Zoom F6 Automix Feature: What It Does & When To Use It!

[@fotografkennethlund]

Hi! Thanks for taking time to do this video - much appreciated 👏🏻 As I’m currently looking at getting either the Zoom F6 OR the SoundDevices Mix Pre 6 II. In my research (not being able to test them before ordering) it seems to me that the F6 only attenuates the “not active” mic by very few DB, where the Mix Pre is more like the original Dugan Automix where it aims at keeping a similar level of “energy” and level of background noise and ambience no matter which and / or how many mics are receiving input at any given time. I’m fairly familiar with the Dugan approach in the Yamaha CL mixing consoles and it works just like I want. Am I right in seeing the F6 as a less active automix in this comparison (perhaps to avoid getting hit by a Dugan parent lawsuit - maybe even in case of the SoundDevices, as they renamed it MixAssist instead of automix)?

[@EugenioTrainer]

Awesome, thanks for sharing

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

Happy to help :)

[@leemski]

Great tutorial! Thanks

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

Definitely! Happy to help 👍

[@TheTechPreacher]

Great video

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

😁🎬

[@halhallaq]

what about if i use tow microphone separate channel? mic 1 left and mic 2 right its work ?

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

Sorry, I'm having a hard time understanding your question.

[@AllisterDotDash]

Should auto mix be used with a stereo pair of microphones in stereo mode?

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

By stereo microphone, do you mean a single microphone that records both x&y mic into a mono track?

[@OrigEntertainmentOfficial]

Please put an audio warning for headphone wearers and/of lower the volume in post if you are going to shout into mic.

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

Thank you for your feedback.

[@DrewProject]

Ok but the F6 records in 32bit so why would you automix? If you’re going to edit the sound professionally at all automix makes zero sense. A conference style automix to provide the editor with an already mixed audio file for when there’s no time to post processing the audio for whatever reason (budget, time, etc) would be much more useful for location sound mixers imo.

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

To answer your question, using automix for 32-bit recordings is ideal because if you're a one man band mixing multiple microphones (boom mic & lav mics) on location, the automix feature will automatically lower the gain lever for you if they're mistakenly set to high on the lav mics. Keeping in mind that wireless lav mics transmit 24-bit audio.

[@mikegiamberardino1335]

Automix adjusts the volume of the non-active mics lowering them compared to the active mics. This reduces comb filtering and phase issues and has a tighter sound. as far as I can tell it has nothing to do with cliping. Its ideal for clipon mics as itll only activate them when the person is speaking and turn them way down when theyre not actively used. If you have a boom mic on with auto mix, you will hear the room tone dip when the actors speak so its usually a good idea to leave it off auto-mix, but sometimes, if you have multiple far mics, you may want to just automix everything and edit some room noise in post.

[@morale6014]

Are the files saved automixed?

[@jeffreyhackmedia]

To my knowledge, yes.

[@morale6014]

Thank you for answering my question.