Hi all! We’ve run into an issue with house mixers and monitors. We have our rig for practice and shows built on in-ear monitors. Sadly, when the venue provides the PA and tech, they agree to use our in-ears, but it doesn’t really turn out very well. Things get lost, changed, appear and disappear. Much of that is caused by them making feeds post fader, so as they adjust for the room, it affects our monitoring. I was trying to think of a sensible (cost-wise) idea. If l use an 8-in, 8-out interface (Behringer UMC-1820), l actually found a free 8x8 mixer plugin, and could use a mic splitter to separate us from the PA. I have 3 vocal mics, and could use mics for drums and guitar, so keys and bass would be DI. A drum pad would be my last source. Has anybody tried something similar? Is this overkill? We don’t play out a lot (hard to book, plus real life), and are doing it mostly for fun, but it’d be nice to have better control of this. Thanks!
Hi
Historically I have used a Focusrite Saffire 2i4 which gives me four outputs. Two go to Front of House - mixed in with my live keyboards, and then there are two outputs for our IEM click - In Welsh Floyd I had a channel for Guitar/Keyboards and then one for Drum/Bass
So the IEM outputs went nowhere near the House PA. I had a send from the PA that I could feed into the IEM as well, and of course I can hear/adjust the relative levels of PA send and the IEM feed.
That is how I do it anyway. I am in the process of upgrading my rig to include a MOTU16A and that will give me even more flexibility - including more outputs.
Thank you, Derek! My current rig has a Presonus Audiobox 96, which is two in, two out. I use Left out to feed the PA (mono), l use Right out to take a click track (just about 3 pieces) to the drummer to help us with certain things (song intro count-ins). What l’m thinking now is in-ears for everybody, set up separately from the PA. I was thinking of -
A mic splitter to separate us, clean paths go on to PA.
Transformer paths go to an 8-in Audio l/O, to be remixed and output to 8-outs on that l/O.
Each output can feed an in-ear. I only need 5, but the others may prove useful.
I found an 8-in, 8-out mixer vst on KVR, which l would hope to run in Cantabile.
I have just seen a MOTU interface that may do the mixing internally, which may obviate the need for PC and Cantabile (Sorry, Brad!), still looking around…
I’ve found that having each band member control their own mix on their phone is best, so start there (i.e. a cheap digital mixer like the Behirnger XR18 can do the trick). We always simply use prefader/post EQ going to our Aux feeds. We also tell the soundguy DON’T CHANGE THE INPUT GAINS! Then if one of us needs different EQ we just have the soundguy EQ that entire Aux feed. Works pretty well. Some of us have ability to globally EQ our entire IEM mix, which is even better.
However, it’s also quite common to split your feeds and separate your IEMs to avoid exactly the problem you’re facing. We used to use a Studiolive16.0.2 mixer for rehearsals and we would gig with it for IEM only. Worked great, a bit of a pain to haul and set up, but there are probably newer, smaller mixers out there that can handle it.
I currently have a Quantum 2626 interface (which I can’t recommend highly enough!) and it’s 8x8, so I could have used that. However, I decided I didn’t want to run another PC for IEMs, which is what you’re looking at. So here’s something we’re doing now, that’s merely food for thought:
We still use the phone to set our personal mix. I have an IEM rack within my Cantabile songs. I take the band feed from the mixer, prefader-post EQ, but without my instruments from Cantabile, and feed it to that IEM rack (which goes to my interface out Ch 1-2, which is the IEM feed to IEM transmitters). I EQ or compress to taste in the rack. I can split the signal at my 1-2 output and other band members can use or blend-in the same mix if they want, or I just patch it direct into my IEM wireless transmitter.
My instruments in Cantabile are routed to the same IEM Ch 1-2, so now everything is hitting my IEM, but I have control over 1) the bands mix, with global volume and overall EQ/compression, and 2) my Cantabile instruments, with global volume and overall EQ/compression. BTW, a brickwall compressor like Loudmax is great for this… keeps everything consistent, and if you don’t step on it too hard it sounds great.
This works really well for us, and it’s actually far simpler than it sounds. I’m sometimes 2-3’ away from Sub bins (that were far quieter during sound check), and I can quickly roll off some low end on the band mix in the IEM rack. Or my instruments. And get it just right so I have a great mix. Unlike trying to tell that to the soundguy in the middle of a song!
Sorry for the long winded explanation. Just food for thought. There are many ways to achieve what you need.
Tom
Hi TWAW! Our normal setup (Soundcraft Ui24) is pretty much as you describe, the problem comes when we go to a venue with its own mixer. Now we’re looking at a host of issues. An analog mixer with 4 submixes is about as bad as it can get. Phones can’t talk to that. Some have a digital mixer, but won’t share the software. My plan is to have a single rack, we plug into the front, and a splitter sends stuff on to the house unit. It won’t exactly double our cabling, but it will add some.