The Fader Bank
Mute, PFL, Grouping, and more
After panning is a section called the fader bank (figure 12). The first button you encounter is the mute button. This is pretty self explanatory. When you push the mute button, usually a light will come on next to the button, and the sound for that channel is muted. That is, unless you are using a Yamaha mixing console. With Yamaha consoles, the mute button is an “on” button. So, if the button is pushed down/lit up, the channel is on, and if it’s not lit, the channel is muted. This is the only console that I’ve seen that does this. Almost every console you encounter will have a mute button that, when pressed down, will mute the signal.
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After the mute button is the fader section. This section includes the input fader, signal LED’s, group sends, and PFL. The console you purchase will determine the order that these three functions appear. On the Allen and Heath console, the PFL is first, whereas on the Yamaha consoles, the PFL is last. The PFL, also known as the Pre-Fade Listen, could also be referred to as a “solo” button. When this button is pushed, it will send the signal to a headphone output where you can isolate that one signal by itself. This is helpful in many instances, but is especially helpful when trying to troubleshoot something that’s going wrong during rehearsal. It allows you to listen to the signal without negatively impacting anything else that is going on. I oftentimes even use this button to listen in to the pastor’s microphone before they come on stage, just to make sure it is working.
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The fader is simply a volume control. If you turn it up more it will get louder and if you turn it down more it will get softer. Most consoles’ faders are logarithmic. Meaning, “a small physical change of position while around the unity gain mark on the fader (about 75 percent of the way to the top, usually) changes the signal level by a fraction of a dB, whereas the same physical movement towards the bottom of the fader might change the signal level by several dB. " Unity gain is at or around the 0 mark on most mixing consoles.
The signal LED’s will, at the very least, show you when your signal is peaking. However, on most consoles you will have a green, yellow, and red light. As discussed in the gain structuring section, the goal is to set the gain to where the green signal lights are lit up, and maybe every now and again the yellow light is on.
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Last in this section is the group sends. In many analog consoles like the Allen and Heath and Yamaha consoles, there will be a L-R button, a 1-2 button and a 3-4 button. What button you push actually determines the functionality of the pan knob. If the L-R button is pushed, this means your signal is being sent to the L and the R faders (your master stereo faders) and is bypassing the groups 1-4, and that your pan knobs control position of your instrument in the stereo image. However, if you push a group button, the pan knob now is utilized to send the signal to either the odd or even numbers. If turned all the way to the left, it will send it to either group 1 or group 3, and all the way to the right will send it to group 2 or 4. This can be helpful for things like vocals or speaker microphones which can be controlled all on one fader and typically do not need to be panned at all.
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Figure 12
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And with that, we’ve made it through the channel strip. There are a few other things that are on the Allen and Heath mixing console that you can use like matrices, which are similar to auxes, but provide another tool which you are able to use to output a separate mix. These tools are cool, but are typically console specific and not widely available on a lot of analog consoles.