How do you mix your monitors

[ppr7997]

In addition to EQ'ing your individual instruments, it helps to be able to EQ the actual wedge, too.

[genesisaudio]

we are a small church with a really small place but we are using a hear back system and for the price i guess is a good solution.

[jgibby]

Great thread and good info! I agree that monitors in a church setting are like software products and are susceptible to what is called "feature creep". Periodically I also like to do "spring cleaning" on my auxes and start with the basics.

I also agree that what you hear on the headphones is not necessarily what the musician is hearing. Obviously there are frequency response differences between headphones and wedge monitors, I think the actual difference is probably due to what they are hearing from other sources such as the FOH, other monitors and their monitor combined, that produces a different picture than what is coming out of the wedge.

[BradLyons]

Originally Posted by twj

The rule at our church is that if your ears aren't bleeding from the monitor mix then demand the FOH guy to turn it up a lot!!!

Besides, who needs FOH when the stage is so loud?

Because sound on the stage doesn't sound the same out in the house. By the time you hear what's going on in the house, it's mud. This is why it's imperative to have a louder sound in the house to drown-out the mix from on-stage. So the louder the stage volume, the louder it is in the house.

There are many complications when it comes to stage mixes, because each person wants to hear what they want to hear. When using typical wedges, amps, speakers, etc... each person is fighting for their desired audible level. If someone can't hear, they turn up their speaker---then the next guy and so on. This is a blessing of in-ear monitors, but that's not a cheaper solution to go IEM's. When using traditional wedges, you hear the ambience of what's going on. When using IEM's, you lose that. However, it's recommend to put up a few mics that just record ambience so you don't get locked in....but what I'm referring to is now you're hearing a mix you've been designated to hear. With IEM's, you can no longer have a few dedicated mixes---each person needs THEIR mix or they won't really hear what is going on.

At my church, I have a pretty advanced setup...we only have stage wedges for the choir and our vocal team. I have a brass section, drummer (Roland TD20 kit), percussion, bass guitar, electric guitar x2, acoustic guitar, p&w leader, piano and a keyboardist. Sometimes I have woodwinds and strings. EACH person has an IEM that's being fed from either a 16-channel Aviom system or into a Shure PSM700 IEM controlled by the PQ Controller on my Venue console. Because we do so much broadcast and production, it's imperative to have this separation. I also do a fair amount of location concert recording where I just don't have the luxury of using IEM's, because the musicians are pre-madonna's and want a big sound on-stage. So, I deal with it and it makes mixing it later back in the studio a challenge at times.

Unfortunately, I've found that the un-trained ear doesn't know how to mix stage volume with FOH volume. I've been in churches using real drums where I hear the drums on-stage, but not through the PA. The same can be said with guitar and bass cabs, etc. THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY! Sorry, I have good ears and I like to hear a good mix---even in church, that's the engineer in me that's not satisfied

Brad Lyons

[twj]

Brad,

I was being a bit sarcastic. I like to think I have pretty good ears too. Our auditorium seats about 400 with the stage in one corner. The drummers play so loud it is hard to add any to the house. The same with the bass amp. We have an Aviom system but only the drummers are willing to use it.

The problem I have is when Pastor comes into the room and tells me to turn down the bass when it isn't even in the house mix. Even then we run 90 - 95 dB at the mixer.

[waynehoskins]

An interesting thing I've noticed in recent years is that until the volume of an instrument in FOH is louder than its stagevolume (guitar amps turned up to Twelve, for example), you don't hear the volume from FOH really adding to the stagevolume.

This means that, at least what I've seen, you don't really have to mix around a loud instrument: if the drums are loud, it usually doesn't hurt to add them to the mix anyway. Of course you have to overcome the stagevolume, but you don't really have to be afraid of putting bass in the mix (so it's right in your cans) if he's got his own refrigerator cab and SVT-four-billion.

At least this seems to work for 'rock and roll' applications.

I also find that usually "it's too loud" or "the foo is too loud" means that either something's out of whack with the mix (or often, that increasingly elusive Chinese thing called tu-ning), or that the stagevolume from the foo is overpowering the mix. Sometimes multiple things. "It's too loud" (especially if your meters are reading at or below normal) simply means "it doesn't sound right" .. and sometimes, turning the whole mix up makes it not be "too loud".

Also, any technology (Aviom, for example) is only as effective as those who use it .. if nobody uses the thing, it's not very effective overall, even though from a technical standpoint it's a perfect solution.

Perhaps some day we'll actually have IEMs for everybody and Monitor Beach. I've got our system set up so that going to that is moderately simple, but it's not time yet (by the way, anybody have a 24- to 32-pair split they want to throw away for cheap? ).

[Ron J.]

We ran into a situation on Sunday where the backup singers could not hear themselves or the lead singer and acoustic guitar. I went up on stage to listen during practice and come to find out the bass guitar was drowning out everything.
The bass amp was moved so it was aiming directly at one of the mic for one. This brought it into the monitors and the FOH. Secondly it was booming back into an area where our baptismal tank is. We moved the bass amp over with the back of the amp about 5 inches from a wall.

The bass quieted down so much on stage and in the FOH we had to turn it up. The bass player noticed it so much that he said his bass sounded cleaner and he can hear himself better(this has been a problem for a while) I always thought it was just the bass player complaining. The bass player was always turning his bass amp up to hear himself. We come directly out of the bass amp with a built in DI, into the FOH.

All this to say sometimes it's just rearranging where the sound is hitting that will make all the difference in what you hear.

[EricE]

Originally Posted by cjlowe

We had someone decide to be helpful and mess with the house light controls in the foyer mid-service, because they felt the stage was "too bright for the screens". Not only did they abruptly turn off the stage fill (no subtle fades there), the controls override lighting booth control of those fixtures...

We have a lockout button in the sound booth for the foyer controls for that exact reason. Now remembering to engage it before every service is another story

Usually the refresher is when someone (typically a younger member) plays with the buttons during a service, causing everyone to remember "Oh, that's what lockout means"!

Just had to tell that story. And now back to your regular programming.

Oh, I've been there. And yes, another almost zombie thread but I can't help it if this particular forum is a little slow now, can I?

[TimCha]

Originally Posted by waynehoskins

I've found it really helps to be able to hear the mix you're changing. Headphones are usually good enough. And I agree, "I need more foo" usually means "I need to hear foo, but I can't because bar is covering it up".

Another common problem you'll run into is when two people are sharing a mix, they'll give you mutually exclusive instructions. "I need more piano." "I can't hear anything because the piano is so blankity-blanking loud." "Where'd my piano go?" The easy fix is to give one of them (the piano guy, in our case) one of the IEM sets when he plays. The longer-term solution is to tell them "okay, you're going to have to fight it out between yourselves and then tell me what you need".

In our wedges it's chiefly vocals and acoustic. In our in-ears it's a fuller mix.

This sounds so familiar to me as a sound person right now, I have piano and mandolin player on same monitor mix, The piano player wants more of a seperate mix to themselves. The mandolin player is comfortable and ok with the mix. What is the IEM set? I am not familiar with it.

NeverMind it just dawned on me after I made this post, "Inner Ear Monitor" Duh! LOL

[waynehoskins]

An update on our monitors and such, these four years later (and to save everyone from having to re-read all the history to get the context, it's not my original thread, I'm just a contributor on it). It might be applicable to your situations now.

We upgraded consoles once (or perhaps twice) since 2008. Somewhere around that time we upgraded to a GL3300/840 to do FOH and 6 mixes (4 wedges, 2 ears), and then earlier this year we upgraded and downsized to a GL4/832 to be able to do 2 more mixes, both of them ears, and made the other four mixes able to be either wedges or more ears. The eventual goal is to be predominantly all-ears in the near future.

Musically we fully completed the transition from acoustic-based to electric-based. We currently run 4 guitar amps in an isolation room. Much of the band is on ears now (today, that was 4 of the 7 mixes) and they love it. The rest we're working on switching over.

With ears come many benefits. There's isolation from the surrounding environment (and the monitor of the person next to you), so gone are the monitor volume battles between nearby mixes. The mix is generally personalized, or at least it can be in band-based situations where the number of people on stage is manageably small (in contrast with symphony-and-choir situations or 20-vocal praise-team situations). And with the isolation (both ways), you can put whatever the performer wants in his ears, and nobody else has to hear it, and he has a volume knob on his belt that he can turn down.

All that leads to greater comfort, which lends itself to better performance. Gone are the days of straining to hear yourself in the monitor wedge.

And with all the isolation, even though we're still running a couple of wedges every week, with the main PA off just about all you hear are the drumkit, the saxophone, the bass rig, and a little bit of monitor mud. (And on a side note, someone in our 9:30 service, in the congregation, brings a tambourine to play along. I don't understand it, don't like it, but okay. That thing is louder at FOH than the PA most weeks.)

[bobbycito]

i have my entire band on aviom worship leader recieves a wireless IEM that we mix and the singers share a single mix for all vocals 1-4 depending on the week. all that will go in the wedge is Piano for key and pitch reasons, Hi Hat for time (drums are in a iso booth, and a little bit of acoustic and a blend of the vocals and has work fine for everyone just have to know how the wedges sound and how your headphones sound so when adjsting you understand what your are doing.
i also say never turn a knob unless you are listeining to that Aux/mix has you may not reliaze how some things can interact.

[Frank DeWitt]

We have the entire Worship Team on IEMs with personal mixers. The benefits are amazing, and the cost has come way down. I think it is one of the most important things a church can do to improve there sound.

Frank