Tag Archives: Bang For The Buck

Split Monitor For The Little Guy

You don’t have to be in the big-leagues of production to get big-league functionality.

Please Remember:

The opinions expressed are mine only. These opinions do not necessarily reflect anybody else’s opinions. I do not own, operate, manage, or represent any band, venue, or company that I talk about, unless explicitly noted.

So, I’ve already talked a bit about why “split monitoring” is a nifty idea. Independent signal paths for FOH and monitor world let you give the folks onstage what they want, while also giving FOH what you want – and without having to directly force either area’s decisions on the other.

…but, how to set this up?

Traditional split-monitor setups are usually accomplished with a (relatively) expensive onstage split. Individual mic lines are connected to the stagebox, which then “mults” the signal into at least two cable trunks. This can be as simple as bog-standard parallel wiring – like you can find in any “Y” cable – or it can be a more complex affair with isolation transformers.

While you can definitely use a splitter snake or stagebox to accomplish the separation of FOH from monitor world, the expense, weight, and hassle may not really be worth it. Traditional splitters are usually built with the assumption that there will be separate operators for FOH and monitor world, and that these operators will also be physically separated. As a result, the cable trunks tend to be different lengths. Also, those same cables are made of a lot of expensive copper and jacketing material, and the stagebox internals can be even more spendy.

Now, if you actually need the functionality of a full-blown splitter snake, you should definitely invest in one. However, if you just want to get in on the advantages of a split monitor configuration, what you really need to shift your spending to console functionality and connectivity.

General Principles

Whether you implement a split monitor solution via analog or digital means, there are some universally applicable particulars to keep in mind:

You need to have enough channels to handle all of your inputs twice, OR you need enough channels to handle the signals that are “critical for monitoring” twice. For instance, if you never put drums in the monitors, then being able to “double up” the drum channels isn’t necessary. On the other hand, only doubling certain channels can be more confusing, especially for mixes with lots of inputs.
You actually DON’T need to worry about having enough pre-fader aux sends. In a split monitor configuration, post-fader monitor sends can actually be very helpful. Because you don’t have to worry about FOH fader moves changing the monitor mixes, you can run all your monitor sends post fader. This lets you use the monitor-channel fader itself as a precise global trim.
If the performers need FX in the monitors, you need to have a way to return the FX to both the FOH and monitor signal paths.
You need to be wiling to take the necessary time to get comfortable with running a split monitor setup. If you’ve never done it before, it can be easy to get lost; try your first run on a very simple gig, or even a rehearsal.

With all of that managed, you can think about specific implementations.

Analog

To create an affordable split monitor rig with an analog console (or multiple consoles), you will need to have a way to split the output of one mic pre to both the FOH and monitor channels. You can do this by “Y” cabling the output of external pres, but external mic preamps tend to be pretty spendy. A much less expensive choice is to use the internal pres on insert-equipped consoles. Ideally, one pre should be the “driver” for each source, and the other pre should be bypassed. Whether you pick the FOH or monitor channel pre is purely a matter of choice.

Your actual mic lines will need to be connected to the “driver” pre. On most insert-equipped consoles, you can plug a TS cable into the insert jack halfway. This causes the preamp signal to appear on the cable tip, while also allowing the signal to continue flowing down the original channel. The free end of the TS cable should also be connected to the insert on the counterpart channel, but it will need to be fully inside the jack. This connects the split signal to the electronics that are downstream of the preamp.

If you are working on a single console, you will need to be extra careful with your routing. You’ll need to take care not to drive your monitor sends from FOH channels, and on the flipside, you should usually disconnect your monitor channel faders from all outputs. (If all your monitor auxes are set as pre-fader, you can connect your monitor channel faders to a subgroup to get one more mix. This costs you your “global trim” fader functionality, of course. Decisions, decisions…)

Digital

Some digital consoles can allow you to create a “virtual” monitor mixer without any extra cables at all. If the digital patchbay functions let you assign one input to multiple channels, then all you have to worry about is the post-split routing. Not all digi consoles will let you do this, however. There are some digital mixers on the market that are meant to bring certain aspects of digital functionality to an essentially analog workflow, and these units will not allow you to do “strange” patching at the digital level.

As with the analog setup, if you’re using a single console you have to be careful to avoid using the monitor auxiliaries on the FOH channels. You also have to disconnect the monitor faders from all post-fade buses and subgroups – usually. Once again, if you don’t mind losing the fader-as-trim ability, setting all your monitor auxes to pre-fader and connecting the fader to a subgroup can give you one more mix.

Split-monitor setups can be powerful tools for audio rigs with a single operator. The configuration releases you from the compromises that can’t be avoided when you drive FOH and monitor land from a single channel. I definitely recommend trying split monitors if you’re excited about sound as its own discipline, and want to take your system’s functionality to the next level. Just take your time, and get used to the added complexity gradually.

The Pros and Cons of Decoupling

Separating gear into its components gives you more control, but it also creates more work.

Please Remember:

Question: If I gave you a mic pre, a parametric equalizer, a couple of splitter cables, an output selector box, and three volume pots, what could you make?

Answer: A basic channel strip.

Think about it – for all intents and purposes, the items listed above are the basic components necessary to construct an audio chain that behaves like a channel found on a simple console. What made them seem different is that they were packaged as single items, instead of all being attached to a circuit board.

They were decoupled from one another. Unbundled. Unboxed.

Decoupling pro-audio components can give you a lot of powerful choices, but it isn’t appropriate for everyone or every situation.

What The Heck Am I Talking About?

When I talk about “coupled” or “bundled” audio products, I’m referring to a device that houses multiple functions in one enclosure. Each function could theoretically be performed by a separate device in its own enclosure, but for various reasons the devices have been combined. For example:

“Powered” speakers, which stick an amplifier (and often, a lot of very carefully tweaked processing) into the loudspeaker enclosure. This is in contrast to “passive” speakers, which require amplification and processing from external products.
“Multiway” loudspeakers are even an example of bundling. Some people are happy to run entirely separate enclosures (and amps, and processing) for subs, low-mids, high-mids, and high-end. Lots of other folks are happy to combine everything above the subwoofers into one cabinet.
“Monolithic” mixing consoles, which put audio circuitry and/ or processing in the same case as the controls. I’m unaware of any analog console which ISN’T essentially monolithic out of sheer necessity. Some digital consoles, on the other hand, have DSP brains that are at least physically independent of the control surface.
System controllers, AKA loudspeaker management systems, are devices which combine equalizers, crossovers, and dynamics processors (amongst other things) into a single unit.

Each of these products presents you, as the buyer, with a choice. Accept the bundle offered, or decline it and construct your own solution. So – why pick one route over the other?

Conservation Of Responsibility

I don’t know if this is the biggest factor to consider when you’re thinking about whether to use a coupled or decoupled setup, but it’s the most generalized description that I could easily think of:

In a coupled solution, the manufacturer bears most of the responsibility for an effective configuration. In a decoupled solution, the responsibility shifts to the operator.

One of the best examples of this is the powered or “active” speaker, especially when the unit is biamped or triamped. The manufacturer of the speaker is the one who has to pick an appropriate amplifier for each driver. Not only that, but they have to include appropriate crossover processing at a minimum. Often, advanced driver-protection, driver-to-driver time alignment, and corrective EQ are “baked in” to the total solution.

If, on the other hand, you choose to go with passive speakers, you have to choose which of these functions are worth implementing, which products you’ll use to fulfill them, how to connect those products, and how to configure each unit.

The upshot is that there’s “conservation of responsibility,” in that the obligation of deciding how to put everything together is always present. Who actually gets most of that obligation depends on how much is packaged in one box. This is also true for the audio knowledge required when using the product(s). Audio gear that’s been bundled can reduce the knowledge demands for whoever is actually doing a show with that gear. Unbundled gear usually requires a more knowledgeable operator for maximum success.

Weight and Volume

Whenever you choose a bundled or decoupled solution to an audio-gear need, it’s helpful to have an awareness of the weight/ volume tradeoff that can occur (it doesn’t always happen):

All things being equal, “coupled” gear reduces the space required for deployment and transport, at the cost of each unit becoming heavier. Decoupled gear makes for lighter individual units, at the cost of more space being required for the entire system.

It’s important to notice that the above starts with “all things being equal.” In many cases, all things are not equal. For instance, if you replace a whole stack of PA management gear with a single Driverack processor, the weight AND volume of PA management equipment goes down. This is because all things aren’t equal – all the physical components of each piece aren’t included, because the functions are replicated in software.

In the same way, a powered speaker may not actually be as heavy as the passive version plus an amplifier, because the manufacturer will probably choose an amplification unit that allows for less weight (not to mention one that doesn’t require a hefty rackmount chassis).

Cost And Risk

Choosing coupled versus decoupled solutions in pro-audio influences both how much money you pay for things, and how many eggs you have in one basket:

Because of various “economies,” coupled products can sometimes be less expensive than their decoupled counterparts.

Powered speakers are another excellent example of this phenomenon. By the time you add up the cost of amplifiers, processing, speaker cable, and racks, creating equivalent functionality with a passive speaker enclosure can be more expensive than just buying a decent, pre-packaged, active box. If cost is a big factor for a production, coupled products can be a big help.

Because of tight, inter-component integration and dependence, the failure of one part of a coupled product can deprive you of the functionality of ALL parts of the product.

An example of this can be found with a loudspeaker management unit. All of the functionality of the unit (EQ, crossover, dynamics, etc) is tied to one power supply and one front-panel control setup. If either one of those is damaged or fails, everything “in the box” becomes unusable. In a decoupled system, the death of the crossover doesn’t deprive you of the use of the EQ. Bundled gear allows for each individual product to do more, but if there’s a problem you may lose ALL of that “doing more” in an instant. It’s just a risk that you have to be aware of.

Control Issues

The final point I want to make is in regards to the overall command that you have over coupled vs. decoupled audio systems:

Using decoupled products provides you with greater system flexibility and control than using bundled units.

I do want to be careful to point out that the above is NOT a value judgement. Greater control and flexibility are not an advantage unless you actually want them and will benefit from them. For instance, I’ve chosen to use a “decoupled” console, where the I/O, processing, and control all have some amount of separation. As a result, I have a ton of control over how the console behaves. If I don’t like some part of it, I can swap that part without losing my investment in the other parts. On the flipside, though, my console is not industry standard, it’s difficult to just “pick up and use,” and I have to be personally invested in making the whole thing work.

In the end, I definitely encourage audio enthusiasts to go for decoupled systems where it makes sense for them. For folks who just want things to work without much hassle, bundled gear is a great choice. I happen to use both kinds of pro-audio equipment, because I have to pick my battles. It all seems to be working out, so far.

Measure Your Marketing

If you want to be smart about promoting your band and your shows, you need to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

Please Remember:

I do NOT subscribe to the notion that “if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist.” I think there’s all kinds of room for things that are experienced, undertaken, and managed at an intuitive level. There isn’t a single thing wrong with saying, “this seems to be working really well, so let’s go with it.”

At the same time, though, I’m a proponent of quantifying things when there’s freedom to do so. This freedom seems to come along after you get to a certain comfort level.

Sometimes, a DIScomfort level.

Anyway.

You get to a point where things either seem to be working, or they seem to not be working, and you get a second to step back, scratch the ol’ noggin, and try to suss out the whys and wherefores. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in an artistic, technical, or business discipline – you eventually reach a state of needing (or wanting) to get at some underlying science.

You know. Numbers. Stats. Correlations.

When it comes to doing promo for your band’s recordings and shows, I’m of the opinion that it’s better to start figuring out the numbers early. If nothing else, being willing to take “the hard look” at what’s working and what isn’t can save you both money and effort in the long run – and who doesn’t want to have more cash and more free time?

De-mystifying Advertising Analytics

When I say the word “analytics,” it may be pretty intimidating. I’m a pretty tech and science savvy dude, and it was a touch intimidating to me when I hadn’t really gotten into it. The reality, though, is that being analytical about your promo comes down to one basic concept:

Each piece of your promotion should have some way to unambiguously self-report on its effectiveness.

Huh?

Okay. Let’s rewind.

Think about some ads that you’ve seen lately, especially if they were in some “traditional media” channel. It doesn’t matter what they were for. Did the promo say anything about “mention this ad and [some reward will be offered to you]?”

If the answer was yes, then the advertisement was set up to self-report on its effectiveness. The advertiser offered a special incentive for a customer to mention that specific ad campaign, with the goal being to keep track of how many people actually mention the ad. If a ton of people mention the ad and claim the incentive (“Two For One!” or whatever) then the advertiser knows that – at some level – the ad campaign was effective in reaching an audience. Either the tallied number of people saw the ad and responded, or a smaller number of people saw the ad and passed on the information to their friends.

Now, if they’re really smart, the advertiser will keep track of how much each incentive-claimer bought, and whether or not the aggregate profits offset the cost of the advertising. This is why all the big retailers have reward cards and other ways of invading your privacy. They want to gather as much data as possible, and then correlate your buying habits with their profit and loss statements. In real time, if possible.

I could get into what it means if you answered “no” to the question “Was an incentive offered for mentioning the ad,” but that’s not really germane to this article.

Anyway.

The point is that figuring out whether or not your promo is effective means embedding a measurement strategy in the promo itself.

Embedded Measurement

So…how DO you embed measurement into your promotional efforts?

The most immediate way is to use promo channels that already have measurement and reporting built in. Even at the most basic level, you can make observations about Facebook likes and shares, or Twitter favorites and retweets. You can then compare those numbers to all kinds of different things – when you sent out the Facebook post, what wording you used, when and where the show was scheduled, etc. Counting the number of responses you get is obvious, and I’m sure you already do it. However, you might not already be trying to correlate those “measures of engagement” with the various strategies that you try.

This is all fine and good, but what if you’re trying a promo method that isn’t web-based? For instance, lots of bands post flyers, but I know of very few bands that know if they actually work or not.

Mostly, I think bands post flyers because other bands posted them in the past. It’s a tradition!

Anyway…

This is where an incentive program can come in very handy.

For instance, you could have some special merch (like a free CD and sticker) to give away to anybody who comes to the show and brings a flyer with them. If you’d rather not have people pulling your flyers down, you could also make the same offer for anyone who comes in with a cellphone picture of the flyer.

You do need to be careful that you can afford the incentive. You might need to put a limit on the number of redemptions, if the incentive is relatively “spendy.” (“The first 10 people to bring in a flyer get a free shirt!”) It’s fine to get people in the door with a promo, but if the cost of the campaign outweighs the benefits of a larger audience, then the promotion wasn’t worth it.

You also need to be aware of whether or not your incentive actually focuses on your music, or if it focuses on something else. It’s perfectly fine to make a deal with a venue where people with cellphone pics of your flyer get a discount on a hamburger, but you need to be aware that some folks will take the picture and make the trip only for the food. On the other hand, incentives for band merch and cheaper admission make the promo solely about your band and your show.

Once you have your incentive program operating, you do need to remember to count. At the very least, make a note of how many people took advantage of the incentive and when. (This can be as simple as marking a tally on a sheet of paper with a date at the top.) When you relate this information to other numbers that you already have, you can start to get an objective picture about your different promo activities.

The ultimate goal is to figure out what promotions get attention AND actually make you more money. It’s not that making more money is the only worthwhile goal. It’s that turning a profit is one worthwhile goal among many…

…and measuring your marketing is very helpful in achieving that end.

Experiments Are For Discovery

Don’t do experiments to save money. Do experiments to learn things and get maximum ownership.

Please Remember:

If you yourself aren’t crazy enough to want to build your own amplifier, or construct your own loudspeaker, I’m betting that you know somebody who does. Hey, you know me, and I built my own digital mixing console. That’s pretty “out there” for most audio folks.

The reason people get these bats in their belfries is because building things is fascinating. You get to figure out what actually makes audio gear work – you get a hands-on trip through the actual tradeoffs that industry designers have to handle.

That’s the point of doing experiments: Learning something.

I’ve seen something unfortunate surrounding these endeavors, though. There’s a tendency for people to get into these projects solely for the purpose of trying to save money. When they discover (in one way or another) that doing an experiment is highly likely to actually cost more than buying a finished project, they bail out. Any excitement they had is completely wrecked.

It’s sad, really.

Makin’ Sawdust

It’s pretty easy for folks to get taken in by websites promising that you can build a superior loudspeaker for less than what it costs to buy one outright. The problem with the assertion is that it forces a lot of assumptions onto both the builder and the project:

It assumes that the builder knows how to use the necessary tools.
It assumes that the builder has the tools handy, or can obtain them for little cost.
It assumes that the tradeoffs made in the project design to allow for inexpensive components are well-understood by the builder.

On that last point, there’s one site for speaker enclosure plans that repeatedly touts how the designs outperform far more expensive models. The thing is that the supplied designs DO outperform their commercial counterparts – but only in one area. The DIY speakers are great if you want to get the maximum per-watt output available from inexpensive drivers, but not so great if you want deep LF (low frequency) extension and consistent overall response.

Once you couple the above with having to buy your own tools and deal with your own construction mistakes, you’ve pretty much burned any monetary advantage you might have had. There’s also the whole problem of how amplification and processing costs have dropped like a rock…as long as those components have been engineered into the actual speaker enclosure. If not, you have to provide that externally, which further drives up the cost of your homebrew project.

Now, sure, you might be able to find a sweet-spot where you can build a box with higher-end parts at a good price. If you’re not trying to maximize profit, and you’re willing to ignore the effective cost of your own labor, then you just might manage to save a few bucks in some way. It’s all just a game of moving the numbers around, though, where you can conveniently sweep certain costs under the perceptual rug.

That’s why “doing it cheaper” shouldn’t be the goal. The goal should be to have fun, learn something about woodworking, get a feel for what works and doesn’t in loudspeaker design, and ultimately have something in your hands where you can say, “I MADE this.” That’s where the real value is – and that value is far in excess of the few bucks you might save if you get lucky.

Console Yourself

Get it? “Console” yourself? It’s a play on…anyway.

In a purely “cash” sense, I did effectively save some money by building my own mixing system. To get fundamentally equivalent functionality and I/O, I would have had to spend about $1000 more than what the build cost. However, it’s important to point out that other, no less important expenses had already been made.

I already knew about the construction, care, and feeding of DAW computers.

I already knew enough about computers in general to be my own tech support.

I already knew enough about signal flow that I could effectively set up my own console configuration.

I already had enough overall experience to know what I wanted, and be able to actually leverage the advantages of the system.

I already had a spare console if something went wrong.

The value of all that goes beyond $1000. Several times over.

Again, though, that’s not the point of building your own digital console. The point is that you get to have a rig that’s truly yours – that you’re responsible for. You get to pick the compromises that you’re willing or not willing to make. You get to be the “proud parent.” You get to discover what it’s actually like to run a system with a custom front-end.

There was a time when pro-audio gear was something that you essentially had to construct yourself. It wasn’t a commoditized industry like it is now. These days, though, economies of scale make it vastly cheaper to buy things off the shelf when compared to doing your own build.

As a result, you shouldn’t do DIY experiments to save money. You should do them because they’re awesome.

Why Buy An Active DI

An active DI box can cost a bit more, but they have big advantages.

Please Remember:

The beat-up device up there with a missing knob is one of my well-loved passive DI boxes. It’s sounded plenty decent on a number of sources, solved at least its own share of ground-loop issues, and has never had any problems (beyond losing its attenuator knob).

Passive DI boxes are very handy creatures. They solve connectivity problems with almost no fuss at all, and the well-designed models are highly resistant to both stupidity and malice. My guess is that, about 80% of the time, they’re a perfectly decent choice.

The thing is, though, that active DI boxes let you cover the full 100% at all times. They’re also cheap enough now that there’s really no reason not to go active (if you’re starting from scratch).

The “cheap enough” bit is pretty self-explanatory. Head on over to your favorite music-gear retailer – Sweetwater, PSSL, Zzounds, whoever – and find their direct box category. Sort by ascending price, and you’re almost sure to find active units before you leave the $30 price point. (Some of the really cheap units are junky, but to be fair, I own two Behringer DI800 units that have never let me down…and at $120 a pop, their per-channel cost is $15.)

What isn’t so self-explanatory is why passive units don’t quite cover 100% of the direct-input situations you’ll encounter. There’s a bit of science involved.

A Few 10s of kOhms Is Usually Enough

Modern audio is all about voltage transfer. Voltage transfer is all about connecting an output device to an input device with an impedance (opposition to current flow) that is high when compared to the output circuit.

Okay, that sounds like gobbledygook. An analogy would be helpful.

Think of a bunch of cars on the freeway. Traffic is flowing nicely. Everybody’s just flying along without a care in the world. This is low impedance. There’s very little opposition to traffic flow.

Now, we construct an exit to the freeway. The exit leads to a one-lane road. The one-lane road, in comparison to the freeway, is a high-impedance device. Fewer cars can flow down that one lane road, and as a result, the freeway has no trouble keeping the little road supplied with cars.

This condition, when applied to electrical connections, is called “bridging impedance.” An output device with low impedance is like a freeway, and an input device with a comparatively high (10x or more) impedance is like a one-lane road. For audio types, we’re not concerned with preserving the amount of electrical flow, so much as we’re concerned with preserving electrical force (voltage). Bridging impedance lets us do that.

Most passive DI boxes have an input impedance that’s in the range of several tens of thousands of Ohms. Some can even be in the 100,000 Ohm range. Connect a device with an output impedance of a few thousand Ohms or less, and – no problem! A lot of devices are perfectly suited to interacting with a passive DI, because a lot of the gear and instruments that get connected are active units. Keyboard outputs are low-impedance creatures. Guitar-processors have low-impedance outputs.

Heck, a lot of acoustic-electric guitar outputs are low impedance. The actual pickup might be anything under the sun, but quite often you’ll find some sort of preamp sitting between the pickup and the output jack.

In a lot of cases, you can even get away with connecting a bass or electric guitar with passive pickups to a passive DI. It’s not theoretically ideal, but it usually sounds fine.

This covers the “80% of the time” thing. The 20% comes in when you encounter an instrument with a very high impedance pickup, and no preamp. Plug one of those into a passive DI, and…yuck.

Easy As Pie-zo. (Yeah, That Was A Cheesy Pun…)

The ur-example of the high-impedance pickup is the piezo. Piezo pickups are neat because they’re small, put in direct contact with the instrument (which makes them resistant to external noises, insofar as the instrument resists those noises), affordable, and simple.

The problem with piezos is that they are passive devices with a very high output impedance – so high that getting into impedance bridging territory requires millions of Ohms or more.

So, you plug one of the little darlings into a passive DI, and what happens?

First, you probably get a weak signal out of the pickup. Poor impedance bridging means poor voltage transfer, and voltage transfer is how we ensure good signals in the world of pro-audio.

Second, the instrument probably sounds terrible.

Why?

A piezo pickup (when connected to another audio device and viewed as a set of electrical building blocks) is a capacitor, inductor, and load resistor in series, with a capacitor connected in parallel before the load resistor.

What all of that means is that passive EQ is happening – the capacitor, inductor, and load form a classic resonant circuit. The capacitor and inductor in series allow a range of frequencies through, and the parallel capacitance acts as an additional low-pass filter. (Whether or not this low-pass is significant after the capacitor-inductor bandpass is a whole other issue.)

The issue with passive filter circuits is that everything has an effect on everything else. If the load impedance is adequately high, then we get a nicely damped, wideband filter that sounds natural. If the load impedance is too low, however, the filter gets narrow and odd sounding. This effect can become so pronounced that string instruments start to sound like horns(!)

The obvious fix, then, is to connect the piezo pickup to a very-high impedance device. An easy way to do this is to use an active DI box.

The Buffer Zone

Active DI boxes solve the piezo impedance problem because they can employ buffer amplifiers. The great thing about a buffer amplifier is that its input impedance is very, very high (millions or even billions of Ohms). It also does this in a very small package. You could probably construct a passive DI box with an input impedance in the millions of Ohms, but the size and weight of the thing (not to mention the cost) would be really off-putting.

The downside of using a buffer amplifier is that it requires a power supply. This means batteries, or engaging phantom power from the console. In practical reality, though, this downside is almost negligible. Almost any modern console that’s capable of mixing a full band will have phantom available, and a battery in a DI box will probably last for tens (if not a hundred or so) hours.

So – all of this is just a very long way of saying, “Buy active DI boxes.” They’re pretty much guaranteed to work with any kind of instrument output you encounter, and they can be powered by any half-decent console or mic pre. They remove any need for guesswork, and they can even have nifty extras like signal boosters and guitar cab emulations.

Passive direct boxes are the right choice most of the time, but a reliable, full-featured, active DI is the right choice all the time.

No contest.

Buy A Little Amp

Large, powerful amplifiers were necessary in the early days of rock and roll. Not anymore.

Please Remember:

Nothing screams “Rock Band” like lots of gear. I myself will readily admit it: I LOVE the look of big, “ugly,” powerful, solidly-built amps and speaker cabs. You get all of that into a room, and by gum, everyone knows that you mean business.

Having people think that you mean business is a really good feeling. Heck, it’s an addictive feeling.

But it’s just a feeling.

What counts a lot more than looking like you mean business is to actually mean business, and then prove it beyond all doubt with your actual music. Proving you mean business in the small-venue context doesn’t require a lot of gear. It simply requires that you have enough gear.

Sure, you do want a bit of “cushion” or headroom, but a whole ton of it isn’t necessary. In fact, it can even be detrimental. We’ll get into that in a bit – but first, let’s talk about where the “big gear” thing came from.

The Days Before PA (As We Know It)

Way back when, in the days when men were real men, women were real women, and cars cost about as much as five tanks of gas today, you could count on one general rule for live-sound reinforcement:

You either made enough noise acoustically, or you had a dedicated amp.

The exception to this (but not by much) was the vocalists. Each vocalist might not have had their own PA, but the typical reality was that the PA only had a handful of inputs – and the PA only did vocals. The idea that you would put all the instruments through one sound rig was a foreign concept.

As a result, if you were doing a big show, you needed big amps. The drums might carry pretty well, but if you were going to get that guitar solo all the way to the back row, you needed serious firepower. Even as PA technology grew by leaps and bounds, the notion that guitarists and bass players would make all their own noise stayed entrenched. Hey – they already had the gear, right? Why fix what isn’t busted?

At this same time, the founding fathers of amplified guitar and bass were creating the tones and textures that would define those instruments for decades. They were getting those sounds through gear that had to be big, heavy, and loud to do its job. Especially for the guitar players, who loved (and still do love, for good reason) the thick, satisfying roar of power tubes being driven hard, the acoustical output was in-freaking-sane.

They got away with that volume because it was expected, and also because they were playing to huge crowds. Most of the audience wasn’t in the first few rows, and so the noise wasn’t as deafening.

Now, fast forward to 2013.

The iconic gear that defined the sound of rock and roll instruments is still very much in fashion. Sure, there have been various improvements in materials, construction, cost management, and design, but all of these creatures of the amplifier kingdom are fundamentally the same animals as their counterparts from 1969. They’re big, they’re heavy, and their most rockin’ sounds require stadium volume (or a power soak, if you don’t want stadium volume).

The problem is that stadium volume from amplifiers is no longer required, or even desirable – especially not in small rooms.

The 100 Watt Amp Problem

Let’s talk about some of what’s going on when an all-tube, 100 watt, gorgeous sounding amp is really doing its thing. Let’s make some conservative assumptions to start:

The 100 watt rating is the continuous power generated by the amp at a full-tilt, maximum overdrive, supersaturated roar.
The cab is a 4×12, wired so that each loudspeaker gets 25 watts.
Each loudspeaker has an average sensitivity of 95 dB SPL at 1 watt, measured at 1 meter.

The tone is killer. So is the volume.

Each cone is producing about 109 dB SPL, continuous. The summation of those four cones is 115 dB SPL, continuous, at 1 meter. The average audience member is probably sitting about 22 feet (6.7 meters) away. The venue isn’t totally dead, acoustically, so the average SPL decay is 5 dB per doubling of distance, as opposed to 6. This works out to 13.7 dB of volume decay for the average audience member.

So, for the most part, the audience is hearing about 101 dB SPL, continuous, of just the one guitar. Add another guitar of similar volume, and the continuous level is 104 dB SPL. The bass player fits in with a 99 dB SPL contribution, which takes our total to 105 dB SPL. The drummer is a spirited lad, able to make 100 dB SPL himself. Now we’re at 106 dB SPL. The vocals probably have to be at a minimum continuous level of 102 dB in order to be distinguishable, so that takes us to a grand total of…

Just under 108 dB SPL, continuous, for the average audience member, and that’s not including monitor wash.

For most people, that’s pretty dang loud. In a bar, that kind of level is hard to deal with when placing or taking orders (assuming that the bar is in the “average level” zone – which IS the case in a good number of rooms).

There’s no denying that the tone of the guitar is spectacular, but that spectacular tone is causing an audience discomfort problem, and potentially an economic problem for the venue.

This is bad for you.

Also bad for you is that, to get really good separation, the singer (who’s about 12 feet from the cab) has to be able to produce about 125 dB SPL at their mic capsule. This means that you need a singer with lots of power, stamina, and great pitch control at full volume…or less pitch control, but more raw power in reserve.

On top of that, for the vocalist to feel like they’re really hearing themselves in the monitors, the wedges will need to be making about 115 dB SPL continuous at the singer’s ears. If the singer is really powerful, and the wedges are good, then this should be achievable. If the singer isn’t really powerful, or is having an off day, or if the wedges are a little cheap, getting that kind of level may be a battle. Now, you’ve potentially got gain-before-feedback issues.

The Upshot

That arena-ready amp rig sure does sound good, but:

It probably costs a fair amount of money to acquire.
It takes up a lot of room.
It’s heavy.
It has to get really loud before it sounds right.
It forces everybody else to keep up.
It makes monitors harder to manage.
It can drive audience members away.
The venue can lose money.
It reduces the FOH audio tech’s options for the rest of the band (because the tech’s first priority can be forced towards just keeping up with you).

Bummer.

There’s a fix.

Buy a little amp.

There are plenty of all-tube combos out there that top out at 10 watts. That’s really all that you need. Get those tubes really hot to get the tone you want, and you’ll probably have about 105 – 110 dB SPL at 1 meter.

And you’ll be able to do it with a piece of gear that’s easy to carry.

And you’ll be able to do it with a piece of gear that you can fit anywhere.

And you’ll be able to do it without making your vocalist work themselves to death.

And you’ll be able to do it without forcing everybody else to keep up with you, whether in terms of volume or equipment purposes.

And you’ll be able to do it without flattening the audience.

And you’ll be able to do it while the bar still makes money.

And you’ll be able to do it while allowing the audio tech to make meaningful choices to get you the best sound possible.

And, because PA technology has come a very long way, that one amp will still work for you when you’re playing stadiums. The crew will just stick a mic in front of it, and turn that 10 watt amp into a 10,000+ watt amp with great coverage and smooth frequency response across the entire audience.

I can certainly understand that you might want a big rig because of the way it looks, or because there’s something very specific about the sound that can’t be perfectly replicated by other means. I do get that.

But big amps just aren’t necessary anymore, and they can be more trouble than they’re worth.

Book Like A Sniper

When looking for shows, be choosy.

Please Remember:

(Fair warning – this post might start out with a particularly cranky tone, but that’s just to lay the groundwork for friendly advice and encouragement a bit farther down. All I ask is that you hear me out.)

I’m not currently the booking manager of any club, bar, or theater.

But when I was, I had a bad relationship with a particular kind of booking agent. I called them “Shotgunners.”

A Shotgunner was a booking agent or band member who had a “form e-mail” written up, and was sending out that e-mail to every venue in the path of their tour. The goal was to get “a show” (any show) when they were in Salt Lake, and so they half-blindly shot a bunch of messages into the general area. If they got multiple responses, that was great – they could choose a gig from the bunch. If they got one response, that was still okay, because they would have something to do that night.

For a good while, I responded personally to each Shotgunner. I saw it as doing the right thing, but as time went on the shotgun-booked shows turned out to be both poorly attended, not-fun-for-anyone affairs.

I started ignoring the Shotgunners entirely. Shotgunner emails were, on the whole, very easy to pick out from the worthwhile booking requests:

They were almost always sent from a major music market, like LA, Chicago, Nashville, New York, or Austin. (There’s nothing wrong with that, it was just part of the pattern.)
They disproportionately represented the metal-screamo-pop-punk pool of bands. You know, the genre where there’s always at least one musician who’s way too loud for the small-venue context, and where all the band names have a catchy cadence like “Deny Us The Planet,” or “Tear The Stars From Heaven?” (By the way, if there are bands with those names, I’m not ragging on you. I just made those names up on the spot.) Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of this. It was just “the profile.”
The e-mail writer almost always said something like “we’re routing through your area.” This was apparently code for “we’re going to travel through your city on the way to an important gig, and we figured we might as well play.” If I was particularly lucky, they would take the time to actually mention Salt Lake by name.
The Shotgunner would usually try to impress me by mentioning that their catchily-named band had shared the stage at [venue in their music market that was probably big there, but that I had no clue about] with [another catchily-named band that was probably big where they were, but I had no clue about]. The Shotgunners did get bonus points – for a while – if the band had been a part of Warped Tour or SXSW. After I realized that a band having been a part of either event was no indication whatsoever of whether anyone in Salt Lake would even know about that band, I stopped granting the points.
The absolute, positive, dead-giveaway that I was being Shotgunned was when the e-mail would inevitably reveal that nobody had bothered to read the venue’s booking info. The booking info clearly stated that we were a DIY sort of affair, where locals put together their own bills, there were no guarantees, and everybody (the venue included) was just getting a cut of the door. The Shotgunners would constantly talk about guaranteed payouts, and how it would be okay if local support acts were included. (A big factor in me no longer answering Shotgunners was becoming tired of having to constantly restate our booking info.)

Focus – It’s Good For You!

Everything I wrote about above was about how Shotgun booking affected me, but what I really want to focus on is you.

The musician who’s trying to build a fan base. The musician who wants to tour. The musician who wants to be heard. If you take nothing else away from this post, please take this:

Your music is worth so much more than a hasty e-mail that’s fired off and forgotten.

Read that again, if it hasn’t sunk in yet.

When you let a booking agent shotgun your info, or you shotgun booking requests yourself, you are doing yourself a disservice. You’re selling yourself short. You’re gathering up a big portfolio of shows that – for whatever reason – probably aren’t worth your time.

The fix for this issue is extraordinarily simple. All that has to be done is to trade the “shotgun” for an instrument of precision. In other words…

Book shows like a sniper.

Snipers are the folks who get called in to handle “high value” targets. Snipers become familiar with their quarries, figuring out what makes them tick. Snipers carefully maneuver into place, looking for the opportunity for the perfect shot. They are going to fire one bullet, and that bullet has to count.

(By the way, I’m not advocating for an adversarial relationship between musicians/ booking agents and venue bookers. This is all just a metaphor for focus and commitment.)

Booking like a sniper means taking your time on each individual show, taking the trouble to build a relationship with the venue, and taking care to have the long-term in view.

Better Shows Through Care and Planning

Shotgunning is a very tempting approach. It’s fast, and it seems easy – but remember how I talked about The Law of Conservation of Effort? Shotgunning saves a bit of time on one end, but all that time will have to be paid back later. It may even be paid back with “penalties.”

What I mean is that there’s a big payoff to spending the time necessary to really pin down a great show, in a room you definitely want to play, with clear understandings between the venue management and you.

For one, going into the booking process with a clear demonstration that you understand what the venue is about sends a HUGE signal. It indicates that you care about the show – and let me tell you, your caring about your own show makes everyone else much more likely to care about your show.
Another big point is that taking your time to find the shows and rooms that really work for you leads to a much more fun and profitable career. Sure, a Shotgunner may get more shows, but a lot of those shows will probably be mediocre. Even junk. Snipers, on the other hand, spend their time getting and playing high-quality, fun gigs. Especially if you’re just starting out, high-quality dates might not be as numerous as you prefer, but be assured that they are worth several “junk nights” apiece.
The final point is that a show you’ve taken your time on is one where both you and the venue know what to expect. A hasty booking may be fraught with confusion about who promised what to whom. On the other hand, a careful booking makes you much more likely to be compensated fairly – and also much more able to argue your case if anybody tries to pull a fast one.

“But it takes so much time!” you might be tempted to shout.

Believe me, I hear ya. Again, though, I have to hammer on The Law of Conservation of Effort. Let’s say you shotgun-book a whole ton of gigs. The law of averages will take care of some of them being good, no doubt. However, unless you’re really lucky, a lot of those shows won’t be worth much fun OR money. Even if they aren’t worth much, you still have to get everybody organized, practice, get everyone to the gig on time, load and unload your gear, play like you mean it, and then get “reset” for practice. Because the booking was done in haste, you might have had to renegotiate some things on the fly. You may get shuffled around in the lineup without any say-so. You might just get stiffed out of your share.

The gigs might be utter crap, and yet you still have to do a lot of work to make them happen.

At some point, doesn’t it just make sense to spend, say, a couple more hours on getting a few shows you really want, where all that effort is much more likely to be worth it?

Money Is Important, But Not All Important

Before I wrap up, I want to make one more point.

In my experience, what makes any particular show “high quality” or “worth it” can take a lot of forms. At some times, it will be all about how much money can be made. That’s not all there is, though.

I want to be absolutely clear that I think “fun factor” is a huge component of what makes a gig worthwhile. If you’re going to have a serious career, you will probably have to balance “fun” with “profit,” but it can be very easy to throw “fun” out unnecessarily. Every so often, you’ll run into a situation where the show is a genuine blast, but is financially weak.

Taking that date anyway is totally legitimate, so don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Every so often, it’s perfectly okay to say, “The show will hardly pay anything, but that place has the most amazing [food, drink, hot waitress, view out the window, whatever]. Come on, we’ll get the gas money back, be out of the house, and just play the songs we like.” As long as you don’t run your career into the ground by doing this every show, you’re fine.

…and notice that the hypothetical gig has been well considered, with everybody knowing what to expect.

Book like a sniper.

Marketing And Promotion Isn’t Magic

The idea that more people show up because more money is spent on “broadcast” show promotion is false.

Please Remember:

I don’t know if anybody plays “Magic: The Gathering” any more, but that was the best metaphor I could think of.

Anyway.

There is a persistent myth in the music industry that more promotion = more concertgoers. This myth is untrue. (There are true myths, at least in my experience, but that’s a philosophical discussion for another time.)

Now, what IS true is that “the word” regarding an upcoming show does need to get out. Makes sense, right? If nobody knows about your upcoming gig, they probably aren’t going to show up. The problem is making the assumption that, just because someone knows about your gig, they WILL show up without fail. Of course, at an intuitive level, we know that’s not true. Even your best friends – people who love your music, or the venue, or whatever, don’t always turn up when given the opportunity.

For some reason, though, when it comes to marketing and promotion, we shut off this particular piece of knowledge and start acting like dollars and effort will force things to happen. As a result, money and effort is expended out of proportion to the returns it might bring. This leads to frustration, anger, and also less money for other things. Things like gear. And also food.

Fortunately, I think there’s a fix. The fix doesn’t solve the problem of people showing up, but it does solve our internal problem of believing a lie. The fix, like all troubleshooting, starts with understanding what’s broken.

“Broadcast” Advertising Is A Risky Investment

A quote attributed to John Wanamaker goes like this: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Whether or not he actually said it, the quote illustrates the problem with advertising your show, album release, or anything else via traditional means. It’s hard to know if mass marketing is effective or not.

Traditional media is broadcast in nature. That is to say, it gets fired off into the public with no (or minimal) targeting. Sure, a publication, radio station, or TV production may have its own target audience, but the actual delivery medium effectively “radiates” to a general area. With the exception of their streaming services, TV and radio transmissions fly out with minimal directivity. Folks either tune in or don’t, but the signal still arrives at their location if they’re in range. That transmission power is lost if folks aren’t listening. The same analogy applies to print. Sure, The Salt Lake Tribune, SLUG, and The City Weekly target where they put their distribution stands. Even so, once the papers get to those stands, there’s no targeting at all. The “signal” is just out there, and you don’t immediately (sometimes ever) know if it reached any particular person or didn’t.

This is why traditional media advertises their advertising services the way they do. (So meta! It’s like a reflection of a reflection.) They say things like, “We reach thousands of people across the Wasatch Front. A percentage of these people buy from radio/ TV/ newspaper ads. Advertising with us works!”

Think about that last paragraph. Promotion via traditional media is a form of gambling. It’s really nothing more than a bet based on percentages – like Roulette, or Poker. If your product has a general appeal, then the percentage is in your favor. If your product is niche, then you’re making a risky bet.

Live music is a niche market. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of people who like to attend shows. The issue is that there usually aren’t a lot of people who want to attend YOUR show. So, just telling them that your show is out there isn’t going to turn them into a customer.

If you want to boil it down, you can say this:

Marketing and promotion is the process of gaining attention from the people who are already interested in buying what you’re selling. Marketing and promotion are NOT the process of magically turning people disinterested in your product into people interested in your product.

Let me lay a couple of examples of well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective marketing on you.

I once did an all-ages show for a band that wanted to make a splash in Salt Lake. The whole night was theirs. They spent money on radio spots, flyers, the whole thing. As I recall, about 10 people showed up to a 200 capacity room. To the best of my knowledge, all of them were existing fans.
I once did a show where the venue invested in a “far more extravagant than normal” newspaper ad for the show. It was a good chunk of the page, and in full color. The act came from a good, “name” pedigree. The show night was probably in the top 10 of the slowest nights in that venue.

Of course, I recognize that two examples isn’t a huge sample size. At the same time, I feel that it’s representative of what’s going on.

So…watcha gonna do? Take heart! The news isn’t all bad. Actually, the news is pretty good.

Do What’s Effective, Then Stop. Immediately.

The pretty-dang-good news is that you – yes YOU, you eating the sandwich over there – are your own media outlet now. (Remember my article about that?) On top of that, you’re not just a media outlet. You’re a laser-targeted media outlet.

Seriously.

If the marketing available to bands, artists, and venues were a guided munition, it would be able to home in on a target the size of a cell phone (not one of the big ones, either) in the dark, during a violent hurricane.

…and this isn’t because of studies. It’s not because of polling. It’s not because of statistical genius.

It’s because of social media.

There are a million lectures to be had about the power of social media, so there’s no need for me to repeat very much. What I will say is this:

As a musician, band, or anyone else involved in music, you have the unprecedented power of focusing your marketing efforts on people who have – effectively – declared directly that they are interested in what you’re selling. For this reason, you can get maximum results with a minimum of cost and effort. You just have to give yourself permission.

You don’t have to throw money at traditional media, hoping that someone might listen. You have Facebook likes. You have Twitter followers. You have people who look at your pictures on Instagram. You have people who have decided to listen to you, and you know who they are. Right now.

Yes, I know that capturing the attention of those folks is an issue. That piece of the discussion is beyond the scope of this article, although you might want to check into the resources that Carlos Castillo posts.

The upshot? Spend your precious money and energy on reaching the people that you know are already interested in some demonstrable way. Actually, because social media is effectively subsidized, you only have to directly spend energy. Ask the people who have already taken the trouble to “declare for you” to pass the word. Only some of them will, but the end result is still more effective than throwing a message into the howling, black vortex of broadcast media…and then hoping for the best.

Then, once you’ve reached out to the people who have already said that they want to listen, stop.

Stop.

I mean it.

Give yourself permission to quit promoting after you’ve done all that will actually be effective.

It’s really hard, surprisingly, so make sure to practice.

Even in the music business, which is supposedly a very free-love, touchy-feely sort of place, there’s this incredible undercurrent of having to do an “acceptable” amount of work on a show. The undercurrent is so strong that people will actually spend time and money that they shouldn’t, doing things that don’t actually work, all to satisfy that sense that there’s a certain amount of “tired and used up” that must be achieved before something becomes legitimate. It’s all part of the competition based on work that I’ve come to deeply dislike.

I urge you not to do things that are ineffective simply to say that you’ve done them.

Do what matters, and then move on. Give yourself permission. Even better – give others you’re working with, like bands on the same bill, and the venue you’re playing at, permission to stop after they’ve done what works.

…and keep track of what works. Flyering (which is a form of broadcast media, I assure you) isn’t something that I see as working very much. However, if you can positively determine that it’s effective for you, with real numbers to back up your conclusions, then go for it! If nobody that follows you on Twitter is actually interested in your shows, then don’t sink a lot of time into marketing your shows on Twitter. If Facebook does everything you need, post to Facebook and then let things ride. Do what works for you, and avoid being lazy, but also recognize that all you have to do to avoid being lazy is to do what’s actually enough. Adding on a bunch of useless activity is just getting tired for the purpose of internal bonus points.

Marketing and promotion for shows isn’t magic. It doesn’t conjure an audience out of thin air. If you’ve done what you can, you’ve done what you can.

You Should Try A Custom-Built Digital Console. Or Not.

Custom-made digital consoles have incredible power, but they aren’t for everybody.

Please Remember:

I’ve been a huge fan of digital consoles since about 2001. Back when I was studying at The Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences, it took one day in the digital studio to convince me that digital was the way to go. At the time, that room had two TMD-4000 consoles cascaded together. The functionality of those two consoles rivaled that of the much, much, much, much, much, much, (am I going to say, “much,” again? YES!), much more expensive SSL 4056 in the “A” room next door.

Now, I’m not here to argue about sonics. Having heard audio in both the digital room and Studio A, I can tell you that things sounded “just fine” in both places. Some folks might want to make a huge deal out of which consoles seem to sound better than other consoles. That’s not what I’m here to do. What I’m talking about here is functionality – the kinds of nifty tricks that different consoles can pull off.

Anyway, my first digital console was a DM-24. I now have two of them, actually.

I dropped the first one on concrete during an event load-in.

That DM-24 still works pretty well, surprisingly.

The Next Step

Fast-forward to 2011. I’m working at Fats Grill, and I’m tired of lugging my original, slightly-dinged-by-concrete DM-24 in and out of the place every week. (This was before I got my hands on the other DM, because it hadn’t been decommissioned yet. That’s another story.) It was time to get another console, but I couldn’t find anything I really liked at a price that I could justify.

Mostly, it was The Floyd Show’s fault.

This isn’t actually a tangent. Stick with me, folks.

See, we had featured the band, and the show had gone really well, but I had to submix a good chunk of their inputs. My DM was configured to act as both FOH and a virtual monitor console (more on that in another post), so I only had 15 channels that I could work with “natively” – with full, individual routing, and all that.

I wanted to be able to do the entire Floyd Show natively, on one console. I also wanted to keep full, virtual monitor console functionality. If I could do that, I figured that I could do the same for any other band that came through.

There were consoles in my price range with all the necessary analog inputs, but not enough actual channels or routing wizardry to do the virtual monitor thing. I also wasn’t fond of their overall implementation.

The single or cascaded console solutions that would do what I wanted were more than I could justify spending.

What’s a guy to do?

As it turns out, the next step in the “more bang for the buck” digital progression is to build your own console, using off-the-shelf audio interfaces and preamps. General computing platforms (like Windows) run on hardware that’s now powerful enough to stay responsive while handling lots of audio processing. That same hardware and software can also be made plenty reliable enough to function in a mission-critical environment like sound reinforcement.

The Magic

I ended up building a 24-input, 24-output rig, which originally ran Software Audio Console. I’ve since switched to Reaper, with some custom setup work to make the software more friendly to live work. (The “why” of that switch will be yet another post). On this kind of rig, the functionality available to an audio tech is extensive:

You can have independent FOH and monitor consoles in one box. The monitor console can be completely independent of FOH – aside from your preamp gains – or you can make it dependent on FOH processing by making some routing changes. You could even make the monitor console dependent on only part of the FOH processing stack, if you’re willing to do some fancier routing.
You could conceivably have multiple monitor consoles, configured independently. You could have multiple FOH consoles if you so desired. The only limit is how much processing the computer platform can do at an acceptable latency.
You can have as many monitor sends, mix feeds, and cue buses as you have physical outputs available.
Any regular channel on the console can have sends or be configured as a bus receive. Any channel. If you need full matrix output functionality, all you have to do is add the appropriate sends to the appropriate channels that are receiving other channels and feeding an output. If you need another bus, you just add one.
Since all your console outputs and buses can be regular channels, you can insert any processing on those channels that you please. None of this, “you can’t have that kind of EQ in that context because the engineering team didn’t think it was really important” stuff.
Drag and drop is available for all kinds of things. If you want to copy an EQ configuration to another channel, you just grab the EQ plug that’s setup properly, plop it into the target channel’s stack, delete the old EQ, and drag the new EQ to the proper spot. You can do the same for sends.
The channel processing stack is incredibly configurable. If you want an EQ to come before a compressor, you can make that happen. If you change your mind, you can reorder the channel processing stack by drag and drop. If you want to have a special EQ that wasn’t part of the main audio chain, but instead does something wild with a parametric filter and then passes its output to a gate key or compressor sidechain, you can do that. You can have two extreme EQ setups that process in parallel. You can have a delay and reverb on a single channel that process in parallel, so that You don’t have to use two buses to address them.
For channel processing, you can use any plugin you want – as long as you don’t add noticeable latency to the system of course. The “native” plugs that come with Reaper are killer, by the way:
- The gate has a key input, hysteresis, and can be made into an expander with a simple adjustment to a “dry signal” control.
- The compressor has a sidechain input, and also has a “dry signal” control, which means you can do parallel compression right in a single channel.
- The EQ has as many bands of EQ as you want. It includes peaking, shelving, notch, bandpass, and hi/ low pass filters.
You can have permanent groups for channel faders and mutes, or you can get a temporary group by just multi-selecting what you want. (In fact, I use the temporary grouping a lot more than the assigned group functions.)
You can save as many mixes and projects as the host computer can hold, with any system-legal filename that you want, in any hierarchy that you want.
You can set up a VNC-based remote control system, as long as doing so doesn’t overload the system’s ability to process.
Since the whole thing is driven by an audio interface, you can always swap for another one if the current unit has an issue, or you want to try something different.
If you want more I/O, all you have to do is get an interface with more I/O, or cascade the current unit if that’s supported. You’re not tied to a manufacturer’s choice as to how much connectivity to include.
If you want a control surface, you can add one. You have all kinds of choices, from cheap to extravagant.
If the basic controls break, mice, trackballs and keyboards are only slightly more expensive than dirt. In the same vein, as long as you have a pointing device and keyboard attached, you effectively have a fallback control surface if the fancy one has a problem.
If you want a better screen, you can get one. Or two. Or as many as your video card can support.
You can multitrack record any show at any time, at a moment’s notice. You can even record to max-quality OGG files, and save a lot of disk space without a huge loss in audio quality.
You could do an automated mix if you wanted, with a bit of planning and setup.

I’m sure that, somewhere, you can get a prebuilt digital console with all of this functionality. I just can’t think of anywhere that you can get it for less than $20,000 or so. If I remember correctly, the complete build price for the rig that I’ve just described is about $3000.

What To Be Careful Of

With everything I’ve laid out in the list above, you can probably tell that I’m pretty sold on this whole concept. Having all the functionality that my rig provides means that I can do all kinds of things that aren’t really expected in a small venue context – the most notable thing probably being that I have an independent monitor console, and lots of mixes to work with.

Even with all the positives, it’s important that I tell you about the risks and, shall we say, contraindications for putting together a rig like this:

This probably should not be your first mixing console. All the options and flexibility can be overwhelming for people who are just starting to learn the craft of live audio.
If big chunks of the terminology I’ve used above seem foreign to you, you should definitely do some homework before you try one of these rigs. Otherwise, you may be bewildered, or start doing things without knowing why you’re doing them.
If you don’t have a great grasp of how signal flows in a mix rig, this kind of setup isn’t the right choice. A lot of the system’s magic comes from being able to throw audio around in all kinds of ways, and you need to know exactly what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. (I would rate myself as having professional-level competence in terms of understanding signal flow, and I can still back myself into a corner when I forget to think things through.)
If your mix rig needs to be used by lots of different audio techs, especially BEs (Band Engineers), this kind of mix system is a bad choice. Very few people use them at the moment, and they’re not what most BEs expect when they roll up to a venue.
Rigs like this aren’t likely to be acceptable on riders anytime soon.
If you aren’t comfortable with digging around in computer hardware and software, you should think twice about diving into a rig like this.
If you don’t have any experience with installing DAW hardware and software, and what can go wrong with DAW setups, you should allow a lot of time for getting your rig running. Or, just get a traditional console.
If you aren’t keen on doing your own testing, this kind of system probably isn’t for you.
If you can’t get comfortable with the idea that there’s no support except for yourself and what you can find online, this idea is probably something to skip.
If you’re absolutely sold on working a lot of controls at the same time, you either need to attach and configure a really good control surface, or just get a regular console.
These rigs tend to be a bit slower to operate than traditional consoles, in terms of user interface. If you’re not okay with that, you either need to put in a good control surface, or just stick with what you’re fast on.
Even though you can save money overall on these systems, you need to spend dough on the important bits. USB interfaces are cheap, but getting decent latency out of them can be hard or even impossible. Firewire or PCI is the way to go.

With all that said, I just can’t help but be a bit giddy about how unconventional and powerful systems like these can be.

I’ll even help you build one, if you’re willing to throw some money my way. 🙂