The Digital Shift: Mixing Consoles - Text 3
Although digital recording systems began to be used in the 1980s (with the Sony PCM-F1 in 1981 and DAT in 1987), mixing changed little, because movie theatres used optical tracks more than anything else. Very powerful mixing consoles nevertheless came onto the market, such as the Sonosax SX-S in 1983 and the Cooper CS-106 in 1989. In 1989-90, KODAK-ORC introduced the CDS system. This process would never be marketed commercially, and Kodak left the field to Dolby and DTS, which were already heavily involved in digital recording on film.
In 1992, the Nagra D made it possible to record in very high quality on four digital tracks. This led to the production of multi-track digital mixing consoles, such as Deva in 1996, which made transfer to sound editing software possible. Other models of digital mixing consoles appeared around 2000. The principal evolution for mixing films over the years had been the ability to memorize the mixer’s actions and thus to reproduce them faithfully “time after time” in the mixing. In the 1980s and 90s, the console’s “faders” became motorized, making it possible to reproduce a movement generated by the mixer, which led to the “total recall” system in which every fader was automatized and repeated the action of the mixer.
Today a “mixing console” is software used on a powerful computer, such as Pro Tools software used on consoles such as Avid ICON D-Control. The Cantar system, developed by Jean-Pierre Beauviala and his firm Aaton in Grenoble, continues to supply high-quality equipment, such as the Aaton Cantaress console. It is possible to re-do a mix “infinitely,” because digital systems make it possible to modify each sound in a film. In France, the average mixing time for a film in the 2010s was from three to five weeks.
Tracks can be spread across different channels in the movie theatre. Every sound track recorded while shooting and those sounds added when editing the sound (ambient sounds, lone sounds, sound effects created for the film, post-synchronization of the actors, music) is then mixed in an auditorium. The person in charge of the mixing (the mixer) is not the same as those persons responsible for the previous stages (the sound engineer on the film set, the sound engineer in charge of recording dubbed sounds and sound effects, and the sound editor).
