Tag Archives: Digital Consoles

The Pros And Cons Of Distributed Monitor Mixing

It’s very neat when it works, but it’s not all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.

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.

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Along with folks who rock the bars and clubs, I also work with musicians who rock for church. Just a few months ago, as City Presbyterian’s worship group was expanding (and needing more help with monitoring), I decided to put the players on a distributed monitor-mix system. What I mean by a “distributed” system is that the mix handling is decentralized. Each musician gets their own mini-mixer, which they use to “run their own show.”

The experience so far has been basically a success, with some minor caveats. The following is a summary of both my direct observations and theoretical musings regarding this particular monitoring solution.


Pro: In-Ear Monitors Become Much Easier For The Engineer

One downside to in-ears is that the isolation tends to require that everyone get a finely tuned mix of many channels. This is especially true when you’re running a quiet stage, where monitor world is required to hear much of anything. What this mandates is a lot of work on behalf of each individual performer, with the workload falling squarely on the shoulders of the audio human.

Distributed monitor mixing takes almost all of the workload off the sound operator, by placing the bulk of the decision making and execution in the hands of individual players. If the lead guitarist wants more backup vocals, they just select the appropriate channel and twist the knob. If they want the tonality of a channel altered, they can futz with it to their heart’s content. Meanwhile, the person driving the console simply continues to work on whatever they were working on, without giving much thought to monitor world.

Con: Monitors Become Harder For The Player

Much like effort and preparation, complexity for the operation of a given system can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only be transferred around. A very, very important thing to remember about distributed monitor mixing is this: You have just taken a great deal of the management and technical complexity involved in mixing monitors, and handed it to someone who may not be prepared for it. Operating a mix-rig in a high-performance, realtime situation is not a trivial task, and it takes a LOT of practice to get good at it. To be sure, a distributed approach simplifies certain things (especially when in-ears essentially delete feedback from the equation), but an inescapable reality is that it also exposes a lot of complexity that the players may have had hidden from them before. Things like sensible gain staging and checking for sane limiter settings are not necessarily instinctual, and may not be a part of a musician’s technical repertoire on the first day.

Also, as the engineer, you can’t just plug in each player’s mixer and mentally check out. You MUST have some concept of how the mixers work, so that you can effectively support your musicians. Read the manual, plug in one of the units, and turn the knobs. Personal mixers may be operated by individual players, but they really are part of the reinforcement rig – and thus, the crew is responsible for at least having some clue about how to wield them.

Pro: You Don’t Necessarily Have To Use In-Ears

I have yet to encounter a personal-mix system that didn’t include some sort of “plain vanilla” line output. If the musicians want to drive a powered wedge (or an amplifier for a passive wedge) with their mixer, they can.

Con: Not Using In-Ears May Cause Trouble

As I said before, mixing in a high-performance situation isn’t an easy thing that humans are naturally prepared to do. Life gets even more hairy in a “closed-loop” situation – i.e., onstage monitoring with mics and loudspeakers. A musician may dial their piece of monitor world (at a bare minimum) into SCREAMING feedback without realizing their danger. They may not recognize how to get themselves out of the conundrum.

And, depending on how your system works, the audio human may not be able to “right the ship” from the mix position.

Even if they don’t get themselves swallowed by a feedback monster, a player can also run their mix so loud that they’re drowning everybody else, including the Front Of House mix…

Pro: Integrated Ecosystems Are Powerful And Easy

As more digital console “ecosystems” come online, adding distributed mixing is becoming incredibly easy. For instance, Behringer’s digital Powerplay products plug right into Ultranet with almost zero fuss. If your console has Ultranet built-in, you don’t have to worry about tapping inserts or direct outs. You just run a Cat5/ Cat6 cable to a distribution module, the module sends data and power over the other Cat5/6 runs, and everything just tends to work.

Con: Once You’ve Picked Your Ecosystem, You’ll Have To Stay There

Integrated digital audio ecosystems make things easy, but they tend to only play nice within the same extended family of products. You can’t run an Ultranet product on an Aviom monitor-distro network, for instance. More universal options do exist, but the universality tends to come with a large price premium. Whenever you go a certain way with a system of personal mixers, you’re making a big commitment. The jump to a different product family may be difficult to do…or just a flat-out expensive replacement, depending upon the system flexibility.

Pro: Everybody Can Have Their Own Mixer

Distributed mixing can be a way to banish all monitor-mix sharing for good. Everybody in the band can not only have their own mix, but their own channel equalization as well. If the guitar player wants the bass to sound one way, and the bass player wants the bass to sound totally different, that option is now very viable. Each musician can build intricate presets inside their own piece of hardware, without necessarily having to consult with anyone else.

Con: Everybody Having Their Own Mixer Is Expensive

Expensive is a relative term, of course. With a Powerplay system, outfitting a five-piece band is about as expensive as buying a couple-three “pretty dang nice,” powered monitor wedges. Other systems involve a lot more money, however. Also, even with an affordable product-line, adding a new member to the band means the expense of adding another personal mixer and attendant accessories.

Pro: Personal Mixing Is Luxurious

When we deployed our distributed system, one of the comments I got was “This is what we’ve always wanted, but couldn’t have. It should always have worked this way.” Everybody getting their own personal, instantly customizable mix is a “big league” sort of setup that is now firmly within reach for almost any band. Under the right circumstances, moving the on-deck show into the right place can transform from a slog to a joy.

Con: Not Everybody May Buy In To The Idea

The adoption of a distributed monitor mixing system is like all personal monitoring: Personal. The problem is that you have to try it to find out if you want to deal with it or not. Unless someone categorically states at the outset that they want no part of individualized mixing, the money has to be spent to let them give it a whirl.

…and they may decide that it’s just not for them, with only 30 minutes of use on their mixer and the money already spent. You just have to be ready for this, and be prepared to treat it as a natural cost of the system. Forcing someone to use a monitoring solution that they dislike is highly counterproductive.

Distributed monitor mixing, like all live-audio solutions, is neither magic nor a panacea. It may be exactly the right choice for you, or it may be a terrible one. As with everything else, there’s homework to be done, and nobody can do it but you. One size does not fit all.


I Think My Spaceship Knows Which Way To Go

A superbly talented and highly rehearsed band roars back from the brink of disaster.

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.

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It’s funny how we’re often separated by a common language.

If you’re a regular reader, you are certainly aware by now of how much I emphasize logistics and preparation. On deck to handle the sound reinforcement for a Major Tom & The Moonboys appearance at the Sugarhouse Farmer’s Market, I was feeling pretty confident. We’d managed to talk the event folks into an extra hour for setup, and we were on track to make good use of the time. The van o’ audio was 75% unloaded into Fairmont Park’s west pavilion. We were cookin’.

We then got the news that we were in the wrong place.

You see, when the Farmer’s Market folks said “the west pavilion,” what they meant was, “the pavilion on the west side of the Farmer’s Market.” Unfortunately, the additional qualification wasn’t what we heard. What we heard was “THE west pavilion.”

So that’s where we were.

And being both on time and industrious actually worked against us.

We could easily pull our vehicles right up to where we were really supposed to be, but the van was almost empty. To make matters worse, it would take just as long to walk everything back to the van as it would to walk it over to the correct location. By the time it was all done, our lead time had evaporated. The situation was now “throw and go” with a band that is decidedly NOT meant to be “throw and go.”


Some weeks earlier, my cautionary inner voice had said, “You know, Danny, you probably don’t want to be dialing up monitor world from scratch on this gig.” As such, I had gone out to a rehearsal and built a preset monitor solution. This did indeed turn out to be a Very Good Idea™ in the end, but at first it tripped us up. With the stage not necessarily being patched in a house-left-to-house-right order, but rather jumping around a bit, it wasn’t possible to set out a simple “patch logic” and have other folks go to town. I couldn’t walk out to FOH and work on that setup while the stage was getting taken care of. Every task had to be done in series, with me directing traffic in detail.

And, of course, my danged CAT6 cables for the stagebox connections got tangled in the box. It’s amazing how even nice coils will find a way to glom onto each other. With the help of Layne, the percussionist, the two of us managed to sort out 200 feet of pissed-off, solid-wire data cable in decent time – but we were still late, and nowhere near where we needed to be.

We were a little over halfway patched overall when FOH control finally came together. Or sort of did. There’s a special kind of horrified panic that audio humans experience when something that, by all measures should be working…flat-out fails to work. We had this whole plan for a grunge-a-delic break music solution involving David Bowie instrumentals coming through a mic’ed boombox. The boombox was working, and the mic was working, so why wasn’t anything coming through the FOH PA when I pushed the fader up? Even worse, why was the channel routed to the main bus, but the main bus meter showed no signal?

I was racking my brain.

I checked all the global routing I could think of, with my half-panicked brain going mushy with reinterpreting the odd machinations required to string two X32 consoles together in a daisy chain. Had I reset something by accident? How was that even possible?

Finally, the lead videographer made the simple suggestion: Just restart the software. Of course this had not occurred to me, because a problem of this nature could not possibly occur without active misconfiguration, right? Well, at that point I was ready to try anything. Ten seconds later, FOH was in business.

So, if you didn’t know, it is indeed possible for X32-Edit to connect to a console and “see” meter activity, yet not successfully send control data.


At this point we were over half an hour past our scheduled downbeat. Michael, the guitar player, said what I was very definitely starting to think. “Let’s just plug in the keyboards and bass and go for it.” So, with neither guitar in the PA, nor drums, and the FOH subwoofers metaphorically thrown under the bus, we went for it.

Our luck changed immediately.

The band dove in, and our prep work started to pay off. I had also prebuilt some of FOH, which meant that I could just grab faders and basically have something usable come out of the system. What was coming out of the system was the music provided by seasoned pros with hours upon hours of rehearsal. I think it’s quite fitting that a Bowie tribute act would embody the line “I think my spaceship knows which way to go.” From everything I could perceive, the audience was IN LOVE.

The songs were being beautifully played by people who adored the material, and the whole thing was basically balanced – guitars and drums in the PA or not – because the players know how to be a band without a sound operator taking everything apart and putting it back together.

Exactly zero people complained about the lack of subwoofer material. (I eventually got the guitars into the system. I never finished patching in the subs.)

Kids were dancing.

The folks down front were smiling.

People were offering compliments on the sound.

As I’m sure happens almost every night all over the world, a supremely rehearsed and professional band had salvaged a bad situation so completely that the problems leading up to the music were essentially forgotten.

Boy, what a ride.


The Story Of A Road Gig, Part 3

Commentary with pictures – or maybe it’s the other way around.

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.

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Rather than try to relate the entire story of this overnighter as a narrative, I’ve decided to take the approach of commenting on the various photos that were taken at the gig (or around the process of it). There are, amazingly, some shots where yours truly makes an appearance. Scotty of Eyes Open got ahold of my camera, and, well, there ya go.


X32 Cores

X32 Cores

While it’s not necessarily for the faint of heart, running surfaceless consoles can potentially save you money, weight, and some space. Consoles like this really hammer home what a digital mixer is: A whole lot of software running on specialized hardware. Delete the control hardware, and all the heavy-lifting for audio still remains.

Going surfaceless requires significant homework. You’ll have to get both your “mix brains” and their associated control devices (laptops, tablets, etc.) onto a network and talking to each other. An inexpensive wireless router is really all you need for this, but DO have a fallback option. Also, anything that doesn’t need to be wireless probably shouldn’t be, so use a wired connection to your control gear whenever you can. Ethernet cable is cheap, available almost everywhere, and pretty much stupid-proof.

And, for heaven’s sake, set up meaningful security on your wireless network. Nothing but your consoles and controllers should be connected to it.

I have two X32 cores for more than one reason. Reason #1 is to be able to have separate FOH and monitor worlds with full “first-class” channel counts – 32 inputs each. Reason #2 is that, if one console were to give up the ghost, I could fall back to its counterpart and keep going.

As much as is practical, build mix templates for your show before you leave. The ability to walk up to the show and “just go for it” without having to think through everything on the fly is a big help. Remember to do some meaningful tests on your setup to ensure that it works, and that you know how it works.

S16 Stageboxes

S16 Stageboxes

Digital stageboxes help you save space and weight by removing the need for a big, heavy, multicore trunk. The irony is that digital stageboxes are rather more expensive than their analog cousins. Your overall cost may be slightly reduced if you get a single unit with all the inputs and outputs you need, but you have to account for the risk of that unit dying on you. Using two boxes to do the job allows you to continue in some way if one of them stops cooperating.

Use the network cabling recommended by the manufacturer. If your digital snake system calls for shielded Cat5e with Ethercon connectors, that’s what you should use. There are plenty of stories out there of people who encountered…interesting results while using connectivity that was not up to spec. (At the same time, I’m not convinced that “super premium” is necessary. GLS Audio makes SSTP ethercon cables that seem pretty darn good, and clock-in at under $1.00/ foot.)

Remember to have spare cables for this high-speed, highly-mission-critical audio network you’re building.

Which One Is Which?

Which One Is Which?

Here we see a common, North-American noise-louderizer with a remote console control, he being somewhat perplexed by how the mix-bus order is now reversed due to his move from FOH to the stage.

Tablets And Monitors

Tablets And Monitors

I am brand new to the whole idea of walking up on deck with a remote, but let me tell you, it’s one of the greatest things since sliced bread. For your initial rough-in of monitor world, it’s downright beautiful to be able to put things together without any guesswork, or running back and forth to a console. Instead, you park yourself in front of a wedge, start dialing things up, and instantly hear the results of your changes. This means that you can actually pick up on the exact point where additional gain on a channel starts to get “weird.”

It’s also beautiful to have the remote when artists are actually on stage. Again, a lot of guesswork and disconnection simply goes away. You can talk to each other naturally, for a start. Even more important, though, is that you can actually hear what the musician is hearing. Problems with a mix don’t have to be described, as you can experience them directly for yourself. Finally, it’s a great bit of “politics;” Musicians who have often dealt with uncaring (or just absent) audio-humans now have one who’s really paying attention – and who’s also very much in the same boat as they are.

As was jokingly mentioned above, you do have to remember that your mix order may be “flipped.” If you numbered your mixes based on how you’re looking at things from FOH, walking up on deck now means that you’re seeing the mirror image.

When putting a system together, don’t be stingy with your monitor mixes. I’ve never regretted having more mixes and wedges available. As I’ve said before, and will probably say again, getting everyone happy on deck means a much better experience at FOH. A recipe for success really is making sure that a big piece of your budget goes to monitor world. Give those drummers “Texas headphones” (a drumfill) if at all possible. They tend to like it.

Scotty And McCrae

Scotty And McCrae

Scotty and McCrae were the guys who brought me out on the trip, and on a practical level, the show would NOT have happened without them. McCrae handled a lot of behind-the-scenes logistical elements in real time, making sure that things like shelter, power, and scheduling were actually working.

Scotty joined with McCrae to form my weekend stage crew. It was a little slice of heaven to work with those guys, because all I had to do was describe what I wanted to happen, and then wait a few minutes. The importance of such a crew, that has a can-do attitude and a real sense of humor, can NOT be overstated. I was able to deliver because (and only because) everybody else did their job.

(Also, a huge “Thank You” goes out to Bayley H. for running the event as a whole, for giving Scotty and me a place to sleep, and for chasing down one of those super-rad Honda generators for us. She was juggling about 80 things all weekend, one of those things being the music, and we were very well taken care of.)

Run!

Run!

Spooked by the sudden noise of a band getting comfortable on deck, a black-footed knob-turner (voluminus maximus) bolts for the safety of FOH.

FOH

FOH
FOH 2

I put FOH control on top of the console case, with monitor world off to the side. The laptops are different colors so that I can tell them apart easily when unpacking them. The trackballs are there because, let’s face it, trackpads are fiddly, imprecise, and (to be both blunt and slightly crass) just tend to suck in general.

Another tip: If your primary monitor-world controller has a case, put the monitor control tablet in that same case. It will make things ever so slightly faster and easier at setup.

Talkback is one of the main reasons to have at least one microphone equipped with a switch. Choose where you want talkback to be routed to, latch the console’s talkback control, and then simply flick the switch on the mic when you want to talk.

Laptops (with good batteries) and a UPS are helpful at FOH, because a power failure means that your audio processing and routing stay up. No, there might not be any audio for them to work on, but they’ll be available immediately when you get the power back.

Troopers

Troopers 1
Troopers 2
Troopers 3
Troopers 4

Katie Ainge and her band were real troopers throughout the show. Over the course of two days, we would have a few technical issues, and we would also get rained on twice. Through it all, they played their best, kept smiling, and kept coming back for more:

Originally, they were only supposed to play on the Friday night. However, a storm ended up rolling in. Katie and company played right up until the rain started falling, only calling a halt because their instruments were getting wet. After a hasty pack up and retreat, after which they could have bailed out with full pay, they elected to stay around and get a full show in on the following morning.

Also, large garbage bags make pretty decent rain protectors for loudspeakers and other gear. They do tend to buzz at certain frequencies, but that’s the least of your worries when water starts falling out of the sky.

We only hung a single overhead. With a well-balanced band, a single mic in the right spot will get everything on the kit without getting swamped by bleed. Also, I mix live audio in mono about 99.9% of the time, and a single mic is always in phase with itself.

Try, Try Again

Try, Try Again

After a frantic night of Scotty and McCrae packing, unpacking, and drying out the gear, the next morning came along with the promise of actually doing the show. Notice that the generator really is NOT in the right place. I should have placed it off to the side of the deck, so that the exhaust would have stayed away from the performers. Oops.

Double Hung

Double Hung

McCrae and Bayley, masters of all they survey.

With the PA deployed as it was, putting the same signal into all four FOH mid-highs probably would not have sounded all that hot. The outer pair was slightly behind the inner pair, which would have resulted in the high end being out of phase alignment. That problem did not come into play, however, because the different pairs were used for different signals. The inner pair was my vocal cluster, and the outer pair was for instruments. This technique borrows both from The Grateful Dead’s “Wall Of Sound,” and Dave Rat’s “double hung” PA deployments – it’s just on a very small scale.

The configuration as pictured and described trades coverage area for power and/ or clarity. We essentially have one, larger PA setup that’s firing in a narrow pattern. (Even so, some walking around proved that you could hear the PA pretty much everywhere in the park proper.) An alternative would be to put the entire mix into all four boxes, but aim the boxes to hit different zones. In that case, we’d be trading power/ clarity for coverage.

For Real This Time

For Real This Time 1
For Real This Time 2
For Real This Time 3
For Real This Time 4

With no rain during the actual show, the retry of the previous night went much more smoothly. We did have a couple of problems with the cables to Katie’s DI, with my suspicion being that the metal on their XLR connectors is inexpensive, soft, and therefore prone to change shape when heated significantly in the sun. (I can’t prove it though – this is just a wild theory.)

In any case, though, it was great to see Katie and her friends bring some really enjoyable tunes to an audience able to stay for the duration.

Afterwards, packing the van, we got another rain shower.

But it was time to go home anyway.


The Behringer X18

Huge value, especially if you already have a tablet or laptop handy.

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.

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From where I’m standing, the X18 is proof that Behringer should stop fooling around and make a rackmountable X32 with full I/O. Seriously – forget about all the cut-down versions of the main product. Forget about needing an extra stagebox for full input on the rackable units. Just package up a complete complement of 32X16 analog, put a DSP brain inside it, and sell the heck out of it.

I say this because the X18 is a killer piece of equipment. It packages a whole ton of functionality into a small space, and has only minor quirks. If someone without a lot of money came to me and asked what to use as the core of a small-but-mighty SR rig, the XAir X18 would be high on my list of recommendations.

Software Breaks The Barriers

We’ve hit a point in technology where I don’t see any economic reason for small-format analog mixers to exist. I certainly see functionality reasons, because not everybody is ready to dive into the way that surfaceless consoles work, but any monetary argument simply fails to add up. With an X18, $500 (plus a laptop or tablet that you probably already have) gets you some real big-boy features. To wit:

Channel-per-channel dynamics.

Four-band, fully parametric EQ on all inputs and outputs, plus an additional hi-pass filter that sweeps up to 400 Hz.

Up to six monitor mixes from the auxiliaries, each send configurable as pre or post (plus some extra “pick off point” options).

Four stereo FX slots, which can be used with either send-model or insert-model routing as you prefer.

Sixteen, full-blown XLR inputs with individually(!) switchable phantom.

A built-in, honest-to-goodness, bidirectional, multitrack USB interface.

Full console recall with snapshots.

Mute groups (which I find really handy), and DCA groups (which other people probably find handy).

A built-in wireless access point to talk to your interface device.

Folks, nothing in the analog world even comes close to this kind of feature set at this price point. Buying an analog mixer as a backup might be a smart idea. Starting with an analog mixer because all this capability is overwhelming is also (possibly) a good idea. Buying an analog mixer because it’s cheaper, though, is no longer on the table. Now that everything’s software, the console’s frame-size and material cost no longer dictates a restricted feature set.

I’ll also say that I’ve used X32 Edit, which is the remote control software for Behringer’s flagship consoles. I actually like the XAir software slightly better. As I see it, X32 Edit has to closely emulate the control surface of the mixer, which means that it sometimes compromises on what it could do as a virtual surface. The XAir application, on the other hand, doesn’t have any physical surface that it has to mirror, and so it’s somewhat freer to be a “pure form” software controller.

Anyway, if you really want to dive into mixing, and really want to be able to respond to a band’s needs to a high degree, you might as well start with an X18 or something similar.

Ultranet

I didn’t list Ultranet with the other features above, because it exists outside the normal “mixing functionality” feature stack. It’s also not something you can make work in a meaningful way without some significant additional investment. At the same time, Ultranet integration was what really made the X18 perfect for my specific application.

We wanted to get the band (in this case, a worship band for church) on in-ears. In-ears can be something of a convoluted, difficult proposition. Because of the isolation that’s possible with decent earbuds, getting everybody a workable mix can be more involved than what happens with wedges; Along with assuring that monitor bleed can’t hurt you, you also get the side effect that it doesn’t help you either. Further, you still have to run all your auxiliaries back to the IEM inputs, and then – if you’re running wired – you have to get cables out to each set of ears. The whole thing can get tangled and difficult in a big hurry.

The Ultranet support on the X18 can basically fix all that – if you’ve got some extra money.

Paired up with a P16-D distribution module that links to Ultranet-enabled P16-M personal mixers, each musician can get the 16 main input channels delivered directly to their individualized (and immediate) control. If a player needs something in their head, they just select a channel and crank the volume. Nobody else but that musician is affected. There’s no need to get my attention, unless something’s gone wrong. Connections are made with relatively cheap, shielded, Cat6 cables, and the distribution module allows both signal and power to run on those cables.

The “shielded” bit is important, by the way. Lots of extra-cheap Ethernet cables are unshielded, but this is a high-performance data application. The manufacturer’s spec calls for shielded cable, so spend just a few bucks more and get what’s recommended.

Depending on your needs, Ultranet can be a real chunk of practical magic – and it’s already built into the console.

The Quirk

One design choice that’s becoming quite common with digital desks is that of the “user configured” bus. Back in the days of physical components, never did the paths of “mix” and “auxiliary” buses meet, unless you physically patched one into another somehow. Mix buses, also called subgroups, would be accessed via a routing matrix and your channel panner. Aux buses, on the other hand, would live someplace very different: The channel sends section.

In these modern times, it’s becoming quite common for buses to do multi-duty. From a certain standpoint, this makes plenty of sense. Any bus is just a common signal line, and the real difference between a sub-group bus and an aux bus comes down to how the signal gets into the line. When it comes right down to it, the traditional mix sub-group is just a post-fader send where the send gain is always “unity.”

Even, so, may of us (myself included) are not used to having these concepts abstracted in such a way. In my case, I was used to one of two situations: Dedicated buses existing in fixed numbers and having a singular purpose, or to an effectively unlimited number of sends that could be freely configured – but that always behaved like an aux send.

In the case of the X18, the “quirk” is how neither of those two situations is the chosen path. X18 buses exist in fixed numbers, but are not necessarily dedicated and don’t always behave like an aux send. When a bus is configured to behave as a sub-group for certain channels, it is still called a send and located where the other sends are found. However, its send gain is replaced with an “on” button that either allows post-fader, unity-gain signal to flow, or no signal to flow at all. Now that I’m used to this idea, the whole thing makes perfect sense. However, it took me a few minutes to wrap my brain around what was going on, so I figured I ought to mention it.

Other than my minor befuddlement, there’s nothing I don’t like about the X18. It’s not quite as capable as an X32, but it’s not a “My First Mixer” either. It’s actually within shouting distance, features wise, of the more expensive Behringer offerings. There’s a lot of firepower wrapped up in a compact package when it comes to this unit, and like I said, one of these would be a great starting point for a band or small venue that wants to take things seriously.


Just What Signal Is It, Anyway?

This business is all about electricity, but the electricity can mean lots of different things.

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.

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A fader, an XLR cable, and an Ethernet cable walk into a bar.

None of them could have ducked, because cables and faders can’t walk into a bar anyway. Besides, they don’t play nice with liquids, if we were talking about the other kind of bar.

Look, some jokes just don’t work out, okay?

Every object I mentioned above deals with electricity. In the world of audio it’s pretty much all about electricity, or the sound pressure waves that become (or are generated by) electricity. What trips people up, though, is exactly what all those signals actually are. An assumption that’s very, very easy to make is that all electrical connections in the world of audio are carrying audio.

They aren’t.

The Three Categories

In my experience, you can sort electrical signals in the world of audio into three “species:”

  • Audio signals.
  • Data signals that represent audio.
  • Signals that represent control for an audio-processing device.

Knowing which one you actually have, and where you have it, is critical for understanding how any audio system or subsystem functions. (And you have to have an idea of how they function if you’re going to troubleshoot anything. And you’re going to have to troubleshoot something, sometime.)

In a plain-vanilla audio signal, the electrical voltage corresponds directly to a sonic event’s pressure amplitude. Connect that signal – at an appropriate drive level – to a loudspeaker, and you’ll get an approximation of the original noise. Even if the signal is synthesized, and the voltage was generated without an original, acoustical event, it’s still meant to represent a sound.

Data signals that represent audio are a different creature. The voltage on the connection is meant to be interpreted as some form of abstract data stream. That is to say, numbers. The data stream can NOT be directly converted to audio by running it through an electrical-to-sound-pressure transducer. Instead, the data has to reach an endpoint which converts that “abstract” information into an analog signal. At that point, you have electricity which corresponds to pressure amplitude, but not before.

Signals for control are even further removed. The information in such a signal is used to modify the operating parameters of a sound system, and that’s all it’s good for. It is impossible, at any point, for that control signal to be turned into meaningful audio. The control signal might be analog, or it might be digital, but it never was audio, and never will be.

The Console Problem

Lots of us who louderize various noises started on simple, analog consoles. Those mixers are easy to understand in terms of signal species, because everything the controls work on is audio. Every linear or rotary fader is passing electricity that “is” sound.

Then you move to a digital console.

Are those faders passing audio?

No.

Ah! They’re passing data that represents audio!

Nope.

I have never met a digital mixing desk that does either of those things. With a digital console, the faders and knobs are used for passing control data to the software. With an analog console, the complete death of a fader means the channel dies, because audio signal stops flowing. With a digital console, a truly dead fader doesn’t necessarily stop audio from flowing through the console; It does prevent you from controlling that channel’s level…until you can find an alternate control method. There often is one, by the way.

And then there’s the murky middle ground. More full-featured analog consoles can have things like VCAs. Voltage controlled amplifiers make gain changes to an analog audio signal based upon an analog control signal. A dedicated fader for VCA control doesn’t have audio running through it, whereas a VCA controlled signal path certainly does.

And then, there are digital consoles with DCAs (digitally controlled amplifiers), which are sometimes labeled as VCAs to keep the terminology the same, but no audio-path amplifiers are involved at all. Do your homework, folks.

Something’s Coming In On The Wire

I’ve written before about how you can’t be sure about what signal a cable is carrying just by looking at the cable ends. The quick recap is that a given cable might be carrying all manner of audio signals, and you don’t necessarily know anything about the signal until you actually measure it in some way.

There’s also the whole issue of cables that you think are meant for analog, but are carrying digital signals instead. While it’s not “within spec,” you can use regular microphone cable for AES/ EBU digital audio. A half-decent RCA-to-RCA cable will handle S/PDIF just fine.

Let me further add the wrinkle that “data” cables don’t all carry the same data.

For instance, audio humans are interacting more and more with Ethernet connections. It’s truly brilliant to be able to string a single, affordable, lightweight cable where once you needed a big, heavy, expensive, multicore. So, here’s a question: What’s on that Ethernet cable?

It might be digital audio.

It might be control data.

It might even be both.

For instance, I have a digital console that can be run remotely. A great trick is to put the console on stage, and use the physical device as its own stagebox. Then, off a router, I run a network cable out to FOH. There’s no audio data on that network cable at all. Everything to do with actually performing audio-related operations occurs at the console. All that I’m doing with my laptop and trackball is issuing commands over a network.

It is also possible, however, to buy a digital stagebox for the console. With that configuration, the console goes to FOH while attached to a network cable. Because the console has to do the real heavy-lifting in regards to the sound processing, digital audio has to be flying back and forth on that network connection. At the same time, however, the console has to be able to fire control messages to the stagebox, which has digitally remote-managed preamp gain.

You have to know what you’ve got. If you’re going to successfully deploy and debug an audio system, you have to know what kind of signal you have, and where you have it. It might seem a little convoluted at first, but it all starts to make logical sense if you stop to think about it. The key is to stop and think about it.


Pretty Close To An SC48

The great thing about this business is that, nowadays, you can get a lot of functionality for a little money.

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.

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I just had the privilege of spending four days working in an amazing venue. I won’t be naming names here on the site, although where I worked (and who I worked for) are not secret – it’s just a bit of courtesy, as it was my “first rodeo” with the performing group.

The venue was not small by my standards. A 500-seater sits squarely in what I consider the “midsize” bracket. Also, the place has a gloriously high ceiling, full fly-system (you know, curtains, big battens to hang lights on, that sort of thing), tons of power, and pretty much whatever else you want. Plus, they have a helpful, good-natured, knowledgeable staff that are always around when you need them.

At FOH, they installed an SC48.

An SC48 is a tour-grade digital console by Avid. It’s one of those pieces of gear that folks salivate over, and with good reason. It’s got an eminently usable control surface, a well-designed software interface, and lots of channels. Plus, as I said, it is an honest-to-goodness tour-grade unit. When you’re driving one, you are very definitely sitting in “the big chair.”

A basic model of the SC48, purchased new, will run you about $29,000 US.

And, for less than 1/10th of that, you can buy a digital console that will basically do all the same things an SC48 can do.

I’m Not Slagging The SC48

I hope that it’s abundantly clear that I am in no way ragging on the Avid product. There are things that I wish were different on it, but that can hold on for a bit.

What I am saying is that the gap between “pro-sumer” units and the biggest, coolest toys is continually narrowing.

See, I have in my possession, right now, a Behringer X32. It’s not even the full-size model. Spending four days with an SC48 made it very clear to me that an X32’s core functions are entirely competitive with the Avid desk. By extension, this means that pretty much any “affordable” digi-mixer is competitive on the basis of core functionality.

Full dynamics processing available on all input channels? Check.

Multi-band, fully parametric EQ on all input channels? Check.

A snapshot system? Check.

Recallable input gains? Check.

Matrix mix functionality? Check. (Matrix mixing is creating a blend of inputs and/ or outputs, as opposed to regular bus and aux mixes which are input-fed only. I don’t really use matrices, but it is one of the features, so…)

Now, let’s be fair. When you invest in something like an SC48, you’re buying more than just the core functionality. You’re buying (hopefully) great manufacturer support, which can get you out of a jam on nights and weekends. You’re buying redundant power supplies. You’re buying industry recognition and acceptance of the hardware and software platform. You’re buying (again, hopefully) better and more careful manufacturing. You’re buying a product which is meant to have a lengthened life cycle.

None of that is a mere triviality.

At the same time, though, those elements represent a VERY large price premium that doesn’t really make sense for small-venue types.

How Much Is It Worth To You?

Yes, an SC48 can run ProTools plugins, which is something my X32 can’t handle.

I did find that functionality very useful!

Because – for some bizarre reason – Avid doesn’t seem to think that integrated dynamics and EQ on OUTPUT channels is something anybody needs. (Avid…guys…if a console costs as much as a car, I really think that full processing on outputs ought to be there. Just an idea. Behringer can help you with that, as can Soundcraft, A&H, Yamaha, whoever you like.) Also, an X32 can’t crossfade from scene-to-scene, whereas an SC48 does it intuitively and effortlessly. Along with that, there’s very finely-grained control over what is “recall safe” on the Avid. I liked all that for the show I was doing, and it’s super-nifty in general, but I don’t know if I’d be willing to pay $26,000 extra for the privileges.

The ease of patching on the Avid unit blows most other implementations completely out of the water. Again, though, I’m not sure that’s worth a 14X price differential. (As a side note, if you can handle the routing matrix in Reaper, you can patch on an SC48. The concepts are exactly the same.)

Pretty much the only thing that you can’t get around is the option of having 48 inputs in one frame.

I realize that this sounds dangerously close to ripping on the SC. What it really is, though, is a celebration of just how level the playing field is becoming. Some folks lament that everything is turning into software; I, on the other hand, think it’s great. It means that affordable gear has staggering power and flexibility. The work you can do with a relatively inexpensive mixer really is not that far away from what a big-time desk can pull-off. There are definitely folks who need the tour-grade units, and can pay for them. You HAVE to have the appropriate tool for the job, and I’m not suggesting that folks who need all that an SC48-class console provides should use an incorrect tool.

I’m just saying that, more and more, the technological barriers to the best possible sound being available from a console are collapsing. As time goes on, operator dedication, curiosity, and professionalism – which have always mattered the most, anyway – are completely eclipsing the limitations of the “toolkit.”

Because the toolkit is getting better and more capable on a continuous basis.


Why I Think Steam Machines Are Cool

My audio-human mind races when thinking of high-performance, compact, affordable machines.

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.

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“Wait,” you’re thinking, “I thought this site was about live shows. Steam Machines are gaming devices.”

You’re right about that. What you have to remember (or just become aware of), is that I have a strange sort of DIY streak. It’s why I assembled my own live-audio console from “off the shelf” products. I really, really, REALLY like the idea of doing powerful things with concert sound via unorthodox means. An unorthodox idea that keeps bubbling up in my head is that of a hyper-customizable, hyper-expandable audio mix rig. It could be pretty much any size a user wanted, using pretty much whatever audio hardware a user wanted, and grow as needed. Also, it wouldn’t be too expensive. (About $900 per 16X16 channel “block.”)

When I look at the basic idea of the Valve Steam Machine, I see a device that has the potential to be a core part of the implementation.

But let’s be careful: I’m not saying that Steam Machines can do what I want right now. I’m not saying that there aren’t major pitfalls, or even dealbreakers to be encountered. I fully expect that there are enormous problems to solve. Just the question of how each machine’s audio processing could be conveniently user-controlled is definitely non-trivial. I’m just saying that a possibility is there.

Why is that possibility there?

The Box Is Prebuilt

The thing with prebuilt devices is that it’s easier for them to be small. A manufacturer building a large number of units can get custom parts that support a compact form factor, put it all together, and then ship it to you.

Of course, when it comes to PCs, you can certainly assemble a small-box rig by hand. However, when we’re talking about using multiple machines, the appeal of hand-building multiple boxes drops rapidly. So, it’s a pretty nice idea that a compact but high(er) performance computing device can be gotten for little effort.

The System Is Meant For Gaming

Gaming might seem like mere frivolity, but these days, it’s a high-performance activity. We normally think of that high-performance as being located primarily in the graphics subsystem – and for good reason. However, I also think a game-capable system could be great for audio. I have this notion because games are so reliant on audio behaving well.

Take a game like a modern shooter. A lot of stuff is going on: Enemy AI, calculation of where bullets should go, tracking of who’s shooting at who, collision detection, input management, the knowing of where all the players are and where they’re going, and so on. Along with that, the sound has to work correctly. When anybody pulls a trigger, a sound with appropriate gain and filtering has to play. That sound also has to play at exactly the right time. It’s not enough for it to just happen arbitrarily after the “calling” event occurs. Well-timed sounds have to play for almost anything that happens. A player walks around, or a projectile strikes an object, or a vehicle moves, or a player contacts some phsyics-enabled entity, or…

You get the idea.

My notion is that, if the hardware and OS of a Steam Machine are already geared specifically to make this kind of thing happen, then getting pro-audio to work similarly isn’t a totally alien application. It might not be directly supported, of course, but at least the basic device itself isn’t in the way.

The System Is Customizable

My understanding of Steam Machines is that they’re meant to be pretty open and “user hackable.” This excites me because of the potential for re-purposing. Maybe an off-the-shelf Steam Machine doesn’t play nicely with pro-audio hardware? Okay…maybe there’s a way to take the box’s good foundation and rebuild the upper layers. In theory, a whole other OS could be runnable on one of these computers, and a troublesome piece of hardware might be replaceable (or just plain removable).


I acknowledge that all of this is off in the “weird and theoretical” range. My wider goal in pointing it out is to say that, sometimes, you can grab a thing that was intended for a different application and put it to work on an interesting task. The most necessary component seems to be imagination.


Building A Small System

A guide to building a simple live-sound rig, from input to output.

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.

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Every once in a while, I get a request for information on how to create or add-on to a system for live audio. I like to personalize this information, because rigs for show and event production are best built for specific applications. However, there is a point where insisting that everything be approached in a customized way becomes inefficient – a lot of the same ground gets covered repeatedly.

So…

If you’re wondering what I think is required for a “small, basic, but still worthwhile” audio rig, read on. I’ll be including lots of links to vendor pages where you can buy various products.

(We’re going to go in order of signal flow, by the way.)

Input Transducers and Interfaces

For the smallest possible rig, take a distributed approach: With anything other than vocals, have the musician supply their own, personalized sound. Further, seek to avoid the whole issue of putting the output of that sound through the PA. Let a guitar amp make the guitar sound, let the drums just make their own noise in the room, and so on.

Having the ability to put more in the PA increases your potential control over the sound of the show, but outside factors can prevent that potential control from becoming actual control. Also, more inputs means more complexity, and thus more difficulty in system operation. There’s no hard and fast rule of what to be ready to reinforce, but I generally encourage folks – especially folks new to this whole thing – to ease themselves into the maelstrom that is live audio.

Wired Microphones

A decent mic will basically sound like the thing it’s being pointed at. For this reason, don’t agonize about getting specialized mics for everything right off the bat. A good “vocal” mic will be fine for many, many instrument applications. I recommend buying mics with tighter patterns (super or hypercardioid), as they can make the handling of high-gain situations much easier. Tight-pattern mics do require that the musicians – especially the vocalists – be able to use them appropriately. This issue should be considered as something for the musicians to figure out, because no system can fix everything (and a basic rig can fix even less of everything, if you take my meaning).

My current favorite mic is the EV ND767a. You might also consider the Audix OM2. Here’s a comparison of the two at Sweetwater.

Microphone Accessories

Each mic you buy will require an appropriate stand and XLR-Female to XLR-male cable.

Budget stands (like these from OnStage Stands) are just fine… if you can put in the effort to be nice to them. Gator Frameworks also has some promising offerings.

When it comes to cable, don’t overspend and don’t oversave. For a 20+ foot mic cable, paying more than $1.00 per foot is a huge premium for no benefit that I’ve been able to clearly observe. There are perfectly decent cables that can be had for as low as $0.40 per foot when purchased in a bundle. Going much below that, though, is likely to lead to problems.

I’ve been quite happy with cables I’ve gotten from Audiopile and Orange County Speaker. I’ve gotten some REALLY inexpensive cables from Unique Squared that were okay for a good while, but started having problems after a number of uses.

Wireless Mics

One word: Don’t.

Wireless is a pain in the donkey, with the FCC selling off all kinds of UHF spectrum to cellphone and computing companies, and the frequencies used for digital wireless becoming ever more crowded and hostile. Functionally, wireless transmission of audio is far more “fragile” than signal running on a cable, with all kinds of weird things that can happen outside your control.

But no matter what I say, you’re going to buy at least one wireless mic anyway, so…

Buy a digital system that operates in the 2.4 Ghz band if you want a chance at retaining your sanity in the short term. Specifically, look at the XD-V55 systems by Line 6. They’re very reasonably priced, have nice features like remote monitoring of mute status and battery level, and are the best wireless experience I’ve personally had to date.

You can, of course, go up from there.

Wireless Mic Accessories

Handheld wireless mics benefit greatly from having a stand available for every transmitter. Further, each receiver will need a cable to interface with the rest of the system.

Direct Boxes

A direct box is what I class as an “interface,” because it doesn’t convert acoustical events into electrical signals. A DI makes signals that are already electrical play nicely with pro-audio equipment when they might not otherwise. An aspect of this is also isolation, in that the DI creates what you might call an indirect connection between a console and a device. This can be very handy if the sending device (a guitar, keyboard, sampler, whatever) can’t tolerate phantom power, and the console has phantom applied to the signal line in question.

Direct boxes come in two main flavors, passive and active. Active DI boxes require external power of some kind, be that power from the wall, batteries, or phantom from the console. If you’re going to buy DI boxes, buy ACTIVE models. An active DI will work with almost anything, whereas some instrument pickups pair quite badly with passive boxes. You might as well buy units that work everywhere, and thus simplify your life. Expensive models from BSS, Radial, and Countryman are certainly nice, but there’s great value to be had in units from ART and Behringer, especially the “multiple modules in one box” offerings.

DI Box Accessories

Just like a microphone, each DI box will require an XLR-Female to XLR-Male cable. Remember that multi-module DI boxes require a cable for each individual module.

You don’t have to actually mount a rackable DI system, but you might want to. Sweetwater and Audiopile both sell quality rack cases in a huge variety of configurations.

Snakes/ Multicore Connections

Depending upon how you implement the mix and signal processing part of the rig, you may or may not require multicore cabling. If you want to send and receive a bunch of audio signals at a remote location, a snake really is a must. If you merely want to control the processing of signals from a remote location, you might be able to use your console in the same way you would use a traditional snakehead or stagebox.

If you do use a multicore, I suggest getting one that’s a little “overkill” in terms of the number of lines it contains. If a line fails, you’ll have a spare to patch to. “Headless or “fan-to-fan” snakes are a bit cheaper, but less convenient than multicores that terminate one end at a box. (You will always have to hunt for the specific line you want to connect to. It’s like a law of nature, or something.)

Audiopile would be my first choice for buying a snake I was really serious about. I have had good results with Seismic Audio fantail-to-fantail snakes, but my experience with their stagebox offerings has been mixed.

Mixing Consoles and Output Processing

This is where things get REALLY interesting.

Essentially, you have three major choices:

1) Use a relatively simple console where output processing is handled externally, and place all that at a “remote” location.

2) Use a more sophisticated console that encapsulates the output processing, and place the console at a “remote” location.

3) Use a more sophisticated console that encapsulates the output processing, leave the console close to the stage, and control the console from a remote location.

Option one takes up more space and requires more complicated physical patching, but the interface can be easier to understand at an intuitive level. Option two is compact and easy to physically patch, but the whole thing can be less intuitive for an inexperienced operator. Option three is like option two, with the added issue that control can depend entirely on an external device and network connection. If those fail, you may be in big trouble.

In every case, a console with some room to grow in terms of both inputs and outputs is a good idea. Don’t go overboard, though. You’ll end up spending a lot of money to no functional end. Especially if you’re new to all this, keep your monitor sends down to a maximum of four.

Option 1

The Console

Whatever you do, buy a console where the EQ has sweepable mids on the EQ and pre-fader auxiliary sends for each unique monitor mix you want to handle. A Soundcraft EPM8 is probably the minimum you should look for. I’ve been quite pleased with Yamaha’s mid-basic offerings, which have been revamped since I’ve bought one.

Simple, analog consoles “race” in a VERY tight pack, which means that there are lots of little permutations and many viable choices. Mackie, A&H, and Peavey are all worth looking at, and Behringer, while not having the shiniest reputation, has a knack for cramming lots of features into small cost. An XL2400 has what I would consider to be pretty darn flexible routing for a $650 mixer.

Console Accessories

Some consoles can be easily cased up or rackmounted, and some can’t.

You will need patch cables and/ or adapters with appropriate ends to get from your console outputs to your processing, one cable for each channel. As with other cables, high-dollar options really aren’t necessary. Stay somewhere in the $2/ foot range, and you’ll have patch connections that are long enough for some wiggle room and cheap enough that you won’t cry about ’em.

Also, get yourself a decent set of headphones for listening to the console’s solo bus. I have a pair of very-well-loved HD280s, and lots of other options exist. You want to look for closed-back, durable, “un-hyped” phones if you’re doing your own hunting.

The Processing

What you choose for output processing depends greatly on your own personal taste and comfort level. At the minimum, you should have an independent EQ for each mix. A really basic setup might be three mixes – one for the audience, and two monitor mixes for the stage. Things go up from there, of course.

Graphic equalizers, while not my personal favorite, are straightforward for most folks to operate. I generally recommend 31-band models over 15-band units, because you can focus in on a problem area without sledgehammering material that’s not making trouble. Peavey and dBX are good overall bets, but affordable graphics are similar to affordable consoles: All the players are very similar. I do like the features of the Behringer FBQ3102, but I also had one die after a year of use and a bumpy ride in the back of a truck.

If I’m going for an EQ-only solution, I can tell you that I vastly prefer a flexible parametric EQ over a graphic. In that realm, I have been extremely impressed by Behringer’s Feedback Destroyers. To be clear, my experience is that their automated feedback management is mediocre at best – but they are WICKED HANDY when you run them manually. You get a huge number of fully parametric filters at a very low price point. I’ve never had a major problem with any Feedback Destroyer I’ve owned. (Be aware that parametric EQ is more involved than graphic EQ. It’s not quite as “grab-n-go.” There are more choices that you have to make deliberately.)

If you want your processing to include dynamics, and also to let you have a graphic EQ combined with a parametric EQ, then a Behringer DEQ2496 is another killer device. Again, I haven’t found anything else exactly like it “in the wild,” although a Driverack PA2 is actually very close. DEQ2496 units do sometimes have problems with one of the internal connectors getting loose, but it’s an easy fix once you get the cover pulled off the device…and the connector freed from being glued down. (You will very definitely void your warranty if it’s still in effect, but hey, live a little.)

Processing Accessories

You may or may not be able to patch your snake returns (or other output cables) directly to your processing, so some adapters or patch cables might be necessary.

Also, you should definitely rack up any outboard processors you have for your system. It really does help to keep things neat and tidy.

Option 2

The Console

Digital consoles are a great route to take if you want to keep everything in one box. The downside, of course, is that the one box becomes a single point of failure. Then again, in any case, losing the console pretty much ends your day if you don’t have a spare.

Another factor to consider is that the processing available in digital consoles tends to be more fully featured while also being somewhat abstracted. This can make them overwhelming for new users, who simply don’t know what to make of all the options available.

If you’re going to be physically present at the console, you may as well get one that has a control-surface integrated in some way. An X32 Producer is a pretty natural choice, along with offerings from Presonus, Allen & Heath, and QSC.

Console Accessories

As was said earlier, rackmounting or casing the console might be possible. You can decide if you want to go to the expense or not.

The need to buy patch cables or adapters may still be there, depending on the configuration of your snake or other output lines.

And you’ll still want some headphones.

Option 3

The Console

You can leave the console on stage and mix remotely with the consoles detailed above, although the control surface might be a bit of a waste. Affordable digi-mixers that lack a surface are an interesting new product on the scene – just remember to factor in the cost of a remote-control laptop or tablet. Also, be aware that remote control is inherently a bit more “shaky” than being physically present at the mixer. It’s not horribly problematic, of course, but you have to have a contingency plan.

Surfaceless consoles at lower price points are available from Behringer, Soundcraft, and A&H. More expensive units also exist, of course.

Console Accessories

Surfaceless consoles are definitely rackable, and definitely should be.

Remember to buy the necessary patch cables or adapters for the outputs.

…but you can probably skip the headphones, because the consoles don’t currently stream the solo bus to a remote location (that I know of). That’s another downside of the number three option – to access the solo bus, you still have to be physically present at the console’s location.

Output Transducers (Speakers, That Is)

You’ll notice that I didn’t include an option for amps and passive speakers, and there’s a reason for that: This is supposed to be a simple system, and powered speakers are really the way to go to achieve simple.

Also in the service of simple is to keep your monitor wedges and FOH speakers interchangeable. Unless it’s completely inappropriate for your application, having loudspeakers that are all of the same model means that you can expect similar behavior from each box. If a failure occurs, you can swap one box for another and not have to think about it too much.

When buying powered loudspeakers, accept nothing less than an honest-to-goodness, biamped, fully processed unit. There are plenty of powered speakers that are single amped, with no processing outside of a passive crossover that is placed between the amplifier and the drivers. You want something more – something with an active crossover, basic corrective EQ applied at the factory, and an internal limiter. A peak SPL rating of greater than 120 dB @ 1 meter is also a good thing to look for, even with all the “fudging” that marketing departments apply to output numbers.

In terms of specific recommendations, I can say that PVXP12s have done very well for me. I can do “rock and roll” monitors with them in a small space, and I’m confident that they would perform equally well as an FOH unit. There are lots of other possibilities of course, provided by JBL, Mackie, Yamaha, and Behringer (just to name a few).

Loudspeaker Add-Ons

First, make sure you have the necessary cables to get from the console or snake outputs to the loudspeakers. Because speakers tend to be deployed in a rather spread-out fashion, it’s advisable to buy a bit more cable than you think you need. A 50 footer for each loudspeaker is probably a good start.

When it comes to stands for your FOH speakers, it’s good to get something a little nicer. Stands with locking collars and/ or piston assists can be a big help. I’ve used crank stands in the past, and they’re okay, but given a chance I’d make the upgrade to a more technologically advanced support.

The Biggest Accessories Of All

In the end, none of the fancy gear will mean much without power. You don’t have to buy really fancy power-conditioning equipment, but some rackmountable power units help reduce the need to fish around for a bunch of “free range” power taps. Of course, you should still keep a few freely-positionable power taps handy, along with several extension cords that use 14-gauge conductors (or something beefier, like 12-gauge). Powered speakers spread out all over creation have an alarming tendency to need those extension cords.


While there are other sundries and gadgets you can add on, going through the above should get you a working rig. As I said, this is a basic system. It won’t do everything for everybody all the time, but it should provide you with a decent start.


Not Remotely Successful

Just getting remote access to a mix rig is not a guarantee of being able to do anything useful with that remote access.

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.

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The nature of experimentation is that your trial may not get you the expected results. Just ask the rocket scientists of the mid-twentieth century. Quite a few of their flying machines didn’t fly. Some of them had parts that flew – but only because some other part exploded.

This last week, I attempted to implement a remote-control system for the mixing console at my regular gig. I didn’t get the results I wanted, but I learned a fair bit. In a sense, I think I can say that what I learned is more valuable than actually achieving success. It’s not that I wouldn’t have preferred to succeed, but the reality is that things were working just fine without any remote control being available. It would have been a nice bit of “gravy,” but it’s not like an ability to stride up to the stage and tune monitors from the deck is “mission critical.”

The Background

If you’re new to this site, you may not know about the mix rig that I use regularly. It’s a custom-built console that runs on general computing hardware. It started as a SAC build, but I switched to Reaper and have stayed there ever since.

To the extent that you’re talking about raw connectivity, a computer-hosted mix system is pre-primed for remote control. Any modern computer and accessible operating system will include facilities for “talking” to other devices over a network. Those connectivity facilities will be, at a basic level, easy to configure.

(It’s kind of an important thing these days, what with the Internet and all.)

So, when a local retailer was blowing out 10″ Android tablets for half price, I thought, “Why not?” I had already done some research and discovered that VNC apps could be had on Android devices, and I’ve set up VNC servers on computers before. (It’s not hard, especially now that the installers handle the network security configuration for you.) In my mind, I wasn’t trying to do anything exotic.

And I was right. Once I had a wireless network in place and all the necessary software installed, getting a remote connection to my console machine was as smooth as butter. Right there, on my tablet, was a view of my mixing console. I could navigate around the screen and click on things. It all looked very promising.

There’s a big difference between basic interaction and really being able to work, though. When it all came down to it, I couldn’t easily do the substantive tasks that would make having a remote a handy thing. It didn’t take me long to realize that tuning monitors while standing on the deck was not something I’d be able to do in a professional way.

A Gooey GUI Problem

At the practical level, the problem I was having was an interface mismatch. That is, while my tablet could display the console interface, the tablet’s input methodology wasn’t compatible with the interface being displayed.

Now, what the heck does that mean?

Reaper (and lots of other audio-workstation interfaces) are built for high-precision pointing devices. You might not think of a mouse or trackball as “high precision,” but when you couple one of those input devices with the onscreen pointer, high precision is what you get. The business-end of the pointer is clearly visible, only a few pixels wide, and the “interactivity radius” of the pointer is only slightly larger. There is an immediately obvious and fine-grained discrimination between what the pointer is set to interact with, and what it isn’t. With this being the case, the software interface can use lots of small controls that are tightly packed.

Additionally, high-precision pointing allows for fast navigation across lots of screen area. If you have the pointer in one area of the screen and invoke, say, an EQ window that pops open in another area, it’s not hard to get over to that EQ window. You flick the mouse, your eye finds the pointer, you correct on the fly, and you very quickly have control localized to the new window. (There’s also the whole bonus of being able to see the entire screen at once.) With high-precision input being available, the workstation software can make heavy use of many independent windows.

Lastly, mice and other high-precision pointers have buttons that are decoupled from the “pointing” action. Barring some sort of failure, these buttons are very unambiguous. When the button is pressed, it’s very definitely pressed. Clicks and button holds are sharply delineated and easily parsed by both the machine and the user. The computer gets an electrical signal, and the user gets tactile feedback in their fingers that correlates with an audible “click” from the button. This unambiguous button input means that the software can leverage all kinds of fine-grained interactions between the pointer position and the button states. One of the most important of those interactions is the dragging of controls like faders and knobs.

So far so good?

The problem starts when an interface expecting high-precision pointing is displayed on a device that only supports low-precision pointing. Devices like phones and tablets that are operated by touch are low-precision.

Have you noticed that user interfaces for touch-oriented devices are filled with big buttons, “modal” elements that take over the screen, and expectations for “big” gestures? It’s because touch control is coarse. Compared to the razor-sharp focus of a mouse-driven pointer, a finger is incredibly clumsy. Your hand and finger block a huge portion of the screen, and your finger pad contacts a MASSIVE area of the control surface. Sure, the tablet might translate that contact into a single-pixel position, but that’s not immediately apparent (or practically useful) to the operator. The software can’t present you with a bunch of small subwindows, as the miniscule interface elements can’t be managed easily by the user. In addition, the only way for the touch-enabled device to know the cursor’s location is for you to touch the screen…but touch, by necessity, has to double as a “click.” Interactions that deal with both clicks and movement have to be forgiving and loosely parsed as a result.

Tablets don’t show big, widely spaced controls in a single window because it looks cool. They do it because it’s practical. When a tablet displays a remote interface that’s made for a high-precision input methodology, life gets rather difficult:

“Oh, you want to display a 1600 x 900, 21″ screen interface on a 1024 X 600, 10″ screen? That’s cool, I’ll just scale it down for you. What do you mean you can’t interact with it meaningfully now?”

“Oh, you want to open the EQ plugin window on channel two? Here you go. You can’t see it? Just swipe over to it. What do you mean you don’t know where it is?”

“Oh, you want to increase the send level to mix three from channel four? Nice! Just click and drag on that little knob. That’s not what you touched. That’s also not what you touched. Try zooming in. I’m zoomi- wait, you just clicked the mute on channel five. Okay, the knob’s big now. Click and drag. Wait…was that a single click, or a click and hold? I think that was…no. Okay, now you’re dragging. Now you’ve stopped. What do you mean, you didn’t intend to stop? You lifted your finger up a little. Try again.”

With an interface mismatch, everything IS doable…but it’s also VERY slow, and excruciatingly difficult compared to just walking back to the main console and handling it with the mouse. Muting or unmuting a channel is easy enough, but mixing monitors (and fighting feedback) requires swift, smooth control over lots of precision elements. If the interface doesn’t allow for that, you’re out of luck.

Control States VS. Pictures Of Controls

So, can systems be successfully operated by remotes that don’t use the same input methodology as the native interface?

Of course! That’s why traditional-surface digital consoles can be run from tablets now. The tablet interfaces are purpose-built, and involve “state” information about the main console’s controls. My remote-control solution didn’t include any of that. The barrier for me is that I was trying to use a general-purpose solution: VNC.

With VNC, the data transmitted over the network is not the state of the console’s controls. The data is a picture of the console’s controls only, with no control-state data involved.

That might seem confusing. You might be saying, “But there is data about the state of the controls! You can see where the faders are, and whether the mutes are pressed, and so on.”

Here’s the thing, though. You’re able to determine the state of the controls because you can interpret the picture. That determination you’ve made, however, is a reconstruction. You, as a human, might be seeing a picture of a fader at a certain level. Because that picture has a meaning that you can extract via pattern recognition, you can conceptualize that the fader is in a certain state – the state of being at some arbitrary level of gain. To the computer, though, that picture has no meaning in terms of where that fader is.

When my tablet connects to the console via VNC, and I make the motions to change a control’s state, my tablet is NOT sending information to the console about the control I’m changing. The tablet is merely saying “click at this screen position.” For example, if clicking at that screen position causes a channel’s mute to toggle, that’s great – but the only machine aware of that mute, or whether that mute is engaged or disengaged, is the console itself. The tablet itself is unaware. It’s up to me to look at the updated picture and decide what it all means…and that’s assuming that I even get an updated picture.

The cure to all of this is to build a touch-friendly interface which is aware of the state of the controls being operated. You can present the knobs, faders, and switches in whatever way you want, because the remote-control information only concerns where that control should be set. The knobs and faders sit in the right place, because the local device knows where they are supposed to be in relation to their control state. Besides solving the “interface mismatch” problem, this can also be LIGHT YEARS more efficient.

(Disclaimer: I am not intimately aware of the inner workings of VNC or any console-remote protocol. What follows are only conjectures, but they seem to be reasonable to me.)

Sending a stream of HD (or near HD) screenshots across a network means quite a lot of data. If you’re using jpeg-esque compression, you can crush each image down to 100 kilobytes and still have things be usable. VNC can be pretty choosy about what it updates, so let’s say you only need one full image every second. You won’t see meters move smoothly or anything like that, but that’s the price for keeping things manageable. The data rate is about 819 kbits/ second, plus the networking overhead (packet headers and other communication).

Now then. Let’s say we’ve got some remote-control software that handles all “look and feel” on the local device (say, a tablet). If you represent a channel as an 8-bit identifier, that means you can have up to 256 channels represented. You don’t need to actually update each channel all the time to simply get control. Data can just be sent as needed, of course. However, if you want to update the channel meters 30 times per second, that meter data (which could be another 8-bit value) has to be attached to each channel ID. So, 30 times a second, 256 8-bit identifiers get 8-bits of meter information data attached to each of them. Sixteen bits multiplied by 256 channels, multiplied by 30 updates/ second works out to about 123 kbits/ second.

Someone should check my math and logic, but if I’m right, nicely fluid metering across a boatload of channels is possible at less than 1/6th the data rate of “send me a screenshot” remote control. You just have to let the remote device handle the graphics locally.

Control-state changes are even easier. A channel with fader, mute, solo, pan, polarity, a five-selection routing matrix, and 10 send controls needs to have 20 “control IDs” available. A measly little 5-bit number can handle that (and more). If the fader can handle 157 “integer” levels (+12 dB to -143 dB and “-infinity”) with 10 fractional levels of .1 dB between each integer (1570 values total), then the fader position can be more than adequately represented by an 11-bit number. If you touch a fader and the software sends a control update every 100th of a second, then a channel ID, control ID, and fader position have to be sent 100 times per second. That’s 24 bits multiplied by 100, or 2.4 kbits/ second.

That’s trivial compared to sending screenshots across the network, and still almost trivial when compared to the “not actually fast” data rate required to update the meters all the time.

Again, let me be clear. I don’t actually know if this is how “control state” remote operation works. I don’t know how focused the programmers are on network data efficiency, or even if this would be a practical implementation. It seems plausible to me, though.

I’m rambling at this point, so let me tie all this up: Remote control is nifty, and you can get the basic appearance of remote control with a general purpose solution like VNC. If you really need to get work done in a critical environment, though, you need a purpose built solution that “plays nice” at both the local and remote ends.


The Cost Effectiveness Of Premium Soda

$1.00 per usage cycle is a magical number.

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.

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Whether or not you like them, energy drinks are actually pretty cheap.

That is to say, for about a buck you buy a can of soda. You consume the contents of that can and chuck out the container without a second thought. You got exactly one use out that product for $1.00, and you barely noticed the transaction at all.

In my mind, that’s a pretty strong definition of “cheap, and cost effective.” The acquisition price was basically forgettable on its own, and the amount of utility you got for that acquisition price was reasonable to you – maybe at an unconscious level, but reasonable.

For show-production techs, there comes a day when we either have to procure our own gear or procure gear with someone else’s money. On that day, we have to think about cost effectiveness. We may not give it the conscious thought it deserves, but some sort of mental evaluation takes place. In this business, an oft-occurring result of considering gear is “sticker shock.” We look at the price attached to something and go “Geeze! That’s a lot!” Sometimes the reaction is justified, but there are other times when the number associated with entry isn’t rationally compared with what happens after the entry occurs. In certain cases, the long-term utility of a piece of gear actually makes the entry cost seem microscopic – but that can be hard to see at the time.

Now, there are all kinds of ways to determine cost-effectiveness. Some available methods are incredibly granular, taking into account depreciation, cost of transport, industry acceptance, and so on. Dave Rat, for example, put together a rather interesting “Buy Vs. Lease” calculator that you can find at the bottom of this post. If you know me, you know that I’m a great appreciator of granularity. I like to be able to deal with all kinds of minutiae. I like sniper-rifle focus in lots of areas, especially when it comes to mixing FOH (Front Of House) and monitors from the same spot.

But when it comes to making purchasing decisions in a rational way, I think that getting buried in a barrage of detailed considerations can lead to paralysis. I think that a basic shorthand can help make cost-effectiveness decisions go much more quickly – which provides a shortcut to the fun part, which IS GETTING NEW GEAR AM I RIGHT?

Anyway.

When I talk about shorthand, I mean REALLY shorthand. It’s probably one of the quickest questions you can ask yourself about a piece of gear: “Will I be able to get enough usage out of this item that each deployment cycle will have cost $1.00 or less?”

Of Power Amps and Microphones

At my regular gig, the amplifier for the full-range FOH loudspeakers is a QSC GX5. It’s been very good to us, and by my shorthand test, it’s been entirely inexpensive.

See, I just passed my four-year mark at the job. We do just a bit more than 104 shows per year, so the amp has about 416 shows on it. GX5 amps retail for $400 when brand new. Divide $400 by 416 shows, and you get a “cost effectiveness factor” of $0.96/ deployment. To be brutally honest, that’s peanuts. It’s not that we’d want to, but at this point we could just give the amp away and have lost nothing more – proportionally speaking – than if someone had bought and consumed about 400 energy drinks.

And the amp is still going strong! (It needed a replacement power switch last weekend, but that’s it.) It’s cost effectiveness is already slightly better than what we, as a society, expect from a product that we simply buy, swallow, and eliminate into a toilet.

Four hundred dollars might seem like a sizable chunk of change (and it is when your budget is constrained) but when you look at the whole utility of something like a power amp…well, you ultimately realize just how cheap certain aspects of live-sound have become.

In the same vein, I bought six EV ND767a vocal mics at the beginning of last year’s August. One of them died early on, so the total cost per working mic was $155. They haven’t all been used at every show, but figuring everything out in excruciating detail isn’t what a shorthand is for. As a group, those EV mics have been available to me at about 132 shows so far. Their cost effectiveness factor (as a group) is $1.18 / deployment, and improving every week.

When you consider that a vocal mic can be trouble-free for hundreds of shows, $100 – $200 for such a transducer works out to be what you would expect for a “mediocre commodity.” In the long run, a bog-standard stage microphone doesn’t actually cost any more than something you would casually throw away.

So, when it all comes down to it, dividing the purchase price of gear by the number of expected usage cycles can be illuminating. There’s quite a bit out there that, over its lifetime, becomes of no more monetary consequence than “fancy sugarwater.” If you need a quick assessment of what it makes sense to buy, items that can reach the $1.00/ deployment neighborhood are probably decent bets.

You have to be careful, though, because this kind of shorthand doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

The Blind Spot

What you have to realize is that there’s plenty of gear in plenty of situations that can not, and should not be expected to meet a long-term goal of “throwaway” pricing.

Mixing consoles, for instance, are unlikely to quickly reach the price point of mass-consumables. Pricing as compared to functionality has indeed gone over a cliff, but even that hasn’t stopped mixers from being a premium product. A $3000 digital console can do a LOT these days, but even doing 312 shows a year (six days a week, every week) it would take over nine years to make the console “disposable.” Especially with digital consoles, nine years is rather longer than the effective product lifecycle.

A console is a premium product, not a consumable. You can use the dollars/ usage cycle calculation to get an idea of your potential value for money, but trying to get to the $1 point just isn’t an appropriate goal. If you’re going to use a shorthand to determine cost-effectiveness of gear, you have to take care to apply the appropriate “goal ratios” to appropriate items. Gently treated and well-constructed mics, cables, amplifiers, and small-venue loudspeakers can usually be looked at as commodity items. Mixing consoles and large-format loudspeakers usually can’t.

For the non-commodities, an approach more in line with traditional cost/ benefit analysis is far more appropriate.

For everything else, if it seems to be made decently and will have a long-term cost effectiveness that’s comparable to premium soda, it’s probably a decent buy.