How important is knowing signal flow and what IS signal flow?
Signal flow refers to the path that the signal follows as it leaves the source (a source example would be a vocalist singing into a microphone) and finally coming out of the loudspeaker(s). On a very basic system an engineer might be able to sit down at the board and begin mixing without too much thought to the larger picture. He turns on channel 1, slides fader up, and sound comes out of the speaker. On the other hand, as the system becomes more complex with reverbs, compression, active speaker systems, foldback, more channels, sub-mixing, and a host of other things then the issue takes on more importance. Knowing and understanding signal flow can help you to optimize your mix. The knowledge will also help you as the system expands and the job gets more complex. It can also help you to troubleshoot a system. Even on a very basic system, that knowledge is an important building block to understanding a larger system. In the above example of a basic system…(in the case of a problem) If
