Headphone amp setup help

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thesedaze

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Hello,

I am using a Behringer MX3282a mixer, Behringer Powerplay Pro headphone amp, and an Echo Layla24 soundcard setup.

My goal is to be able to have a setup where each set of headphones can hear playback, as well as a live full band mix.

I know in order for the headphone amp to receive playback, an out from the Layla must go to the aux in on the headphone amp, but I get confused when I want to achieve both live mix and layback capabilities. I need to know what to route into the mixer aux, and what to route into the headphone aux. With only 8 channels on the soundcard, We're definately going to have to subgroup, especially for a live mix.


Help is appreciated!

thanks
 
I am not too sure about your mixer, but I have a Mackie 1604 and a delta 1010. Maybe my setup is similiar enough to get you going in the right direction.

Let's assume that you are running a 4 piece band. There are drums, guitar, bass, and vox. Let's also assume that you are going to use the preamps on your mixer. One other assumption is that you have adequate isolation between the instruments. If you don't have this isolation, then there are work-arounds, but they add time to the tracking stage of the project.

Given these assumptions I would recommend the following:

1) Develop a good drum sound using a 4-mic technique. 2 Overheads, snare, and kick drum. There is plenty of info on the web and this place on how to do this. Run the direct outs from the preamps on your board to the inputs on the layla.

2) Assign guitar, bass, and vox through their pathways that eventually terminate at the input stage of the layla.

3) Now you have one extra track that you can either use to record a click, extra drum mic, extra vox, etc. Use it at your discretion. I said record the click because, to make a long story short, my delta 1010 is set up in a way that I have to do it like that.

4) Now that you have inputs running into your soundcard, there should be a low-latency monitoring option in your soundcard's driver that basically takes the input signal that it is getting and outputs it right back to you without running through the computer. This is called "input monitoring". If you try to listen to the signal after it is processed by the computer you will be totally lost because of the delay.

5) Set up the outputs of the soundcard on their own channels on your mixer, and get a decent control room mix on your mains. This becomes your main headphone output that connects into the main input on your headphone amp.

6) Now, try to view each aux send on your board as each musician's very own send. Connect Aux send 1-4 from your mixer to the auxillary inputs on each channel of the headphone amp.

7) Now, when the drummer wants to hear more guitar, turn up the drummers aux send on the channel of your mixer that has the guitar output from the soundcard.

This is just one way to do it, but maybe it will get you going in the right direction.

peace
 
from the start, there's a problem. We use an 8 mic setup for drums.
 
You might see what kind of results you can get with a 4-mic set up. If you don't like the results from that, I think you can buy another Layla and get sixteen inputs. If that isn't possible, there really is no way that you can record a whole band live unless you group things into your busses.

The drawback to doing this is you have to feel real comfortable with combining the different mics while tracking because you won't have individual control over the drums during the mixdown. It's possible that you would get a better sound in the end by using a 4-mic technique.

If you still decide to use 8 mics on the kit and use your busses to record a whole band, I really can't help because I am not knowledgeable enough about your board to offer assistance in recording the whole band with the board's pres while getting individual headphone mixes.

Good luck
 
that is already what we do. use the busses for subgrouping. btw, echo makes a layla expansion we'll be getting...another 8 ins without having to have a full soundcard with it. bout half the price.
 
btw, echo makes a layla expansion we'll be getting...another 8 ins without having to have a full soundcard with it. bout half the price.
Click to expand...

That's pretty cool. Once you get that, it looks like your mixer has enough inputs to handle what I was suggesting in my initial response.
 
I just thought of something, does the expansion add eight more outputs? If it doesn't, then you will have to figure out how to group the outputs of your Layla from within your sound card's control panel or just ball up and buy a whole new layla.
 
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