Last week I had an interesting conversation with my new friend Allan Tépper about mixers and recorders under $1000 USD with an auto mix feature. Allen is a contributing author at ProVideoCoalition and also hosts Beyond Podcasting. You can listen to our conversation over at ProVideoCoalition.com.
For those not familiar with auto mixing, this feature is very helpful in situations where you're recording two or more people, each with their own microphone, for interviews, panel discussions, or podcasts. In such situations, it is common for one person's speech to bleed over into the other peoples' mics, at least a little bit. Also, the mics that are not currently in use will often pick up reverberation in the room as sound bounces off the walls. Auto mix helps solve this problem by fading back the microphones not currently in use and then quickly fading them back up when that person begins to speak.