I got my PhD in mixology today, and then some. Ian Freeman of Free Talk Live walked me through setting up a mix-minus with the new mixer and the Comrex and Audio Cactus (blog post on all that coming soon.) Then I read the whole manual. Then I got to try a trick I’ve only heard about before, but never tried, since this is the first mixer I’ve owned that has a built-in compressor for each channel.

Two compressors in series using half the ratio sound better than one compressor with a higher ratio. Try turning the ratio down on your outboard compressor/pre-amp to half what it is now, then turn the compressor knob on the Behringer up to two or three (I don’t think the numbers on it are strict correlations to ratios, i.e. setting it on 3 seems to give a ratio of about 2:1.)

Check it out if you’re not doing this yet. It sounds creamy.

Before I got this mixer, I was using a 4:1 ratio on my outboard tube pre-amp compressor. Now I’m using a 2:1 ratio on the outboard tube pre-amp compressor, and setting the compressor knob on the Behringer on 3. Sounds better than just the 4:1 ratio on my outboard tube pre-amp compressor did through the old mixer. (Also the Behringer has less noise than my old Alesis, and the Alesis had no compression in it.)

I’m not using compression on the other tracks obviously (Comrex, Audio Cactus), only on track one, the one my mic is plugged into.