- Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative.
In this video, we're gonna show you how to set up
and connect the Yamaha AG06 Audio Mixer.
This audio mixer is perfect for live streaming,
small events and home recording as well.
If you're looking for pricing
or specs for anything that we cover in this video,
we're gonna plug all types of different pieces
of equipment into this audio mixer
to show you how to use it.
If you are looking for pricing on cable or stands
or microphones or anything like that,
we do have pricing down in the description below
with current up to date specs
and availability at a variety of online retailers.
So let's get started with his audio mixer.
First of all, on the back of the audio mixer here,
you can see that it has a USB connector.
It's a printer cable,
it's a USB type B here.
I'm just gonna unplug it so you can see that there.
So if you're connecting to a newer computer,
you'll need a USB B to USB C cable,
otherwise you need a USB B to USB A cable.
We do have links, again,
if you're looking for the right cable
down in the description below.
Now, your computer will power
this audio mixer perfectly fine
and everything will work on it.
The one issue is if you're recording with an iPad
or if you're using this audio mixer with an iPad,
then you do need to connect the external power supply
and you need to provide your own cable
and power block and everything
like that to externally power this mixer.
And then this USB cable here
would just be providing signal to your iPad.
The iPad cannot power this on its own.
So we'll put this back on the table here.
You can see here's the power button.
You don't wanna be turning this on and off
a whole bunch of times because
there is software inside of it.
So if you do turn this audio mixer off,
just know that you do have to wait six to 10 seconds
before you wanna turn it back on,
otherwise the software won't be fully reset
and ready for you.
If you do wanna factory reset this when you set it up,
you just hold the Compressor button here as you turn it on,
count to five, or something like that,
then release the Compressor button
and that will reset all the settings inside of it.
So we're fully reset right now.
Now, I'm just gonna turn all the knobs down,
make certain none of the buttons are pressed
so we know that we're starting with a brand new mixer here.
I'm gonna talk about this To PC section here first.
You do have a couple different options
with the USB output of this mixer.
The section that takes everything from here to your PC,
your Mac or iPad,
or whatever you're doing.
The first option is this Dry Channels 1-2.
This will send two channels to your recording device.
In my case, it's a laptop,
and that's these first two channels.
So in that case,
you can think of this as an audio interface,
like the Scarlett 2i2 or something like that.
You can basically ignore everything else,
and if you're in this Dry 1-2 mode,
it'll ignore the effects and the compression
and everything and just send the raw XLR outputs
or inputs into this mixer straight on
through to your computer so you can process it.
This is what I recommend if you're doing
any type of professional recording.
You generally don't wanna add compression
or EQ from the mixer.
You wanna be able to change that later
because if you add something like a compressor or EQ,
you can never undo that after the fact.
So if you are recording,
the Dry Channel 1-2 will just get the raw
recording into your computer,
and that's a really good option.
The next option here, the middle option,
is Input Mix.
What that will do is it will take
all the inputs here from the mixer
and it'll send it to your computer as a stereo mix.
So then you can think of this as an audio mixer,
but when it's in Dry Channel 1-2,
you think of this more as a typical audio interface.
So that's pretty cool.
It's kind of a hybrid device here.
The last mode is something super cool,
is a Loopback mode.
So this would allow you to do
something like send audio from your computer,
say you have iTunes open,
or if you're doing a live stream,
you can be showing like a video on your computer.
You run that through the audio mixer
through the USB volume knob here,
and then you can send that back out with the new signal,
so you're playing a video
or playing a sound file off your laptop,
comes through the mixer,
it gets mixed,
and then you can send it back
through the USB cable to OBS
or something that's listening for it,
and you can broadcast that to your live stream.
So that's a super cool feature.
Definitely underrated,
not a lot of mixers in this price range
have a feature like that.
Super cool,
definitely highly recommend that.
For the purposes of this video today,
I'm not gonna use Loopback just because
we have so much recording going on my computer right now
trying to screen capture as we're going.
So I'm gonna do the Input Mix here,
and that will just send everything
that we're working on to the recording on the computer.
Next, let's talk about the outputs on this mixer.
You do have a whole bunch of different options here.
You can use the stereo outputs here.
For me, I would use a balanced 1/4 inch to XLR adapter.
Say you're doing a small event,
like a wedding,
this is what I would do to connect my powered speakers.
I would connect this cable.
So this is balanced.
You can see that there's two rings there,
so it's tip, ring and sleeve.
You can connect that to the stereo output.
That will convert it to XLR for you,
and then you can send that out 100 feet
to your speakers at a wedding or something like that.
That's how I'd use this in a live event setting.
If you're using this in a studio or streaming setting,
you can use your monitor outputs here or headphones.
Notably, there are two headphone jacks.
There's the 1/4 inch jack up here
and there's a headset input down here.
If you plug something into the headset input down here,
it will kill the 1/4 inch headphone jack,
just so you know.
They're both, as far as I can tell,
the same volume,
but you can only do one at a time.
A lot of people do wanna know if this is strong enough
to power a set of 250 ohm headphones,
and it is.
I use the Beyerdynamic DT 990 PROs,
and the headphone amp that's built into this
is plenty powerful enough to power these in almost,
well, in every use case
that I have when I'm using this audio mixer.
So that's good there.
Now, a couple more things about the outputs.
You do get independent control of your headphones here
and your studio monitors,
but you do not get independent
volume control of your stereo outputs.
That's if you're using this in a small live event
or something like that,
it will just auto sum your mix for you.
You don't get a main master level
for that stereo output there.
So just be aware of that.
If you're recording something like vocals or guitar,
actually, guitar is a better example.
If you're recording electric guitar that you have mic'd up,
and you have that microphone
plugged in to one of these inputs,
you can choose to mute that from the monitors
so that way you don't get feedback,
you don't wanna hear the microphone coming through it
and you can hear your guitar amp
plenty loud enough because it's typically
right beside you if you're doing a recording like that.
So that Monitor Mute Channel 1-2,
that's when I would use that.
But other than that,
if you're using headphones,
just leave it wide open
and you'll be happy with that.
So I'm gonna put my headphones on now.
In this video,
we're gonna connect two different types of microphones.
We have the Audio-Technica AT2020,
which is a condenser microphone,
and we have the Shure SM58,
which is a dynamic microphone.
Both of these are currently priced very similarly.
Again, we do have some links down
in the description below
for current pricing on either one of these,
but these are extremely popular
microphones for this type of setup.
So we're gonna connect this XLR cable to the audio mixer.
Now, you're gonna see here
if we turn up the gain that nothing moves.
There's no activity on the meter there,
and that's because it's a condenser microphone,
so it needs 48 volts of phantom power in order to turn on.
It's not like this microphone
will sound bad without phantom power,
it just won't turn on
and won't work for you at all.
So we're gonna hit that +48V button
there to turn the microphone on.
We don't need the Pad.
I should've covered this at the beginning,
but these are combi inputs.
You can see that I plugged an XLR cable into the jack here.
You can also plug in a 1/4 inch cable if you wish, as well.
So it'll accept either one,
but for this video,
we're just gonna use XLR.
The phantom power does only work on the XLR cable,
it does not work on any 1/4 inch jack.
So if you have a condenser microphone with a 1/4 inch jack,
this won't work for you,
you'll need another solution.
And it's pretty rare
that you'll find a microphone like that.
Okay, so now we can get
to setting the gain on this microphone.
So I'll turn up my headphone volume
up to 50% so I can hear what I'm doing.
So to set the gain,
we start with the level.
We're gonna turn the level
all the way up to that thicker line there,
which is eight out of 10.
That's the best spot to start with it.
That's known as zero, or unity.
And then we can increase the gain from there.
When we increase the gain,
we're gonna start to look over at this meter here.
You're gonna see on this meter
that both sides,
the light on both sides is moving.
If you have this in Dry Channel 1-2,
I'm gonna switch it now.
If it's on Dry Channel 1-2,
it's gonna send microphone one to the left side
and microphone two to the right side, again, dry.
It's gonna ignore these compression and effects,
which we'll discuss in a minute.
For this video,
we're gonna go back to the Input Mix
'cause we wanna send the whole mix
of what we're doing to the recording so you can hear it.
So we're gonna increase the gain here.
As we increase the gain,
we're waiting to see until it peaks.
Once it peaks, we can see here
that it's peaking at about 8.5 out of 10.
I like to back it up a stop and a half
or two full stops.
So we'll go back half,
and then another full one.
And that's where I would set my gain.
We don't have a very accurate meter here,
but I found that by going back
a step and a half or two steps,
and I'll discuss which one I would use when,
you just have to estimate
that because this meter is not super accurate.
If we look over in Logic right now,
we can see that we're peaking at about -7,
which is probably more than I would like to be peaking,
but since this is a streaming mixer,
and a lot of people use this audio mixer for live streaming,
you generally have to keep that number pretty close to zero.
I was doing a studio recording,
then I would be targeting somewhere between -12 and -18.
Anything live, I'd try to keep it between -6 and -12.
If you're at that -12 to -18 mark,
your online guests will complain that you are a bit loud.
Anyway, we're pretending
that we're live streaming right now.
You can see that on the meter
here in Logic that I am at about -5.3,
which is fine,
as long as we don't get too close to zero.
Now, if you do wanna prevent getting too close to zero,
you can open up the Yamaha AG app here
that comes with the software.
You can change it to be Expert mode.
It'll ask if you're sure you wanna do that,
and then you open up this menu here.
Here's where you can control your compressor.
So if we go back to the mixer here,
we turn this compressor and EQ on,
and you can look over at the computer,
and this compressor setting window
opens up if you have the app installed.
You can download this app from the Yamaha website.
So first of all,
you'll wanna check your threshold.
- 24 is pretty good.
You can control how much makeup gain
you're adding to the channel,
and you can change the compression ratio.
Another option that we have with this Compressor/EQ button
here is it does open up the EQ.
So say you wanna do a 400 Hz cut,
you can lower it like this
and you can change the width to scoop out the low mids
a little bit if you do want more clarity.
You can bump up that kinda 2.5k range if you want.
And if you're getting lost in all of this,
you can always go back to the Load Default section.
Another option that we have,
I'm gonna turn the Compressor and EQ off,
is you have effects.
I'm gonna turn that on now.
Now you can hear that we have a reverb effect
on the right hand side
of the software in the Yamaha software.
You can control the reverb effect.
There are three presets here.
There's Hall, there's Room,
which is a bit tighter,
and there's stage,
which is somewhere in the middle,
or you can go back to the default.
You can play with all these knobs
to change it to your liking,
but I'll just leave it at that for now.
So you can turn the effect off.
So that's how you set up
a condenser microphone with the Yamaha AG06.
Now, you can plug to dynamic microphones
into this audio mixer,
no problem, but you can only plug one
condenser microphone into this audio mixer because,
as you can see here,
there's only one 48 volts of phantom power option.
So keep that in mind.
If you're trying to record
a two person podcast or something like that,
you can't use two condenser microphones.
But now we're gonna show you
how to connect the dynamic microphone.
So I'm gonna turn the 48 volts
and turn this microphone off.
Okay, so now we can connect the Shure SM58,
which is a dynamic microphone.
So we just connect it.
It's coming in at mic level,
so we don't need a pad,
and if you are plugging an electric guitar
straight into this audio mixer,
do press down that guitar button.
So just like the previous microphone,
we can bring the level all the way up
to that eight out of 10 mark
where there's the thicker line there,
and then we can increase the gain.
So we're gonna increase the gain all the way until it peaks.
You can see it here that this microphone just peaks at 10,
so we'll come down to about 8.5.
Again, if you look over in Logic now,
you'll see that we're peaking at about -11,
which is a really good spot
to be recording a recording like this,
but if you're doing a live stream,
you might wanna cheat that up
just a little bit to be closer to something like -6.
So if you open up the Yamaha AG software,
again, you can turn on effects like we had previously.
It'll use the same effect engine
as the other channel that we had set up,
but on this channel here,
you'll notice that we do have a new button for Amp Sim.
That will use this guitar amp simulator.
It works for the 1/4 inch input
or the XLR input.
I'm just gonna turn my headphones down,
and then we can turn that amp sim on.
So you can hear that it is just a guitar,
it's like running a microphone
through a guitar amp if you want this.
A lot of people wouldn't use
this for their electric guitar sim,
but it's an option that you have.
I just changed it to low gain.
We can change it back to high gain.
So that's one option for you.
It's not the amp sim in the world.
I'm just gonna turn it off.
It's not the best amp sim the world,
but it does work for those who are looking for a cheap,
easy to plug their electric guitar
into their audio mixer
and get some distortion out of it
or quickly do a recording or something like that.
So we have the Shure SM58 coming
in through this channel that you're hearing now.
Now, we have a set of 1/4 inch inputs
here that are line level inputs.
You do have a pad that's built into it,
so if you do have a really powerful input,
you can bring it down as well.
So you could use this for plugging
something like your phone into your audio mixer.
For me, I use this Lightning to headphone jack adapter.
I always use the official one from Apple.
So I have that.
And then I use a cable like this whenever
I'm connecting my phone to an audio mixer.
What this cable does is it goes from a headphone jack cable,
so an 1/8 inch cable,
and it goes all the way into two 1/4 inch cables here.
So if there's red on one,
that's always the right.
So red is right.
You connect that to the audio mixer.
And then connect the headphone jack to the phone.
Now you play some music,
and I can turn it up.
(upbeat music)
So that's how that works.
The channel beside it where
it has a picture of the CD player,
that works exactly the same,
except it uses a headphone jack to RCA cable,
so that's an option for you as well.
If you're connecting something like a soundboard
or if you do need another device plugged into this as well,
you can use this Aux input.
The only different with the Aux input
compared to what I just did
is that you have no volume control on the audio mixer.
So you do need to set your volume on the device itself.
I'll show you what I mean.
So we're gonna plug the same adapter into our phone here
to headphone jack cable or Aux cable,
plug that into the audio mixer.
And you can see here
that there's no volume knob for this input,
so you have to control it with the volume on your phone.
That's the only difference.
So you can come all the way down
just using the control on the phone
and turn it back up.
So that's another option for you as well.
I'm just gonna turn this off now
and unplug it.
Another option with this audio mixer
is you have this headset area here.
We did talk about it a little bit at the beginning
in terms of if you plug your earphones into this jack,
it will turn this other jack off.
In the same way,
if you have a headset microphone
and you plug it in there,
it will disable this XLR output,
but you will still have the gain,
compression, effects and level settings
that you can use for that headset microphone as well.
So that does give you more flexibility
if you're really into gaming,
you have a headset mic that you like.
You can plug it straight into there,
no problem at all.
I hope this video has been helpful.
I think we did cover everything
that there is to cover about this audio mixer.
If you do wanna see more videos about this audio mixer,
we are producing a whole series.
So if you wanna see a whole live streaming
setup with a couple laptops here,
we're gonna do that.
We're gonna do this mixer setup
with all kinds of different microphones.
So if you wanna see what your microphone
would sound like with this audio mixer,
we'll do that as well.
If you do have any questions
that weren't covered in this video,
please leave a comment down in the comment section below.
Again, if you do want pricing
or specs for anything we've seen in this video,
we have a pile of links down in the description below.
And if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
please like and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
(upbeat music)