Let’s get to know the Midas M32 mixing board in depth! You can read the user manual below at the bottom of this page, or go section-by-section with Rhett’s notes here.

Preamp Section (1)

The preamp section is where you control gain for a source as well as access the Low-Cut Filter. There are actually four controls here:

• Gain: Controls the level of the signal coming into the mixing board.
• 48v Phantom Power: This button turns on power-over-XLR for condenser microphones that need it. Examples: drum overheads, room mics, etc. Only for use with condenser microphones.
• Phase Switch: This button flips the phase of the input if needed so it will be in correct phase with another source. Examples of use would be drum snare and overheads, room mics, and double-mic’ed guitar amps.
• Low-Cut Filter: The first stage of EQ on the board to cut out low frequencies at a definable frequency band. This is included in the preamp section because it has big implications on source clarity (unnecessary low end bleed will kill a source) and on compressors (same thing—low end bleed can negatively impact a compressor, giving you a false sense of compression).

Dynamics Processing (2)

There are two kinds of dynamics processing on the M32: gating and compression.

Gate

A gate mutes a source until that source reaches a definable threshold of loudness—for example, in between playing. This cleans up unwanted noise (such as amp noise or mics bleeding into one another).

You can read more about gating in our Level 2 training here: Gating.

Compressor

Compression is one of the most fundamental ways of signal processing because it is foundationally changing for a source. This effect “compresses” the level of a source—whenever the source gets louder than a definable threshold, the compressor lowers the level of the peaks to create a less dynamic signal. This results in a more manageable output and often a different tone.

• Threshold: the level at which compression kicks in
• Ratio: the amount of compression after the threshold (eg. 4:1, meaning 4dB of compression for every 1dB over the threshold)
• Attack: the speed at which the compressor engages (in milliseconds)
• Release: the speed at which the compressor lets go when the source dips back below the threshold (in milliseconds)
• Makeup Gain: another gain control post-compressor to make up for the gain reduction that happens during compression