Mixing audio channels

[Rough Draft]

 I've used the Voice meter mixer for a while to mix my sound from my mic, voice chat and game but what I've found is that adjusting my sounds while streaming is quite annoying. What I want to do is to keep my audio on seperate channels and then have "mixer" that I can manually change the volume of those channels as I need. Sort of like the "mix amps" that astro / turutle beach do but instead of 2 audio channels I need more like 3 or 4. Really trying to step up my audio game here I'm just not sure if I'm on the right track or not.

 

Would something like the "Yamaha MG06 6-Input Compact Stereo Mixer" accomplish this? 

 

[WereCat]

I was thinking about getting something like that as well. 

I have my eyes out on this one https://www.tc-helicon.com/goxlrmini#googtrans(en|en) 

[Rough Draft]

10 hours ago, WereCat said:

I was thinking about getting something like that as well. 

I have my eyes out on this one https://www.tc-helicon.com/goxlrmini#googtrans(en|en) 

That's exactly the type of thing I'm looking for. Nice to have XLR with Phantom power so I can ditch the separate mic preamp and the usb interface rather then a bunch of wires. Only thing is it's quite expensive compared to some of the other "mixers" I've been looking at. That said, I'm not sure how to setup another mixer with multiple "outputs" like I want and this just does that for you. I've tried learning some of this stuff but short of just buying shit and dicking around I just find myself confused and frustrated. 

 

In the end this very well may be what I go with.

[Kisai]

22 minutes ago, Rough Draft said:

 I've used the Voice meter mixer for a while to mix my sound from my mic, voice chat and game but what I've found is that adjusting my sounds while streaming is quite annoying. What I want to do is to keep my audio on seperate channels and then have "mixer" that I can manually change the volume of those channels as I need. Sort of like the "mix amps" that astro / turutle beach do but instead of 2 audio channels I need more like 3 or 4. Really trying to step up my audio game here I'm just not sure if I'm on the right track or not.

 

Would something like the "Yamaha MG06 6-Input Compact Stereo Mixer" accomplish this? 

 

Yes, you can do something like that. 

 

The important part is that you use the "line in" on the pc, not "microphone in".

However that might be super-overkill if you're not mixing music. You will need a few mono 1/4" jack-to-RCA connectors to connect it the PC's stereo line-in.

 

If you're just mixing channels from the same PC (eg the game plays on the speakers output, but you want to mix it with the microphone on the mixer and then send it back on the line-in) you may get a feedback problem, so you will not be able to monitor the sound from the PC, you will need to use the headset jack as well on the mixer.

 

My opinion however is that this setup is overkill because you're not dealing with equally expensive music/speech microphones. You may want to instead see if you can just map the mixer controls to another HID device or use something like auto-hotkey with it. If you prefer the analog mixer setup, there is nothing wrong with it, but without quality cables, you might induces a lot more noise to it.

 

[Rough Draft]

8 hours ago, Kisai said:

My opinion however is that this setup is overkill because you're not dealing with equally expensive music/speech microphones. You may want to instead see if you can just map the mixer controls to another HID device or use something like auto-hotkey with it. If you prefer the analog mixer setup, there is nothing wrong with it, but without quality cables, you might induces a lot more noise to it.

 

Yes I figured it would be overkill, but I'm really just looking for a practical way to have physical control over my different audio channels. If there is a more "consumer" level mixer that could accomplish this, I'd go with that. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Rough Draft said:

Yes I figured it would be overkill, but I'm really just looking for a practical way to have physical control over my different audio channels. If there is a more "consumer" level mixer that could accomplish this, I'd go with that. 

Alesis MultiMix 4 FX USB is about the same price or less and has a USB connection. So that can save a few analog conversions, YMMV though. 

 

[The Flying Sloth]

Honestly you could probably find a way to map the controls from a USB midi keyboard to volume of different channels, I use my M-audio Oxygen 61 faders for doing exactly that in other workloads.
Other than that, I'm not sure why you're doing this in the first place, if you're streaming you should be able to find levels that work and just keep them there unless I'm really missing something. In reality, pressing Windows+G and changing levels is just about the most painfree way to change levels without messing with hardware options.

Sloth