Oscillator

What's the oscillator purpose on a mixing console?
I never used it before on my console.
Thanks

They used to be used for a number of purposes. One is to send a tone through a channel to trace its route to a patch panel, external FX and back. - in other words to check touting or for fauly finding. Another common use was to add a 50Hz tone between takes on a master tape. When the tape was fast wound you would hear a beep at the start/end of a track. Another common use with tape machines was to add 100Hz and 10KHz tones at the start of a master tape to it could be properly aligned for playback on any other tape machine.

Cheers

Ian

Just to add a bit to Ian's post, the desk oscillator is used like any other piece of test equipment in that it gives you a confidence check on fault finding or routing problems should you get them.  You can use the osc output via the patch panel to test the input circuits such as the mic or line inputs.  My desk, a MCI, allow me to put a tone through the patch panel, to every channel and/or the main mix buss.

Also in aligning tape machines, you set up the levels so that 0VU from the tape machine gives you 0VU on the desk and vice versa.  - for 'Tape machine' you can probably read 'DAW'. 

Good studio discipline is to put a 100Hz, 1KHz and 10KHz line-up tones on the front of a reel of tape, so you guarantee that levels will be the same in the future.

Kind regards

Mike