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Record's mixer is a cut above many others.

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Propellerhead Record's mixer is a bit special, being inspired by SSL's 9000K, one of the most revered studio consoles in recording history. In fact, if you already own Reason, you might argue that it's worth buying Record just to get your hands on it.

If you don't give the mixer some serious attention, though, you might never know what a powerful tool you have at your disposal. Here are 13 ways you can make it do more for you.

1. Find your own path

Experiment, explore and experiment some more! Until you set aside plenty of time to get to know the mixer, front and back, you won't be getting the most out of this powerful tool. And don't forget to check out the Audio, Mix and Master units in the rack, too!

2. Into the mixer

For all its presence and power, the Main Mixer is just another device, albeit one with plenty of bells and whistles, and one that can only appear once in your project. So if you aren't worried about using its handy Control Room output, you can place whatever you want before or after it in the signal path, including other sub-mixers, should you feel the need.

3. Send for help

Don't forget, you can send and/or split the signal from a channel, then route it back into another channel or device, should you so desire. This can be useful for such things as sidechaining, parallel processing (layering the dry signal alongside a compressed one, New York style, for example) or maybe even driving a vocoder.

4. Route finder

Reason and Record share a crucial selling point - their ability to have so many signal types routed to so many places. A great example of this is the CV output from the sidechain section, enabling the sidechained compressor's actions to control other devices that accept CV input. This could be anything from the volume on another device or channel, to a filter's cutoff frequency.

5. De-ess to impress

You can achieve the classic de-essing effect by sending the signal of a sibilant vocal into the sidechain input on its own channel, engaging the Filter to Dynamics button and using the filters to accentuate the top end and cut the bottom, so only the sibilance triggers the compressor. You can even try placing another EQ into the signal path to really isolate the frequencies to be quietened.

6. Chain reaction

One of the most under-appreciated features in any DAW is the ability to save channel strips - or, in the case of Record's Main Mixer, insert effects configurations. You wouldn't expect to have to add a fader, level meter and gain pot to every channel by hand when you start a new project, so why not extend the concept to include some standard starting FX chains, ready at the push of a button.

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