is why you do not need to own equipment to start. Thirty-three of the forty-seven lessons in the audio tier run on paper or on this desk, and this page works on a phone. You can fail on it safely, which is the point.

MAIN—

Module 1 · the signal path — tap any channel

What to do with it

Three drills, and they map onto the modules.

Module 1

Signal path

Tap a channel and read the nine steps from the source to the room. Mute it and watch where the path dies. Module 1 →

Module 4

Gain structure

Press start, then set every channel until it reads GOOD. Push one until it clips. Pull one until it reads LOW and watch yourself chase it with the fader. Module 4 →

Module 5

Feedback

Put a monitor send up on a vocal channel that already has a lot of gain. The desk will ring, and it will tell you which channel and why. Module 5 →