Hello, and welcome to the Soundcraft Video Manual Series. My name is Austin, and today I will be talking about the main mix view, the main master outputs, as well as exploring user workflow tools, such as the Subgroups, View Groups, and others. Let’s get started. In the previous videos of this series, we went into detail regarding getting connected to your mixer, processing your input channels, sending those channels to auxes or FX, and saving your mix in a show or snapshot. Now, we’re going to bring it full circle, firstly by talking about the main mix page and your master outputs. The main mix page is the default page that you see when logging into the mixer, and the one that you always come back to when exiting any menu. At all times, this page shows you what is currently being fed into your main master outputs, which conventionally are routed to your speakers or PA system, as well as headphones via the headphone jacks. The main master outputs are the two line-output jacks on the front of the mixer, either in XLR or ¼" format. Whatever is turned up in this mix is what goes out of those outputs, as you can see from the big master channel with the red fader, over to the right side of the screen. From this master channel, the signal then heads to the aforementioned master outputs on the front of the mixer. There are two knobs on the front that control the output level for the master channel, and you can attenuate or boost that signal as needed for your speakers or speaker amplifiers. Just like with the Aux Master Outputs and FX Return master outputs, the master output channel can be processed separately, meaning that it has its own EQ, compressor, and other processing tools. For example, if we select our Master channel, then click the “Edit” button up at the top, you’ll see that our typical parametric EQ that we have on our input channels has been replaced by a 31-band graphic EQ. This way you can process the whole mix separately from the input channels, and make changes as needed for your speakers, or listening environment. Now, let’s navigate back to the main mix page so we can talk about some of the other channels we have available in this view. Scrolling from left to right, we of course have our input channels, meaning the XLR inputs on the front of the mixer, and then our stereo line input channel, which corresponds to the red and white RCA jacks on the front of the mixer as well, and that input feeds this channel. From there, we have our Player channel, which is fed by the USB port on the front of the mixer. Any audio played off a USB thumb drive will show up here. Next up are the FX returns, which we discussed in the 4th video of this series but watch that video if you want information about how these work. From here, we have our subgroups, in the color pink. Subgroups are just a way of organizing your channels and consolidating them into a single signal path, maybe so that you have easier control over the level, or so that you can do specific processing that combines all those channels. Drums are a common use-case for this sort of grouping, and people often combine their drums into a single drum subgroup, or what’s commonly called a drum buss. Moving onward, we have our Aux Masters, which just control the master output level of whatever is being sent into a particular aux, and then finally we have our VCAs. A VCA, which stands for Voltage Controlled Amplifier, is like a subgroup in the sense that you can consolidate signals into them and use them to manage multiple input channels at once – the difference being that VCAs do not pass through the DSP, and therefore aren’t able to be processed with effects, EQ, compression, etc. As the name implies, you can only control the voltage, or level of the signal, and that’s all. With subgroups, you can apply processing to them. More often than not, subgroups are used in lieu of VCAs for this reason – but they’re still handy to have around just in case. The process of assigning input channels to a subgroup, VCA, or even to set up a View Group or Mute Group is all done in the same menu, so we’re going to explore that in brief now. The metering menu, which is the button in the top-left corner of your screen, contains all the aforementioned functions, as well as some additional ones, like Automix and the More Me functionality – which we’ll cover in some later videos. As you can see, when we enter the metering menu, we’re greeted by a top-level view of the signals coming into and leaving our mixer, which of course can be very handy for when you’re trying to get a sense of where your mix is at. Now, let’s assign those inputs. We’ll select our subgroup menu, and then as you can see, we’re presented with all our input channels, an option to give the subgroup a name, and the Subgroup Fader Assign, which just tells the channels which subgroup to be routed into. We’ll go ahead and leave this selected as number 1, and then add some channels to our subgroup. If we go back to our main mix, we can now control the level of those channels with that fader. VCAs are set up in the exact same way as the subgroups, so I won’t demonstrate those, but I will wrap this video up by talking about the View Groups and Mute Groups. View Groups are just a way to show or hide various channels in your main mix. It doesn’t actually remove anything from the signal path or change anything about your mix but can help de-clutter your mix view if you have a lot of channels you’re working with, and don’t want to have to scroll all the way from left to right if you need to get around quickly. To set up a View Group, we navigate to our Views tab in the metering menu, select the channels we want to add to our view, give it a name and select which View Group we want to assign them to, and then we’re done! Now, if we go back to our main mix page and expand our slide out, which you can do by clicking on the Ui logo in the top-right corner, now we see that we have the ability to enable or disable our View Groups, from this menu. Clicking the button for that View Group will enable it, and as you can see, the channels that we selected are now the only ones that are visible, the rest are hidden. Mute Groups, instead of just hiding or showing channels, actually will mute them. These are useful for when you want to quickly mute channels, maybe the entire mix in between set changes, maybe just the FX returns for when the vocalist talks to the audience in between songs, there’s lots of use cases! To set them up, we navigate to our Mutes menu, and in the same way as before, choose a Mute Group, give it a name, and add some channels to it. Now, back at our main mix page, if we enable our Mute Group, you’ll see that the channels we added to it are now muted. That’s all for now, I hope that this has been a helpful overview of the Ui-series mixers and how to become familiar with all the principal functionalities and tools that they provide! We’re looking forward to seeing how you use your Ui-series mixers in your audio applications. For more news, product information, and troubleshooting tips, visit us at soundcraft.com or our Anytime Help Center at help.harmanpro.com.