Part 1 of 4

Getting the Mixers Out of the Cupboard

The quickest way to make the room feel more musical turned out to be giving some old kit a permanent job.

15 August 2026Approx. 4 minute read

For a while, the mixers lived in the cupboard. That is a perfectly respectable place for a mixer to live if you only need it for a particular job. It is not, however, a brilliant place for the thing that could make you pick up a guitar and start playing.

Before this weekend, a jam had a fork in the road: use the guitar amp, or turn on the Mac, load Steven Slate Drums and do enough setup that the urge to play could quietly leave the building. Bringing the mixers back out gave the room a more immediate answer. It can make sound before the computer has had a chance to make a project of it.

Corner of Tim’s home studio with a Focusrite Scarlett interface, Roland Cube amplifier, mixer, small keyboard and cabling arranged beside the desk. — The room as it is becoming: compact, a little busy, and finally set up to invite a quick play.

A guitar slot, not a negotiation

Guitar now has a clear route through the Cube and into the mixer. It means I can play with no Mac attached at all. Better still, if a mate arrives with a guitar, an amp and an understandably optimistic plan, there is a simple answer: plug into channel one. That is the guitar slot.

The labelled mixer looks gloriously unglamorous, which is exactly why it works. I no longer have to remember which lead went where last time. The tape output can feed the Roland drum kit; the headphone output is available again; and I am not constantly hot-swapping headphones just to hear what is going on.

Sharp close-up of the labelled Behringer mixer, showing dedicated channels for electric guitar, vocals, electronic drums, Bluetooth aux and Mac playback. — Labels are not glamour. They are the difference between a useful route and a small archaeology project.

The routing breakthrough

I briefly considered buying another mixer just to control monitor volume, which felt like a lot of machinery for one knob. I also looked at little monitor-volume boxes. Then I realised the existing routing could do the work. Rearranging the outputs in Focusrite Control created a useful path between the interface, mixer and monitors, with practical control where I actually need it.

The Focusrite is part of a useful chain, not the story’s hero. The real payoff is a room where the main output reaches the interface, the monitors are practical to control, the drums can listen along, and the headphone socket is not forever being borrowed by the latest cable emergency.

Diagram of Tim’s studio routing showing Mac playback, Focusrite Scarlett 8i6, main mixer, Roland e-drums, Roland Cube, guitar, microphone and studio monitors. — The useful version of a wiring diagram: one that makes the next jam easier, not one that gets framed.

Cables are only exciting when they make playing easier. The mixer was once something I expected to bring out for live drums; now it has a permanent job because it makes the whole room more useful.