Curious about modular synthesis, electronic music, and sound design, but unsure how to get started? I have something for you! Join my FREE "Intro to Synthesis" mini course here: www.soundandsynthesis.com/firstpatch2022 PS: You don't need any special gear to do this-just a computer with VCV Rack (which is free to download).
I got to spend some time with the originator of 'No Input Mixing Board', Toshimaru Nakamura at a festival we both played a few years back. I was surprised that in 20+ years of performing and touring with the instrument he only recently was on his second Mackie. They are really built to last even when abused so heavily. His two performances for the festival were beautiful and subtle.
Hey Sarah, lovely tutorial! I also perform with no-input mixer. One little trick that I had been exploring lately is to only put in the patch cable in the input about halfway, it opens up to a whole lot of different sounds! Another thing I had been doing is using a cable connected from output to my palm, the amount of contact to my palm would change the sound.
This is like discovering a beautiful uncrowded beach with clear blue water and one cool bar selling great beer very cheaply. Hmm.. I need to work on my similes. THANKS SARAH!
Funky sounds! I never would have thought this was possible. As a guitarist I only ever used a sound mixer to control volume and prevent noise, so this technique seems straight out of bizarro-land…but you make it seem fun. ❤ 🇨🇦❤️
This is so cool! Never in a million years would I have guessed that you could do this with a mixer. This sounds like some trippy old school sci-fi movie sound effects.
No Input Mixing is amazing. I just started making videos of my own stuff. I have a small Phonic mixer, and the sounds generated by the mixer feedback are superb.
Very interesting video! This technique is used a lot by Japanese noise artists. I guess you can also includes effect pedals in the feedback loops and get even more crazy sounds.
certainly, also try adding just one randomly generated sound source into one channel, bringing it in and out of the mix through various routes to give the feeling of coehesion to a performance.
I had no idea this was a thing! I really want to try this out. Thanks for the great tutorial, I will definitely watch this video again when I get my hands on a mixer.
Thank you so much for this tutorial! I cannot believe I waited all these years to try this practice! I cannot believe how little one has to do with the mixer to generate such astonishing sounds -- where the hell are they really coming from?
Really interesting video and so well explained! As a guitarist you can do something similar using a pedal with mono input and stereo outputs. Sending one of the outputs to the input and using the other output as your monitoring. Things get crazy when you put more pedals in the feedback loop.
Ok I know this is gonna sound like a bit, but I swear to god this is the honest truth: NIMB was one of my most cherished albums when I was a teenager. I remember dreaming of having my own set-up one day. A moment of nostalgia came up on me today and I wondered if anyone was doing something like this. Thanks for making such a good intro video, this is really helpful.
Ok this is totally cool, I have experiences with Mackie boards from my video production days many years ago. I love how you're explaining and showing all of this. What's funny is that what your doing in terms of creating a feedback loop (patching) is what I was absolutely avoiding with my prior audio and video production experience....little did I know then what world existed at my finger tips...total fields of diamonds. Totally worth watching this video, I hope to be one of your future students.
Haha, totally! These techniques definitely go against what you're "supposed" to do with these tools. I remember the first time I got some accidental mic feedback onstage during a sound check and realized I could control the pitch of the feedback by changing the position of my valves on my trumpet... the sound engineer was pretty reluctant to "let me keep the feedback" but in the end it turned into something beautiful!
Using these ideas with modular is always great fun too. Feedback loops with filters in the path, etc. Crazy thing is, you can also do this in a DAW mixer, especially if you include something really transformative like an amp simulator in the middle of the loop.
Wow, what a wild idea! I'm incredibly new to making music, and this concept gives me all kinds of ideas, and makes me very excited to get started experimenting. Thank you for sharing with us!
Also, here's a double tap self reply for the algo-engage-metric gods. This just made me realise I can make a chaos engine instrument with gear I already had. What a wonderful discovery!
I have a destructor patch box it runs into a PCM slot on certain Roland products...I have mine hooked to my Roland u220 modular synth...once I start patching it can get crazy loud...I love how this works and will be trying.... So cool to see a woman doing this... Haven't found any interested in any experimental music .. keep it up...
Sarah, thanks for doing this walk-through! I've only just recently started experimenting with no input mixing, so having someone walk me through the basics is immensely helpful and encouraging. I'd love to see more patch walkthrough demonstrations in the future! One thing I wanted to add in regard to the inherent danger of damaging your monitors due to the extremely hot output of your mixer: I've found that running the signal through a compressor before it reaches the audio interface is a great way to ensure that your levels don't exceed what be you're comfortable listening to or feeding to your monitors. I use an Alesis Nanocompressor, and it's perfectly effective at maintaining a safe volume level. It's an older unit, and can be found used for $30-$40.
Thank you very much. You've just opened a new world of possibilities to me. It reminds me of a one time experiment I made by mistake, with a friend, with an fm radio plugged in a feedback way , that made the antenna work like a theramin. Thank you for this fascinating lesson in "no input mixing". A modular analog synth for free ... Great !
great explainer works for different levels of experience. also, i am reminded of birdsong by the stochastic nature of the performances here, unpredictable repetition, so to speak. very interesting and makes me want to bring my old mackie second mixer up from the basement and dig around for short cables.
This is the very first time, that i come to an awareness that there is such a thing as no input mixing.. I was looking for some regular review on a mixer. And it hits me, with all the fun and the beauty of it.. And so many questions, that occured instantly were answered by you in such a comprehensable and enjoyable manner. Thank you !! You have put a smile on my face today :) And you are a beauty yourself ;]
Inspiring.. It really is.. It will take me some time, to hear and see all that crazyamazing stuff you do.. But meanwhile, I have brought back my old Yamaha MD4 from its R. I. P. in the basement, since the TOC read died.. AND it is perfect for that purpose.. (lots of channel-switches)... I had an amazing time with my very first No-input-mix... Just two connections, with aux return L into channel 1, and aux send into channel 2.. Remembered to turn down the headphone volume, aaaaand.. Nothing happened.. It took me some time to explore and find the sound.. But when I got it, oh boy that was a fun trip .. Well, sorry to bore you out on my tiny little step into your galaxy.. But I'm very happy and thankful for the unexpected journey, so I wanted you to know, how inspirational your work is!! Lots of love.. Kazik
I have the VLZ4. Always have had fun playing around with it like this. I would also say that doing so can teach one how to achieve cleaner analog mixes as well. By learning what will create feedback tones on a mixer, you can learn to avoid those when do don't want those sounds to intrude on your mix.
I seen you Sarah, I caught you. You were dancing Sarah, you were dancing to that music haha 😄 Love it. I'm being silly ofcourse, so expertly done and explained- you make that Mackie sound really nice/good. I wonder if the quality of the mixer effects the results or if its just down to feature set.
3 года назад+1
I love doing this! I 1st did this with a rotten old peavey board in 1999 at noise show in Cleveland. but I had a delay or 2 the patch.
Thanks for the explanation. Unbelievably I had this mixer or very similar years ago and never occurred to me to route it into itself. Think I'll pick up another one just for this purpose. Thanks 👍🏻
Thank you for this great explanation. I had no idea this was possible. I have an unused Mackie mixer that I will now turn into an experimental instrument (just need to get a bunch of short patch cables).
Oh wow. This is really awesome! I used to have a similar setup, but I had a couple of sine wave generators that I bought off of ebay that could produce frequencies above the audible range. It's so much fun to fiddle with knobs and all of a sudden, bam, you've got a rhythm. Have you ever incorporated the channel inserts? It doesn't look like that mixer has pre-fader switches, but you could use the input from one channel as the line insert for another, though you'd have to split one of those balanced cables into dual outputs. At any rate, love what you're doing, I ran across your channel when I was vetting the morph, and you definitely make a good pitch for them.
I love this stuff. It reminds me of Bebe and Louis Barrons Forbidden Plant soundtrack. I’ve always wanted to try it, but I’m scared of damaging my mixer. I might see if I can track don’t an old second hand VLZ or something for cheap.
Sarah, you are an inspiration. I only know you from the virtual rack side but this is what I have been experimenting with, too. Can I ask you this? The level of the final output signal is so random, it wants smoothing out. Sometimes the squealing sound breaks through at a really high volume. How can I prevent this happening? Like some external hardware, or a pedal? How do you guarantee the safety of your listeners? Thank you so much. D
Sounds like a good way to make custom ring tones (like on 16:20) and "forget" to silence your phone during boring meetings, to really annoy your boss! 😂🤣
This was a nice surprise coming from a random search. I've seen a few videos pop up on using guitar pedals as video effects, have you ever went down that rabbit hole?
My synth has an external input on its back, i used to feed the outputs back to it creating nice reverb, overdrive and some etheral tones, its just marvellous
Shit, now I really want to let my drum machine rip through that patch to just disintegrate those drums. But there is no way im trying that on my Zed. You just helped someone sell their old mixer.
Dam I just found out about this.. I have a little 6track mixer gonna try this ..always wanted to try modular synthesis so this is definitely cool if I come up with anything I'm going record it in the Tuscam and maybe add some stuff from the keyboard and sampler
I made this soundscape a while ago using my ms20 mini synth and some weird feedback routing, and it sounded like some of techniques used in no input mixing. now that I know about no input mixing I'm tempted to make an even more complex setup of feedbacks with my ms20 mini.
The first time I saw someone do this was when I saw the metal band Chimera open for Fear Factory. To be honest, at the time, I didn't get it. I don't know if it was getting lost in the mix/context of the band. After seeing a few of these videos, now, I'm starting to see some potential in the realm of sound design, and breaking into modular synthesis.
Did you notice that actually the Mackie mixer has symmetric connectors? That means that by feeding the headphone out via „stereo“ cable into a line in, you're getting the left headphone channel mixed with the phase-inverted right headphone channel. This probably gives the panning knob a different kind of twist.
I stumbled into the no input thing a while ago. And since I can’t afford ciat lombarde or soma labs stuff this is probably the way to go for the quirky and unexpected. For that reason I bought my first mixer today. 50 bucks and looking forward to it!
Hi Sarah, thank you so much for this amazing tutorial! I am wondering how would you connect a limiter/compressor (dbx 1066) and a digital echo (Alesis Quadraverb 2) to the mixer and before two monito speakers (Yamaha HS7)?
Very cool video. I would be concerned a little with cooking internal components over time, specifically input transformers and accompanying components as I have witnessed feedback loops killing vintage mixer circuits in a Tascam M-308 for example... but maybe that wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe a Mackie 1604 could be a good option as there is a lot of routing options as it can accommodate a multitrack tape set up i.e. in-line or rudimentary in-line... but has direct outs etc... and lots of aux returns and sends...
On vintage gear with high ratio step up transformer, possibly yes. But modetn analog mixers all use very low level audio level voltages with passive circuits. Only when things get amplified is when it could get out of hand. The headphone(amplfied) out back into a line level circuit...maybe? Chances are low.
Hey Sarah! Love the video - does it make sense to bring a limiter to a show in order to save the engineer from riding the fader? Have you done that before?
Hey Sarah, I know you’ve answered this question in the past. This vid is a couple of years old, and I’m wondering if since you made it you’ve heard any anecdotal evidence that a mixer could get fried doing no input. I bought a new 802VLZ4 this week, used it for three days and it just went poof, died on me. I loved the sounds I was getting out of it, would like to get another one. But this experience is making me a little gun shy. Thanks for any info. Watching your vids inspired me to get into this stuff. I wanna keep doing it. 🙂
Hey, I’m sorry to hear this happened - and no, I haven’t heard or experienced anything like this personally. I’m still using this same mackie 1202VLZ3 mixer from years ago and it’s going strong.
thanks!! I have never broken a mixer doing no input mixing. Just be mindful of final output levels to protect your speakers (and ears) as they can be unpredictable
Great video. Brand new viewer and subscriber. Great to see you into this! Looking forward to digging into your other videos to see what else is in store for me.
Curious about modular synthesis, electronic music, and sound design, but unsure how to get started?
I have something for you! Join my FREE "Intro to Synthesis" mini course here: www.soundandsynthesis.com/firstpatch2022
PS: You don't need any special gear to do this-just a computer with VCV Rack (which is free to download).
I got to spend some time with the originator of 'No Input Mixing Board', Toshimaru Nakamura at a festival we both played a few years back. I was surprised that in 20+ years of performing and touring with the instrument he only recently was on his second Mackie. They are really built to last even when abused so heavily. His two performances for the festival were beautiful and subtle.
He isnt even in the first 1000 to do it tho?
Hey Sarah, lovely tutorial! I also perform with no-input mixer. One little trick that I had been exploring lately is to only put in the patch cable in the input about halfway, it opens up to a whole lot of different sounds! Another thing I had been doing is using a cable connected from output to my palm, the amount of contact to my palm would change the sound.
I would guess that the frequency response is different when using balance and unbalanced connection patching.
Toshimaru Nakamura brought me here. Thank you so much for explaining this!
I went from here back to Toshimaru (we're in a loop)
Thank you for the best no-input mixer tutorial video. I will share it with my students
My pleasure and thanks for sharing!
This is like discovering a beautiful uncrowded beach with clear blue water and one cool bar selling great beer very cheaply.
Hmm.. I need to work on my similes.
THANKS SARAH!
Perfect for noise music. Great vid👍
It's funny how calming and relaxed you are given the wild, chaotic, experimental sounds of the techniques you're using. Not the expected energy!
Funky sounds! I never would have thought this was possible. As a guitarist I only ever used a sound mixer to control volume and prevent noise, so this technique seems straight out of bizarro-land…but you make it seem fun. ❤ 🇨🇦❤️
This is the best tutorial that I have ever seen on this subject.
Thank you.
You’re welcome! Thanks for watching.
This is so cool! Never in a million years would I have guessed that you could do this with a mixer. This sounds like some trippy old school sci-fi movie sound effects.
I didn't know this existed. It's fascinating!
Thanks for sharing
i never knew this existed till a few days ago! now im watching a bunch of stuff on the topic thanks so much
Sara, I really enjoyed this. I'm going to Japan in a bit and discovered a No Input Mixer artist in Japan, now I need to fire up my cheap mixers.
No Input Mixing is amazing. I just started making videos of my own stuff. I have a small Phonic mixer, and the sounds generated by the mixer feedback are superb.
I was just about to get rid of my Mackie CR1604 but this has given me a renewed appreciation!
Very interesting video! This technique is used a lot by Japanese noise artists. I guess you can also includes effect pedals in the feedback loops and get even more crazy sounds.
certainly, also try adding just one randomly generated sound source into one channel, bringing it in and out of the mix through various routes to give the feeling of coehesion to a performance.
I had no idea this was a thing! I really want to try this out. Thanks for the great tutorial, I will definitely watch this video again when I get my hands on a mixer.
Thank you so much for this tutorial! I cannot believe I waited all these years to try this practice! I cannot believe how little one has to do with the mixer to generate such astonishing sounds -- where the hell are they really coming from?
I didn't even know this was a thing. Amazing! After some thought it makes perfect sense but that's insanely cool.
This video blew my effin mind! Thank you for doing it!
Excellent, like this.... I need to sacrifice an old mixer for this.
Really interesting video and so well explained! As a guitarist you can do something similar using a pedal with mono input and stereo outputs. Sending one of the outputs to the input and using the other output as your monitoring. Things get crazy when you put more pedals in the feedback loop.
Hi Sarah, this was a very well-explained and demonstrated video. Thank you!
Thanks! Happy you found it helpful!
Ok I know this is gonna sound like a bit, but I swear to god this is the honest truth: NIMB was one of my most cherished albums when I was a teenager. I remember dreaming of having my own set-up one day. A moment of nostalgia came up on me today and I wondered if anyone was doing something like this. Thanks for making such a good intro video, this is really helpful.
Ok this is totally cool, I have experiences with Mackie boards from my video production days many years ago. I love how you're explaining and showing all of this. What's funny is that what your doing in terms of creating a feedback loop (patching) is what I was absolutely avoiding with my prior audio and video production experience....little did I know then what world existed at my finger tips...total fields of diamonds. Totally worth watching this video, I hope to be one of your future students.
Haha, totally! These techniques definitely go against what you're "supposed" to do with these tools. I remember the first time I got some accidental mic feedback onstage during a sound check and realized I could control the pitch of the feedback by changing the position of my valves on my trumpet... the sound engineer was pretty reluctant to "let me keep the feedback" but in the end it turned into something beautiful!
Using these ideas with modular is always great fun too. Feedback loops with filters in the path, etc. Crazy thing is, you can also do this in a DAW mixer, especially if you include something really transformative like an amp simulator in the middle of the loop.
Never as good as the real thing.
Love this!... brings me back to the 80s in the studio... would do this with a simple tape loop as input. Gotta try Zero! 😎
Tried it on my Behringer UB1204 PRO... awesome! but a little scary... think I need a limiter?
Wow, what a wild idea! I'm incredibly new to making music, and this concept gives me all kinds of ideas, and makes me very excited to get started experimenting. Thank you for sharing with us!
Also, here's a double tap self reply for the algo-engage-metric gods. This just made me realise I can make a chaos engine instrument with gear I already had. What a wonderful discovery!
I have a destructor patch box it runs into a PCM slot on certain Roland products...I have mine hooked to my Roland u220 modular synth...once I start patching it can get crazy loud...I love how this works and will be trying.... So cool to see a woman doing this... Haven't found any interested in any experimental music .. keep it up...
Sarah, thanks for doing this walk-through! I've only just recently started experimenting with no input mixing, so having someone walk me through the basics is immensely helpful and encouraging. I'd love to see more patch walkthrough demonstrations in the future! One thing I wanted to add in regard to the inherent danger of damaging your monitors due to the extremely hot output of your mixer: I've found that running the signal through a compressor before it reaches the audio interface is a great way to ensure that your levels don't exceed what be you're comfortable listening to or feeding to your monitors. I use an Alesis Nanocompressor, and it's perfectly effective at maintaining a safe volume level. It's an older unit, and can be found used for $30-$40.
thanks for watching! happy to hear the video has been helpful for you :) and thanks for the great suggestion!
Thank you very much. You've just opened a new world of possibilities to me. It reminds me of a one time experiment I made by mistake, with a friend, with an fm radio plugged in a feedback way , that made the antenna work like a theramin. Thank you for this fascinating lesson in "no input mixing". A modular analog synth for free ... Great !
You're welcome!
great explainer works for different levels of experience. also, i am reminded of birdsong by the stochastic nature of the performances here, unpredictable repetition, so to speak. very interesting and makes me want to bring my old mackie second mixer up from the basement and dig around for short cables.
This is the very first time, that i come to an awareness that there is such a thing as no input mixing.. I was looking for some regular review on a mixer. And it hits me, with all the fun and the beauty of it.. And so many questions, that occured instantly were answered by you in such a comprehensable and enjoyable manner. Thank you !! You have put a smile on my face today :) And you are a beauty yourself ;]
Thank you!!!
Inspiring.. It really is.. It will take me some time, to hear and see all that crazyamazing stuff you do.. But meanwhile, I have brought back my old Yamaha MD4 from its R. I. P. in the basement, since the TOC read died..
AND it is perfect for that purpose.. (lots of channel-switches)... I had an amazing time with my very first No-input-mix... Just two connections, with aux return L into channel 1, and aux send into channel 2.. Remembered to turn down the headphone volume, aaaaand.. Nothing happened.. It took me some time to explore and find the sound.. But when I got it, oh boy that was a fun trip ..
Well, sorry to bore you out on my tiny little step into your galaxy.. But I'm very happy and thankful for the unexpected journey, so I wanted you to know, how inspirational your work is!! Lots of love.. Kazik
greetings from the "no input ensemble" and thanks a lot for the great demo
you're welcome!
excellent tutorial! Looking forward to sharing this with students.
Thank you so much for this, I've been meaning to find out more about this approach for some time.
The meme thumbnail. Great sense of humour :D Awesome video!
A truly fantastic intro into NIM.
I have the VLZ4. Always have had fun playing around with it like this. I would also say that doing so can teach one how to achieve cleaner analog mixes as well. By learning what will create feedback tones on a mixer, you can learn to avoid those when do don't want those sounds to intrude on your mix.
Another no input explorer here. Easy and informative video. Thank you!
I seen you Sarah, I caught you.
You were dancing Sarah, you were dancing to that music haha 😄 Love it.
I'm being silly ofcourse, so expertly done and explained- you make that Mackie sound really nice/good.
I wonder if the quality of the mixer effects the results or if its just down to feature set.
I love doing this! I 1st did this with a rotten old peavey board in 1999 at noise show in Cleveland. but I had a delay or 2 the patch.
Excellent video and demonstration, very well explained. I had no idea this was a thing.
Thank you and thanks for watching!
TY! very informative, exciting & unlike other videos i've watched, very clear! :-)
Thanks for the explanation. Unbelievably I had this mixer or very similar years ago and never occurred to me to route it into itself. Think I'll pick up another one just for this purpose. Thanks 👍🏻
Awesome video! Great to see such an in depth tutorial on this subject and to hear all of the really beautiful sounds :)
thank you so much :)
Wow thats incredible id love to see how it sounds through some effects and with drums
Thank you for this great explanation. I had no idea this was possible. I have an unused Mackie mixer that I will now turn into an experimental instrument (just need to get a bunch of short patch cables).
You're welcome! I hope your explorations go well! :)
love the marvin hanging in the background. great video!
thank you! and yes - love the marvin :)
Weird I usually plug my Buchla into a mixer with the same results I think I have been burned
Made me chuckle
ha! this is beginner's stuff, I do No Output music instead. How does it sound? who knows :(
I used to be a prolific Non-Producer, but then I became totally immersed in No Output Music and really could not be happier!
shut up😂
This is an excellent demonstration! Thanks!
Oh wow. This is really awesome! I used to have a similar setup, but I had a couple of sine wave generators that I bought off of ebay that could produce frequencies above the audible range. It's so much fun to fiddle with knobs and all of a sudden, bam, you've got a rhythm. Have you ever incorporated the channel inserts? It doesn't look like that mixer has pre-fader switches, but you could use the input from one channel as the line insert for another, though you'd have to split one of those balanced cables into dual outputs. At any rate, love what you're doing, I ran across your channel when I was vetting the morph, and you definitely make a good pitch for them.
How do use the generator with freq above the hearing range in this kind of setup? I have a wavetek from the 1970’s I’d like to use.
Yes mate!! Awesome video! I've had great success using pedals as VCAs also.
I love this stuff. It reminds me of Bebe and Louis Barrons Forbidden Plant soundtrack. I’ve always wanted to try it, but I’m scared of damaging my mixer. I might see if I can track don’t an old second hand VLZ or something for cheap.
Thanks for the tutorial, tried it out on my own Mackie with a zoom pedal and it's pretty amazing!
Sarah Belle Reid I'm actually trying this out in a live setting next week, wish me luck ;)
Amazing demo, thanks!
You're welcome!
Thank you so much. Great video
muy bueno sarah. gracias por la información
Thanks to this video I have saved thousands of pounds by not falling down a modular rabbit hole
Sarah, you are an inspiration. I only know you from the virtual rack side but this is what I have been experimenting with, too. Can I ask you this? The level of the final output signal is so random, it wants smoothing out. Sometimes the squealing sound breaks through at a really high volume. How can I prevent this happening? Like some external hardware, or a pedal? How do you guarantee the safety of your listeners? Thank you so much. D
Oh wow, this is super interesting and so unique! The sounds feel so organic and alive...
oh man, nice to see you here! :D
@@Audhentik This is a nice one!
Sounds like a good way to make custom ring tones (like on 16:20) and "forget" to silence your phone during boring meetings, to really annoy your boss! 😂🤣
Thank You Sarah!
This is SO helpful. Thank you!!!
You're welcome!
Thanks for that! Used to have a 16 channel Mackie, but now just a little Behringer 4 track. Curious though, and I'll give it a try!
This was a nice surprise coming from a random search. I've seen a few videos pop up on using guitar pedals as video effects, have you ever went down that rabbit hole?
clear, in detail explanation. nice:)
and a little marvin in the background!:)(:
thank you!! and yes! love the mini marvin :)
My synth has an external input on its back, i used to feed the outputs back to it creating nice reverb, overdrive and some etheral tones, its just marvellous
that sounds awesome!
@@sarahbellereid it does
Shit, now I really want to let my drum machine rip through that patch to just disintegrate those drums. But there is no way im trying that on my Zed.
You just helped someone sell their old mixer.
what part of "no input" do you not understand lol /s
Dam I just found out about this.. I have a little 6track mixer gonna try this ..always wanted to try modular synthesis so this is definitely cool if I come up with anything I'm going record it in the Tuscam and maybe add some stuff from the keyboard and sampler
Amazing video thanks
Completely ace!!
thanks!
Thank you for this video
I made this soundscape a while ago using my ms20 mini synth and some weird feedback routing, and it sounded like some of techniques used in no input mixing. now that I know about no input mixing I'm tempted to make an even more complex setup of feedbacks with my ms20 mini.
Awesome! I’ve got a 16ch Mackie with the Alt 3/4 outputs which I’ll have to try this out on!
how did your explorations go?
Ah this video is a real gem - thanks for uploading it, I loved your patch examples!
You're welcome and thanks!!
Nice! I did something similar to this, except that I used just an Erica Synths Zen Delay and a Line 6 DL-4.
Awesome! I’ve been experimenting with adding effects into my no input mixer patches, and it’s super cool. Endless fun 🙃
The first time I saw someone do this was when I saw the metal band Chimera open for Fear Factory. To be honest, at the time, I didn't get it. I don't know if it was getting lost in the mix/context of the band. After seeing a few of these videos, now, I'm starting to see some potential in the realm of sound design, and breaking into modular synthesis.
Did you notice that actually the Mackie mixer has symmetric connectors? That means that by feeding the headphone out via „stereo“ cable into a line in, you're getting the left headphone channel mixed with the phase-inverted right headphone channel. This probably gives the panning knob a different kind of twist.
Nice work. + 1 sub. Thank you for the explanation.
You're welcome and thanks for watching!
I stumbled into the no input thing a while ago. And since I can’t afford ciat lombarde or soma labs stuff this is probably the way to go for the quirky and unexpected. For that reason I bought my first mixer today. 50 bucks and looking forward to it!
thank you so much! you are the best
love the sound you have going in this video sound a lot like circuit bending sound
Hi Sarah, thank you so much for this amazing tutorial! I am wondering how would you connect a limiter/compressor (dbx 1066) and a digital echo (Alesis Quadraverb 2) to the mixer and before two monito speakers (Yamaha HS7)?
Very cool video. I would be concerned a little with cooking internal components over time, specifically input transformers and accompanying components as I have witnessed feedback loops killing vintage mixer circuits in a Tascam M-308 for example... but maybe that wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe a Mackie 1604 could be a good option as there is a lot of routing options as it can accommodate a multitrack tape set up i.e. in-line or rudimentary in-line... but has direct outs etc... and lots of aux returns and sends...
On vintage gear with high ratio step up transformer, possibly yes. But modetn analog mixers all use very low level audio level voltages with passive circuits. Only when things get amplified is when it could get out of hand. The headphone(amplfied) out back into a line level circuit...maybe? Chances are low.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for watching!
Awesome! Thank you
Do you have a live performance posted anywhere? Interesting!!
I love you already...!!! was experimenting with this technique this morning, using an old Boss PS3 in the feedback loop .... sweet ... :-)
Great tutorial!
Thank you so much for this post, incredibly interesting and informative!
Hey Sarah! Love the video - does it make sense to bring a limiter to a show in order to save the engineer from riding the fader? Have you done that before?
Super thank you!!!
Hey Sarah, I know you’ve answered this question in the past. This vid is a couple of years old, and I’m wondering if since you made it you’ve heard any anecdotal evidence that a mixer could get fried doing no input. I bought a new 802VLZ4 this week, used it for three days and it just went poof, died on me. I loved the sounds I was getting out of it, would like to get another one. But this experience is making me a little gun shy. Thanks for any info. Watching your vids inspired me to get into this stuff. I wanna keep doing it. 🙂
Hey, I’m sorry to hear this happened - and no, I haven’t heard or experienced anything like this personally. I’m still using this same mackie 1202VLZ3 mixer from years ago and it’s going strong.
Amazing work!!!! Can your mixer broke in doing this?
thanks!! I have never broken a mixer doing no input mixing. Just be mindful of final output levels to protect your speakers (and ears) as they can be unpredictable
amazing !!
C’est super cool! Merci
Great video. Brand new viewer and subscriber. Great to see you into this! Looking forward to digging into your other videos to see what else is in store for me.
I didn't know about that method, but I once played around with my mixer and I happened to get a near-sine wave. I was shocked.