The main reason is if you want to use more than two channels at once - for adding in samples, scratching, acapellas or whatever else.
But a lot of people who just stick to mixing 2 tracks together still prefer to play on a 4 channel mixer for various reasons... it saves a little bit of effort with switching between phono/line, also if the level from your CD decks is a bit lower or higher than that coming from your decks you may not want to have to make large adjustments to the gain/EQ every time you switch between formats. It also allows you to cue tracks up a track in advance... so you could have a track playing, cue the next track up and if you've got time you can then start cueing the next track up after that to save yourself some time later to use fx etc.
It's also quite useful to have the flexibility of using a separate mixer channel to return fx through from an external fx unit instead of using the mixer's normal fx send/return loop (if it's got one) as that lets you EQ the sound post-fx, gives you a channel fader to control the fx level with and also lets you use the crossfader with the effected sound.
Before anyone gets pedantic, although I realise technically the word 'effected' doesn't exist as the verbial form of 'effect' is 'affect', as I'm talking about the application of an 'effects unit' here, it does just about wind up being correct grammar. Thank you.
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Stu Cox |
Dec-06-2006 16:11
Stu Cox
Supreme smackaddict
Registered: Mar 2003
Location: Southampton, UK
Re: Re: what is the point of 4 channel mixers
quote:
Originally posted by dj_kane
that would be annoying if like me you use turntables and cdjs together so i need all four channels.
Or 4 CDJs together, as will be the case for me when I've bought the CDJ1000 I'm currently planning to invest in
Originally posted by the_gamemaster
How come more people dont just use a 2 channel mixer and switch between phono and line in?
That's cool but if you have 2 x vinyl or 2 x CDJ you can't add Ableton or whatever to a 2 channel mixer
Dec-06-2006 16:56
david.michael
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Sep 2003
Location: Dayton, OH, USA
quote:
Originally posted by Stu Cox Before anyone gets pedantic, although I realise technically the word 'effected' doesn't exist as the verbial form of 'effect' is 'affect', as I'm talking about the application of an 'effects unit' here, it does just about wind up being correct grammar. Thank you.
nice
Dec-06-2006 17:30
ivanbee
Supreme tranceaddict
Registered: Aug 2005
Location: -
4 turntables for the muthafuckin win!
Dec-06-2006 19:14
SgtFoo
Ableton & ProTools addict
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Vaughan, Canada
say for example you have a 2 channel mixer and 3 sources.... 1 cdj, 2 tt.
you have a record playing music and then you mix into a cd and then you wanna mix into a record, but the cdj is on the channel of the playing record... you have no choice... you can either swap the cables real quick or be forced to play another record so you can free up the cd input for the next one.