Subgroups via post fade Aux on Soundcraft Spirit M12

[visa]

hi guys,

i bought a Soundcraft Spirit M12 which i'll be using in a recording/live monitoring hybrid setup at our practice space.

the direct outs will go to my firewire 12ch interface in prefade mode while the main mix bus will be sent to a PA.

since the mixer has no busses besides the main mix bus i was wondering how i'd aproach a submix of the drums for easier monitoring.

http://www.soundcraft.com/download....s/product_sheet/spirit_m_series/m12_hires.jpg

what do you think about this?
i'll just patch Aux 3 and 4 to one of the Stereo channels and use that as my drum bus while the aux 3 and 4 are turned up completely on my drum channels.

does this make any sense at all or is there a better way to do this?

I have no experience at all with mixers and and routing options.

 

[xstatic]

It makes sense to me. I would not turn them up all the way though. I would put each channel at unity gain on the aux send and master. You may have to trim the master depending on the gain range of your stereo channel inputs. Keep in mind that generally speaking aux busses are not as clean and noise free as group channels and such.

I am still not sure why you would want or need to do this on a 12 channel mixer though. It actually seems lilke more work in certain ways to me then just changing things where necessary.

 

[visa]

I am still not sure why you would want or need to do this on a 12 channel mixer though. It actually seems lilke more work in certain ways to me then just changing things where necessary.

the reason i'm doing this is because i want to control the volume of the drums in my monitors with one fader instead of messing around with 4 to 6 faders or aux knobs every time i have to adjust the levels of the drums.

btw, i think i know what you mean by unity gain except that i don't know how to put the auxes at unity gain. how does that work?

 

[xstatic]

For unity gain there will often be a "0" or a little triangle or hash mark or something. If not, the manual will probably tell you what unity gain is on your specific little mixer. The reason I ask about why you wanted to do it is that my real life expereince tells me that "drums up" and "drums down" are very rarely requests. Usually its more or less kick, or more or less snare etc... which means you would be back to fiddling with individual channels anyhow. Using the method you are describing will probably add more noise, especially on a low cost mixer like the Soundcraft, but if it is just for headphones and you really do just need " drums up" or "drums down" then there is no compeeling reason not to do what you are suggesting as long as you don't mind the extra noise.