Members Art Flood Posted December 9, 2012 Members Share Posted December 9, 2012 Got a gig coming up this weekend and one of the band members wants a foh mix in his in ears. He wants to hear what the audience are hearing (I did try and talk him out of it). There seems to be quite a few options for doing this - Option A - patch his IEM straight into the main outs. Option B - use an aux send Option C - use the control room send I am guessing that after the first set he not going to like his IEM mix and is going to ask me can I make his guitar louder or can I cut the bass or drums - not really possible with option A. Using Option B i can obviously add or remove things from the mix but difficult to make identical to the FOH mix. With option C I can easily send him a main mix or switch to an aux send using the solo/main options on the monitor bus (but I really want to use this myself for headphones). My preference is to use option B but I not sure how to make it identical to the FOH mix (at least to start off with anyway). Would it work if I made it post fader and set each of the aux sends to the same level? Going to have a rehearsal with them on Wednesday so any suggestions would be really appreciated. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted December 9, 2012 Members Share Posted December 9, 2012 Originally Posted by Art Flood My preference is to use option B but I not sure how to make it identical to the FOH mix (at least to start off with anyway). Would it work if I made it post fader and set each of the aux sends to the same level? Going to have a rehearsal with them on Wednesday so any suggestions would be really appreciated.Thanks This is exactly how I would approach it. Use an extra aux, and if he gets to be hatin' on you because he doesn't like it, you can switch him back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Art Flood Posted December 9, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2012 Thanks Aged. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ChiroVette Posted December 9, 2012 Members Share Posted December 9, 2012 I don't know, I have tried getting a FOH mix into my IEM and it is less than ideal even if it works out right. The problem with what this musician wants is the same as what I wanted before I experienced it and had to learn for myself that I was wrong, and it was kind of a "duh!" moment once I realized it. Unless you are playing in some huge arena with ungodly amounts of gear where the "stage volume" is almost no factor in the house sound, then you can simply never have a true FOH mix in your ear even if you have a true FOH mix in your ear. Why? Well, because in most venues, you have the stage volume mixing with the house volume since the band is playing in a bar, club, or even small auditorium. So when you, as the soundman, balance the sound for the FOH, you are (intentionally or not) factoring the stage volume into how you mix and this will effect your final mix.So this musician who wants to hear the FOH in his IEM is only going to get a part of the mix you are hearing, that being everything that is going through the mixer, post fader to both the house and his personal IEM. But since most IEM's, including his I would assume, are noise cancelling buds (and hell, even the low end Klipsch s4's I used to just try out the concept of IEM and get my feet wet were noise cancelling) he is not going to hear the stage volume at all. That's what happened with me. I could ONLY hear what was coming out of the mixer, nothing else. So, no, even doing it that way (post fade Aux send) did not give me anything remotely resembling a FOH mix.Firstly, my band is not a very loud band. And the night I experimented with the wired IEM's, I got the stage volume down to a very low level. This meant that the drums did not have to acoustically fight the band so they wouldn't be buried. So the drum mix, for instance, was VERY light in the PA. Since my "house monitoring" IEM was true to what was coming out of the PA I could not hear drums very well. Also, the bass player was playing a little too loud...so, I dropped him very low into the house mix. So what happened was that the bass amp was mostly carrying itself as were the drums. So the FOH sounded fantastic, BUT my alleged FOH IEM sounded very lacking in bass and drums.See the problem? Eventually I threw my hands up and mixed my monitor like a monitor and not like the FOH. You might want to print this post out and show it to the guy who wants a FOH IEM. I get where he's coming from. Hell, I was there. But I was wrong and so is he. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Art Flood Posted December 9, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 9, 2012 Thanks ChiroVette. I get your point and as I said in the original post I have tried to talk the guy out of it but he is determined to give it a try. In this case the FOH mix will be close to the 'real' sound - only the bass player uses an amp, the guitars and keys are direct into the mixer, the bass will be DI and the drums will be mic'd. Like you I am sure the guy will find this less than satisfactory but he wants to try it. My main concern is how to give the guy a good FOH of house mix using an aux send. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abzurd Posted December 10, 2012 Members Share Posted December 10, 2012 Originally Posted by Art Flood My preference is to use option B but I not sure how to make it identical to the FOH mix (at least to start off with anyway). Would it work if I made it post fader and set each of the aux sends to the same level? Going to have a rehearsal with them on Wednesday so any suggestions would be really appreciated.Thanks If you are going to accomodate him one way or another just say "OK" and then use an aux. Set all channels "the same" at about 1/2 way up and make his aux post fader. If you want a smooth gig, bump his guitar up a few LED's, or he'll be on your @$$ to turn him up as he can't possibly be loud enough, and drop the lead vocal an LED or two. There.... he's hearing what the audience hears Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Art Flood Posted December 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 10, 2012 Originally Posted by abzurd If you are going to accomodate him one way or another just say "OK" and then use an aux. Set all channels "the same" at about 1/2 way up and make his aux post fader. If you want a smooth gig, bump his guitar up a few LED's, or he'll be on your @$$ to turn him up as he can't possibly be loud enough, and drop the lead vocal an LED or two. There.... he's hearing what the audience hears Thanks Abzurd - I am hoping that'll do the trick! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Barisaxman2000 Posted December 13, 2012 Members Share Posted December 13, 2012 Not sure if you have available channels, but one band I BE'd for accomplished this (albeit on an analog board) by sending the mono master output back through a channel (NOT ASSIGNED BACK TO THE MAIN OUTPUT/BUS!!!!) and then mix into the montors as normal. That way you can have the main mix, and "more me" on anything else in order to season individual mixes. Keep in mind that if master volume changes signficantly over the course of a show, the feed back into the channel strip will get louder and impact the monitor mixes where it is present. Maybe not (actually, definitely not...) the ideal method, but the results were acceptable to the band and that's what matters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Art Flood Posted December 13, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 13, 2012 Originally Posted by Barisaxman2000 Not sure if you have available channels, but one band I BE'd for accomplished this (albeit on an analog board) by sending the mono master output back through a channel (NOT ASSIGNED BACK TO THE MAIN OUTPUT/BUS!!!!) and then mix into the montors as normal. That way you can have the main mix, and "more me" on anything else in order to season individual mixes. Keep in mind that if master volume changes signficantly over the course of a show, the feed back into the channel strip will get louder and impact the monitor mixes where it is present. Maybe not (actually, definitely not...) the ideal method, but the results were acceptable to the band and that's what matters. Thanks Barisaxman. Good idea I'll give that a try! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted December 13, 2012 Members Share Posted December 13, 2012 Originally Posted by Barisaxman2000 Not sure if you have available channels, but one band I BE'd for accomplished this (albeit on an analog board) by sending the mono master output back through a channel (NOT ASSIGNED BACK TO THE MAIN OUTPUT/BUS!!!!) and then mix into the montors as normal. That way you can have the main mix, and "more me" on anything else in order to season individual mixes. Keep in mind that if master volume changes signficantly over the course of a show, the feed back into the channel strip will get louder and impact the monitor mixes where it is present. Maybe not (actually, definitely not...) the ideal method, but the results were acceptable to the band and that's what matters. As this is not a normal routing, it would pay to verify polarity on an analog console, nothing worse than feeding a polarity reversed signal into a non-reversed mix.If it's a digital console, it would pay to doublecheck latency paths because again, this is not a typical routing scheme and if you have to take the analog signal back into a channel there will be a serious latency difference which can cause really bad comb filtering.Interesting and creative approach though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Art Flood Posted December 13, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 13, 2012 Originally Posted by agedhorse As this is not a normal routing, it would pay to verify polarity on an analog console, nothing worse than feeding a polarity reversed signal into a non-reversed mix.If it's a digital console, it would pay to doublecheck latency paths because again, this is not a typical routing scheme and if you have to take the analog signal back into a channel there will be a serious latency difference which can cause really bad comb filtering.Interesting and creative approach though. Thanks Aged.So I won't try at the gig tonight but certainly one to try at rehearsal. With a StudioLive how much latency I should expect? At least two Analogue to digital conversions worth?Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted December 14, 2012 Members Share Posted December 14, 2012 Originally Posted by Art Flood Thanks Aged.So I won't try at the gig tonight but certainly one to try at rehearsal. With a StudioLive how much latency I should expect? At least two Analogue to digital conversions worth?Cheers The problem is DIFFERENT latencies being combined on shared program material. The actual variable values don't much matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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