Music - studio and stage notes - devices you'll use

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Stage and studio alike

Mixer notes

Per-channel buttons

Groups buttons

See #Groups

Stomp boxes

Fairly literal: A thing that you stomp on for sound.

Often a wooden block with a pickup in it, used for a relatively bassy accompanying rhythm to be amplified, most often alongside acoustic playing.

So this is arguably mostly used by the kind of guitar playing you can do sitting down, without a drummer, but you still want to make your own accompaniment.

Since they're themselves passive, you could build them for a few bucks, though getting a specific kind of thump out of them takes some practice and/or knowledge of physics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomp_box

Stage mostly

DI box

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.

DI, DI box, DI unit, Direct box. (some people argue over whether it stands for direct input, direct injection, direct induction, or direct interface. Most people don't care, because DI names a specific thing and function that we recognize, and isn't the thing we point at the main point of a name?).

Functionally

Takes a high-impedance, unbalanced signal, typically on 6.35mm TS.

Outputs a low-impedance pro-mic-level balanced signal on XLR (pro mic level, because that is what usually carries in audio context).

DIs weren't made for guitars exclusively, but that is a common use.

Passive DIs do so with a single audio transformer, so need no power, which makes them a no-worry functional addition - plug in and forget.

...but their simplicity comes with assumptions that are only usually true, and sometimes they lead to undue sound coloring, or higher noise levels.

In those cases, you want active DIs to fix that. They do a little more, but they do so using power (battery, adapter, and/or phantom power) so take a little more thought than just plugging in.

Acoustic / Standalone / DAWless

Functional pedal stuff

Pedals refer to powered effect boxes.

Often your foot lets you switch its main effect on or off.

This includes equalizers, distortion, fuzz, reverb, modulation, pitch shift, filters, compressor, sustainer, wah-wah, and endless others.

Also some functional things like tuners, splitters/routers/line selectors, buffer pedals,

Also more complex and interactive things like loopers, synths, drum accompaniment.

Studio mostly

These are all valid devices on stage, but people tend to now want to lug the spaghetti of device they have at home to gigs.

So a number of devices are not on that list unless they need to be.

Audio interface notes

Audio interfaces are often a combination of

• sound card and

• some specific-purpose inputs and outputs

both in terms of the plugs

and the electrical nature of what some things need

On gain, and levels throughout

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.