Audio Mixer
Apr. 7th, 2020 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carlfoxmartenYes, I said mixer, not "switch".
I'm working on designing an upgrade from my two-channel switch box, that will have four channels incoming, and four or five outgoing.
Once you get to that many channels, you can't just switch channels, you have to actually be able to mix them together. Which means that it can't be passive circuitry anymore, and has to have some amplifiers, and volume controls, and a power supply, and so on.
So far, I've decided that each input needs a basic amplifier, as does each output to buffer things effectively. I've learned (through posting a question on the Electrical Engineering StackOverflow site) that you should have a special driver for headphones versus other things like PC line-inputs, and know where to buy them too.
The plan is to give each input and output its own volume control and mute button (or switch, that part's still up in the air), while there's a grid of buttons to select whether a particular input gets mixed into a particular output.
I'm also going to use an FM radio board I've been enjoying under other conditions as a dedicated input, with my PC being another input, and two auxiliary inputs spare if I ever need them. The outputs I have planned so far are a set of headphones (with microphone), my PC speakers (so no microphone), my PC's line-in port (so I can record if I want), and either one or two auxiliary outputs, depending on whether I want another spare dedicated headphone jack.
A few things I don't have yet is a case to put this all in, resistor values, capacitor values, amplifier chips, the jacks to connect to, and I may want to design the circuit board directly instead of just using perfboard, but I don't have any copper-clad board (though I do have the 3-axis CNC to route the boards if I decide to go that route), and so on.
Advice is welcome, as I'm pretty sure I don't know what I'm doing.
(hopefully it's going to be fun figuring it out)
I'm working on designing an upgrade from my two-channel switch box, that will have four channels incoming, and four or five outgoing.
Once you get to that many channels, you can't just switch channels, you have to actually be able to mix them together. Which means that it can't be passive circuitry anymore, and has to have some amplifiers, and volume controls, and a power supply, and so on.
So far, I've decided that each input needs a basic amplifier, as does each output to buffer things effectively. I've learned (through posting a question on the Electrical Engineering StackOverflow site) that you should have a special driver for headphones versus other things like PC line-inputs, and know where to buy them too.
The plan is to give each input and output its own volume control and mute button (or switch, that part's still up in the air), while there's a grid of buttons to select whether a particular input gets mixed into a particular output.
I'm also going to use an FM radio board I've been enjoying under other conditions as a dedicated input, with my PC being another input, and two auxiliary inputs spare if I ever need them. The outputs I have planned so far are a set of headphones (with microphone), my PC speakers (so no microphone), my PC's line-in port (so I can record if I want), and either one or two auxiliary outputs, depending on whether I want another spare dedicated headphone jack.
A few things I don't have yet is a case to put this all in, resistor values, capacitor values, amplifier chips, the jacks to connect to, and I may want to design the circuit board directly instead of just using perfboard, but I don't have any copper-clad board (though I do have the 3-axis CNC to route the boards if I decide to go that route), and so on.
Advice is welcome, as I'm pretty sure I don't know what I'm doing.
(hopefully it's going to be fun figuring it out)
