When you are happy with your recording, (and sometimes even when you're not,) you can add other material, including more recorded tracks and effects, and mix it all down to your liking.
WHAT IS MIXING?
Mixing refers to managing two or more recorded tracks. Most music produced today is mixed from a bunch (sometimes hundreds) of tracks.
Imagine a live show where each instrument is individually miked. Each of these channels has to be mixed together to make a stereo (Left and Right) recording onto a tape recorder, (or a similar device.) Each sound is panned left, right, center, or somewhere in between, and the levels must be appropriate for the musical style. Sometimes filtering is needed to reduce noise, or emphasize (or de-emphasize) a certain tonal range. The Technician needs to make adjustments in real time, and any mistakes might be impossible to repair. This is how it was done for many years, and it's still done this way even in critical recordings by a few top people in the trade.
With advances in tape technology, studios had the advantage of more recording tracks, so that more channels could be recorded at once, and the mix-down could be done later, making practice runs and second chances possible, as well as computer-programmable mixing (used even in the 70's by Steely Dan.) We could now tell a machine that at a particular moment, we want the trumpet turned down just so.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
You can always enjoy the efficiency of live mixing, and even take your recording home at the end of the day, but 492 Cafe also uses two powerful tools to get the most out of a performance, and to maximize post-production opportunities.
Console...
The Console accepts up to twenty-four microphones, (plus 24 alternate "B" inputs.) It provides each channel with various routing options to send the signals where they are needed. Each channel has a complex version of the familiar bass and treble controls. These channels are mixed into eight channels. (The later Beatles albums were made on 8 channel open reel tape.) and the eight output "bus" feeds the ProTools recorder.
Pro Tools LE...
ProTools is the industry standard technology by Avid, (the system most used by Hollywood movie Producers.) ProTools LE is basically a high-tech studio in a box with eight channels in and out.
In ProTools, we see the tracks, usually as waves. We can cut and move the sound as desired, add effects, and even run MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface...ask a musician) functions.
Most of the functions of the console are available here with a tremendous advantage... they can all be programmed! Each track can be programmed to change loudness, making simple mixing almost "foolproof." So also can other functions, such as filters and effects.
MIXING EXAMPLES
Speech: These examples are mixed. For example, all audience sounds were recorded, and later mixed as appropriate so that you will hear audience responses, but you will not hear random noise from those microphones. Particularly in the Fisk audience questions section, lots of tricks were employed to make the best of the audience mic track, which was a "feed" from M.I.T.'s Technicians. One complication was that the feed also contained an inferior duplication of Fisk's voice. (Compared to my own podium mic.)
Music: These tracks make extensively use of automated mixing. each recorded track for each microphone has dozens to hundreds of adjustments in one song.