Can I connect my Mixer to a venue's PA system to use my own effects?

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gene12586

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If want to use the effects on my personal mixer at a venue where they already have a PA system, can I connect my mixer to the house mixer?
Let's say I have a personal PA system that I rehearse with at home and I want to use the on board effects on my mixer (e.g., reverb, delay, etc) for a live performance at a venue where they already have an in house PA system. Can I still send my vocals mic to my personal mixer where I apply effects to it and then send the output to the in house mixer at the venue? If so, will this be effective in capturing the sound I usually get when singing at home?
Or would a vocal processor work better than a mixer for this situation?
Thanks.
 
You can see the look on the house sound op already? Frankly, they wont care as long as you give them the audio on the right connector. They’ll shrug and accept what you give them, but they will hate it, and tell everyone the sound wasn’t them.

The thing we all hate is a pre mixed, eq’d and effects laden source we cant control. Reverb and delays are worst, because the audience hear your mix, plus the effect the room has on it. So many venue have rotten acoustics, that a wet mix can be a train wreck. In a rehearsal space you turn up the treatment, but in a bigger room it could just be a swampy mess, and they cannot fix it. Id at the least speak to their operator and get their opinion. You are forcing them to just take your mix, good or bad. At the very least, give them the option of the clean mic. The other thing is monitoring, where do the band get your voice from? When you rehearse using your split system, they probably get your voice direct, and through spill from your setup, on stage, wont you have more monitoring level to balance against the house system. If they are relying on hearing you through the PA, it might be nasty? Are your reverb and delay settings really complex? Could their mixer not replicate it? I have had my sound op really upset by bands with bizarre systems. Me asking why it sounds so awful, and him saying its not his fault, its what he's being sent. Just be careful here. If you can provide them with a signal on an xlr, they'll get it into the system. They might accidentallly not have a DI box if you offer them anything else, as an excuse.
 
Yes Gene you can send the output of your mixer to the FOH PA desk but they might insist on a passive DI box in the feed for several reasons.
1) Sound guys tend to want a mic level feed (balanced of course*)
2) They will NOT want your ground! Make sure the DI box has a ground lift, almost all do.
3) Re above an "isolated" feed is judged to be electrically safer although with the way most DI boxes are configured this is not AS safe as many think.

No Gene! The resulting FOH sound is not likely to be what you expect but that is something for you and the guy on the desk to sort out!

*Many mixers use an "impedance balanced" output. This is fine but can never NOT be "earth referred".

Dave.
 
Rob has beaten me to it! I was just pointing out the 'technical' aspects but everything he says makes abundant sense as well.

Dave.
 
You can't properly judge the sound in the house from stage. Unless there's some very unusual effect in your mixer that you really must have, leave effects to the person whose job it is to make you sound good out front. What you are suggesting is widely known to irritate sound people, and you really need then on your side.

Also, a lot of effects can exacerbate feedback in the monitors. And the sound person may want to cut the effects between songs.

Singers with their own "special" effects are just a pain unless there's something really special and they implement them correctly.
 
Yeah like others said it’ll “work”, but…. My main concern would be the gain-before-feedback thing.

A dedicated “vocal processor” doesn’t fix any of the issues. In fact, it might make things worse because you’ll be tempted to use its onboard compression which just exacerbates the feedback issue.
 
Could the fx in the mixer be sent to an aux or fx in on the house board? I don't know that answer. Lol
It depends on what the house sound has to offer in effects. Are doing an open mic type deal? Is it a bar / club / restaurant? House sound can vary greatly. But it seems these days most have on board fx of at least reverb and delay presets of some sorts. If you explain to a sound guy what you prefer in that respect, he can get you close. And to be honest, unless your auditioning for a label, as long as you have pitch and can play fairly well, the general public doesn't care what fx settings your vocal is on.
 
I have a JBL flown array system in the theatre, and I ask for a L and R which goes into the mixer - two channels panned left and right. Some demand access to the amps so they can run our system from their board direct, but this allows them to push levels, push bass and make my system sound awful, so it's though the desk or nothing. Whatever maximum level they set in the soundcheck, they ALWAYS increase during the show. I go for food and come back and they've been into my desk and taken out the limiter or increased the subs. So I'm the gumpy old man who says no. We do have a few bands through who have very strange things. Sometimes I pinch their ideas - one band said they had a L and R for me and three vocals - one panned centre and the others a bit left and right at a slightly lower level. The feeds are slightly delayed left and right, by different amounts and EQ'd different and a bit of pitch shift too. It makes it sound like three people. I pinched this idea for my own band. When their sound guy explained it, I was happy with them giving me 5 channels. The worst one was a queen tribute with NINE AC30s for Brian May - they were only using our PA, and the rider required 9 SM57s or Senn 606s. I managed 6 57s and 3 606s. When they arrived 6 of the AC30s were foldable dummies - which they insisted I mic up for 'authenticity'.
 
Oh if your mixer has some way of providing a dry signal along with the effect, the house engineer has a lot more chance to make it work. They could send less of the effects to the monitors and even adjust the wet/dry balance in foh if it really seems necessary.
 
Are you changing the effects for each song? If not, you could certainly just tell the sound guy that you like a hall reverb with a 2 second decay and a 440 ms delay.
 
My guess is you won’t be invited back to that venue unless you have a huge following that is making the venue lots of money. :D

On thing I’ve learned in LA clubs, is that it’s a good idea to make friends with the sound man and make their job as easy as possible. They mix a lot of bands and yours is nothing special to them.
 
Live shows have enough complexity and potential points of failure. Adding more won't make you any friends.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Live shows have enough complexity and potential points of failure. Adding more won't make you any friends.
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Often times unless you’re the headlining act, you won’t even get a sound check. They ain’t got time.
The house engineer isn’t familiar with your band, and usually is mixing on the fly. It’s a miracle that after the first song that they actually have a decent mix of your band.

Plenty of times we did a show where we got a cassette or dat copy off the board.

Be nice, bring the sound guy a tape, give him 5 or ten bucks as a tip and they’re usually quite happy to make you a tape of your show. One for one, the first song wasn’t mixed so well, but by the second song, a good guy will have nailed it.
 
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As well as sound technicians the other people you need to cultivate are caretakers, church/school halls e.g. NEVER refer to him as "that bloody jobsworth!"

Dave.
 
gene12586 said:
Let's say I have a personal PA system that I rehearse with at home and I want to use the on board effects on my mixer (e.g., reverb, delay, etc) for a live performance at a venue where they already have an in house PA system. Can I still send my vocals mic to my personal mixer where I apply effects to it and then send the output to the in house mixer at the venue? If so, will this be effective in capturing the sound I usually get when singing at home?
Or would a vocal processor work better than a mixer for this situation?
Click to expand...
Bad idea to send a mix to the FOH Mixer - why? Because of the effects you want to put on it - if you have IEMs it won’t be too bad - if you use monitors - then no way it works - yes the signal will get there - but it wont be any good.

Rather than give the Vocal Processor to the FOH - figure what you have and how you set it - then write down the settings - and ask the FOH to duplicate it - he will get reasonably close usually - and the sound will be much cleaner.
 
gene12586 said:
Let's say I have a personal PA system that I rehearse with at home and I want to use the on board effects on my mixer (e.g., reverb, delay, etc) for a live performance at a venue where they already have an in house PA system. Can I still send my vocals mic to my personal mixer where I apply effects to it and then send the output to the in house mixer at the venue? If so, will this be effective in capturing the sound I usually get when singing at home?
Or would a vocal processor work better than a mixer for this situation?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
This is what you do in that situation: use an Aux send from the vocal channel out as the dry signal output, and another channel for the wet signal from the master out on your personal mixer.
That a way the FOH guy has a wet and dry channel and be able to control the overall wet mix as well as sending a dry signal to stage monitors.
 
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