[geeks] Stupid recording engineers

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Wed, Jul 24, 2002 at 04:24:54PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:

> > Once I'm happy with how the simple stuff using just radio shack parts
> > works, I'll go and order the proper faders, find a decent project box,
> > etc.  It seems that this shouldn't take too much time to do, but
> > things always have a way of expanding to require 1.5x the available
> > time. 
> 
> You'd better get a load of enjoyment and learning out of such a project.
> You can buy a dinky little consumer-grade mixer for next to nothing
> used, or even new at R*Shack.

I certainly intend to get a lot of enjoyment and learning out of this
project, followed by exploring the whole world of do it yourself stomp
boxes, tube amp repair, and perhaps even tube amp design. 

I was shopping at radio shack, and they don't seem to have what I
want.  Basically, I want to hook 3 computers and 1 or more accessories
to one set of powered speakers.  The stuff at radio shack typically
has 2, occasionally 3 stereo chanels, and multiple mono chanels, which
means 2 or 3 devices would behave the way I desire, and the rest would
act like a normal mixer (meaning 2 chanels used for 1 device).  

The closest I've found to what I want is the Nady MM-4 (which doesn't
have the best reputation).  They used to cost a good bit ($160), but
they are fairly cheap now ($76-$100).  Still, I'd like to try my hand
at doing my own. 
 
> Ideally you want a stereo mixer with proper pan controls so you can pan
> both left and right inputs over to one channel when you want to mix a
> stereo signal down to mono....  Still less than $100 I'll bet, even new.

Pan controls would be easy enough to build in if I want them.  Since
this isn't meant for doing recording, mixing, or anything like that,
but rather saving me buying a set of speakers for each machine, I'm
not sure I'd bother initially.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd