We're building an In-Ear Monitor rack for our live shows... mixing and FOH sends?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bryan316
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ALWAYS HAVE YOUR INSTRUCTION MANUALS WITH YOU!


Holy crap.


Okay, I have NO FRIGGIN CLUE how my board is supposed to route the channels. It's been 4 years since I've fiddled with this Alesis mixer, I could not remember how to adjust how much of each of us to get to each of the Aux sends. This board is goofy with its routing. It has the Aux Sends paired, and Aux 1 and 2 are the control room sends.

I think last time, I was using the Groups 1-4 (buses 1-4) for monitor channels, but I couldn't figure it out last night. And I didn't have the instructions with me. Got home last night, couldn't find the manual. Looked this morning again in my stack O' manuals, not there.

Damn it all.

HOWEVER....

Just sending the same mix to everyone, was SMILES ACROSS THE ROOM! Just testing it and doing one chorus of a song, everyone could instantly tell, this was a wise investment. Even my drummer likes it, because now we're not blasting the PA speakers, we're just using it so he can hear some of the vocals for his cues and timing. I told him we could get him in on this new-fangled stuff. He has a headphone amplifier that he can bolt to the leg of his drum rack, and then just drop a hard cable from the mixer to him like we do for our keyboardist. Then that means all our amps can be dialed down low, he'll be able to hear his kick drums better, no need to stomp on them just to make sure he's not shifting off tempo and his hands match his feet during faster double-kick parts.

I quickly tried adding Tony's guitars, yes it works, but it was "staticy or noisy" according to him. If its a ground loop hum, I'll hit the ground lift on his amp tomorrow and test again.

So we need one more receiver and earbuds, and then I can start really getting some experience on this stuff. I'll spend tomorrow afternoon tweaking with the instruction manual in front of me.



As soon as I finish printing another copy of it here at work!
 
Lots of learning, lots of soldering.


So I figured out how my board routs its aux sends. Aux 1 and 2 are considered Monitor Sends, and are pre-fader. Aux 3-6 are post-fader, and don't behave as simply as the Monitor Sends. I'm allowed to use either Aux 3 and 4, or switch over to Aux 5 and 6. I guess they designed this for having two groups of effects processors, for example, 3 and 4 for delay effects, and 5 and 6 for EQ or filtering effects. Either use the 3 and 4 effect, or use the 5 and 6 effect.

So I don't truly have 6 aux sends. Makes things less awesome. But for now, since we only have two transmitters, I'm only going to use 1 and 2 for the in-ears, and 3 for the keyboardist's hard line output to his mixer.

So I spent whatever in-between hours through the weekend, to solder up 12 three-foot mic cables, to rout from the mic splitter to the mixer, and from the splitter to some dongles to connect to the FOH. Only one cable had a problem, prolly a broken lead inside the cables as my solders are all clean and no shorts are visible at the connectors. Will go hit my bench at lunchtime and test this bad cable and see if I can salvage it.

So I got my guitarist to test things last night. Got our two vocals and guitar and bass into it, and BLAMMO. We are awesome. Had to hit the ground lift on my bass amp's DI though. So I now know his basement's power outlets are not cleanly grounded. But once we have all our amps racked in the same box on the same ground, won't have to worry about that. Keyboards had a little hum/noise, but I think that's from hanging that mic cable in the ceiling along his lights and power lines.

Tomorrow is full-band practice. I intend to disconnect everything, and box up the rack box. Then, I'll have everyone take their mic cable and mic, and unravel them to me, I unpack the box, and start plugging things in. Drummer will run a stop watch, so I can tell how long it will take us to set this up, before assembling our own rigs on stage. Shouldn't take more than 2 minutes, if we practice this a few times.

Next: Four identical SM58's. Even though I despise the sound of 58's, every venue will always expect them.

ElectroVoice RE410's for everyone, damnit!!!
 
Allright. In-ears worked well for everyone except me. Quite a stressful, messy setup, and took far too long. The killer was rerouting all of the stage's mic cables to reach my splitter box at the side of the stage.

Horrible idea.


Returning the ART splitter box, and getting individual splitter DI boxes. One for each mic, to be located AT each mic. That way, I don't have to reroute their cables, just add mine.


But the band LOVED hearing themselves. Especially when our frontman played his solos. Crystal clear in everyone's ears, and msitake free. How nice to be able to hear what you're doing!!!
 
Consider a split snake. It will have a stage box and two tails, one to the house snake and one to your rig. The split snake box goes near the house snake box so all the mic cables terminate in the same area as usual. You run the main out to the house snake and the split out to your rig. Usually the main out is about 10' and the split out is 25' or 30' to get across stage to your rig. That should be simpler than the split at the rig or at each mic.
 
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