Introduction to Automixers¶

Automatic mixers, or Automixers for short, attempt to emulate and improve upon the results of a skilled operator controlling a conventional mixer with a large number of speech inputs. Consider a typical conference room scenario with (10) people, each with their own microphone. If all (10) microphones were turned on at the same gain level and only one person were talking, the result would probably not be very intelligible. The other (9) microphones would pick up room noise, reverberation, etc. These signals when mixed together with the properly sounding mic(s) will degrade the mixed output audio. Furthermore, it is likely that adequate volume could not be obtained because the maximum gain before feedback would be significantly reduced by the extra (9) open microphones in the room which do not have a direct source.

A skilled operator would deal with this situation by only turning on the microphones that are in use at any given time and leaving all other microphones off. An automixer performs this same function, but can react much more quickly than a human operator.

Automixers can be used as standalone replacements for an operator, or used in conjunction with an operator to automate a section of the audio.