Personal project: Mixer channel strip

How long until I can buy a SvartDesk?

I think I might have a way to fit more pots into less space, but it's still taking up too much space. I'm about an inch over my limit right now.

I've been trying to find dual-concentric pots, but that's been pretty much impossible for the styles and values I need unless I went to full custom.

It wouldn't be *pure* SSL.  The mid bands are different on my intended design.  I'm also waffling on the idea of trying to put a generic preamp in this channel, and that would have to also be on the EQ board.  Since I never use board preamps, I'm leaning towards not using a preamp at all..

But yeah since I'm going the separate-card route, I guess someone could wire up a handful of these in a rack case, but it'd be more like 3-4 of them in the box since I'm looking at barely fitting the EQ section in an 8" board length..

So I finally put power to the board.. I have signal through the audio path! Looks nice and clean. Now I need to figure out how to test and calibrate the other portions of the control circuit though..

Compression seems to work, but gate doesn't work at all. Need to continue troubleshooting..

fascinating stuff. keep us updated on your custom channel strip. Might even end up placing an order for one if svart ever decides to go commercial   hope it looks good. Throw in a couple of VU meters!

I also think I've figured out a better way to hook up the pots for the EQ, although I'm still running short of space.

Wanna be more specific?

OK fair enough.

I'm still unsure of how to get all of this to fit. Right now I have 23.5" of length to work with. Currently that breaks down to:

7.5" for EQ which is the bare minimum for
5" for compressor
11" for AUX sends, parallel routing and pan, main pan and routing.

The EQ needs 12 discrete pots in one form, or 10 in another form with concentric pots taken from the original console. 12 pots needs 7.5" in the most compact arrangement without any other considerations like switches. 10 pots could be down to around 6.5" in the most basic form.

The compressor is already as compact as it can possibly be.

The main board needs at least 11 pots. 6 for panning, 1 for small fader level, 4 for aux level. It also needs to hold 8 routing switches, 2 mute switches. This needs roughly 7.5" just for the pots, then another 5.2 for the large fader and assign switches, which makes 11" a few inches short of what I need to do all this..

So some more measurements and such..

If I use the concentric pots from my current console in the EQ midrange, I can pick up another 1.125".. Still not enough.

However, I think I need to re-evaluate what it is that I want.

So the vast majority of the space on the AUX/Assign/master card is taken up with wanting 4 stereo AUX sends for my hardware reverbs. That's 8x pots in either L/R level or level and pan configurations. Even in a staggered orientation, that's 5.125 of length. The large fader is 5" from end to end, and I cannot place the fader and a pot next to each other, so the only thing I can have next to the fader are switches. That's fine, as I have 12 switches for assign and mutes which take up around 5.5" anyway.

I also need 1 pot for small fader level, 1 for small fader pan and 1 for main pan.

The current console channel has a true small fader, but even then the width is still slightly too wide to use next to a pot on the board.

So my options are:

1)  Redo the compressor board once again with the pots staggered to pick up 1 more inch and make that card only 4" wide..  This requires adding headers and making small daughter PCBS to mount the pots "upside down".  I'm going to have to do this for the EQ anyway, so I could make a generic version for everything..

2)  Rethink my AUX sending and instead of pots have switches to assign L/R since most of my work will be either 100% L or R or stereo. I rarely pan the sends other than fully L or fully R or full stereo, so if I do this, and place the switches on the back of the board opposite to the level pot and have staggered pots, I can almost half the distance at around 3", but I add complexity in the form of the small daughter PCBs needed for the switches and staggered pots. Doing this without the staggering only increases this to around 3.25" with a little of that being larger gaps between the pots for my fingers..

3)  I could also do something drastic and build a second box for just large faders and such to sit in front of my console, that way I have the whole length of the channel to do all the other stuff.. But that seems complex and expensive.

I'd rather compromise on the AUX sends than do so on the EQ or compressor at this point.

Also, this design doesn't have a preamp at all. I never use the console preamps.. Although it might be nice to get a little space to add a simple preamps like the THAT preamp just in case.

One more idea I'm kicking around is doing VCA control for the main fader. Essentially the main fader would be just a controller for a micro and a ADC/DAC for that channel. I can get super cheap small ADC and DACs to interface with a microcontroller, and create a digital bus inside the board for future use as channel automation. This iteration would simply mirror the value on the fader to the VCA. That's the easy part. The hard part would be to later create some kind of external control that could sync to a DAW somehow and use the drawn automation to control it. I certainly don't want to reinvent the wheel here though.

My goodness!  A mixer that sounds great in front of my interface for live tracking with all the basic necessities with a Pro sound?  This is exactly what I've been looking for all these years.  I just can't be satisfied with all the budget mixers, they all sound like dookie!