Consumer Electronics

MIXERS

Mixers are controls whose purpose is to mix various elements of program together—the action centre of an audio system. For this reason considerable attention has gone into their design over the years. Two areas have received concentrated attention: (1) making the operation silent and durable; and (2) making it easy to use with an action involving natural human reflexes. Any contact that is used as a “slider,” virtually continuously, is liable to deteriorate with long use. This has led to the development of contacts with a minimum tendency to oxidise or wear, and with self-cleaning action.

Making such controls easy to manipulate placed emphasis on knob design so that the position would be easily recognisable at a glance, and also make it ...