Client personal monitor mixers...

[brianjanthony]

I've often thought about getting a Hearback system (Behringer, etc). I always want to give clients the best experience. My problem is, I give them one knob currently. And it's always a battle to get them to just TURN THE DIAL to make their cans louder. Seriously. After 20 years of going "no, just turn that dial marked volume, the mix will be louder, I promise!", I dread giving them all 16 channels to screw with.

Are there any "simple" store bought solutions out there? Are 16 channels too much for non tech savvy clients? My clients aren't fools. But there are many that aren't tech savvy.

I thought of buying some extra headphone amps and controlling them from the control room... just giving each person their own mix. But I need to be able to check their mixes (I currently can check 3 mixes with my Dangerous Monitor ST). But I'd need to check 5 diff mixes and it gets... cumbersome.

[its2loud]

There's always this ...

https://www.presonus.com/products/EarMix-16M

[albee1952]

After having a long chat with a friend using the Behringer system(similar to Aviom and Hearback), I decided that most players are not willing to learn anything(heck, I couldn't even get producers to hit the damn talkback button). My solution is to feed 6 stereo headphone mixes from the session. I spent an afternoon with a band (gave them a free 4-hour block to be guinea pigs) and tweaked the headphone mixes and saved them as part of my template sessions. Now when a band comes in, I rarely spend more than 1 minute on headphone mixes(if you are consistent with input levels, headphone mixes will be in the ballpark for 90% of players). As for the producer and talkback, I gave up and automated the whole thing(thanks to Sound Radix Mute-o-matic plugin). I have a mic on my desk that feeds all the headphone mixes and mics on the ceiling in the drum and main rooms that feed headphones AND studio monitors. Everybody can chat but as soon as I roll transport, all the TB mics drop out


BTW, the 6 HP mixes are via an ART HeadAmp Pro. Capable of 6 separate mixes and I can plug in the front and listen to any mix I want.

[brianjanthony]

Thanks for the above man! It seems to be the direction I was moving in. I just spent the night fishing a few spare snakes thru walls to put an extra few headphone amps in my band room. I figure I can feed 4 or 5 stereo mixes to the amps easier than training folks to use a 16 channel Mixer (like you I cannot get folks to operate a simple volume pot). I'm going to
Check out your talkback Array because it beats mine by 10 miles. God I love the DUC. Thanks again!

[albee1952]

Take a few more things into consideration on this. Happy players perform better, so I shoot for headphone mixes that sound great to the players. When it comes to headphone mixes with sends, Its pretty standard to use Pre-fade sends(and I do), BUT(this is an important detail) if you(the engineer) wish to solo something while the band is recording a take, don't do it! Why? Because even though your players are hearing a mix done with pre-fade sends, any effects you have that are fed by POST-fade sends(like reverb or delay) will suddenly disappear in the HP mixes(because all the post-fade sends will be muted any time you hit a SOLO button). That simple change of HP mixes going "dry" can be distracting to players(all my HP mixes have some verb on drums, vocals, acoustic guitars). You have 2 options on how to deal with this:

#1-the simple option; just don't solo anything during a record pass
#2-make all your FX sends pre-fade(not how I like to work)
#3-give yourself a way to listen that doesn't affect anything else.

I used the first method for a few years(so I know it works) but I still wanted to listen in without messing up any HP mixes so I found a good work-around. I add a pre-fade send in the last send slot on every track and named it "SoloPath". Every send is set to -0 and muted. This send feeds a separate set of outputs. Whenever I want to "SOLO" anything, I Ctrl-click this send and listen one of a few ways; switch my monitors to that output, send that output to my own headphones, or feed it thru a second set of speakers. This allows me to listen to anything without affecting HP mixes for the players, but it also has an advantage over using SOLO buttons. It actually allows me to "solo" effect returns by themselves(try that with the SOLO button) BTW, I use a Presonus Central Station, but most any monitor/source controller should allow for this