Listen Mic Solution Needed

[paulrgmusic]

Hi everyone

I run a studio at the school I teach at. We use PT LE8 with an 002R and a Pre-Sonus Monitor Station for TalkBack and HP amp outputs. We have a Control Room and a separate Live Room next door connected by a stage box housing 8 XLR and 4 jack connections.

This all works really well but I would like to be able to hear the 'talent' in the live room speak back to me a bit more easily. I can do this by setting a mic up in the live room for this purpose but I find it a real flow killer having to mute and unmute or toggle Record Arm every time they want to say something. Is this really the purpose of the 'I' button in HD systems?

Does anyone know of a method/plugin that will help? I found a Massey plugin that seemed to mute the track it was on when the Transport was engaged but it was Mac only. I'm on XP. I've read things about putting sine waves on tracks and using key inputs on expander gates with flipped phase but that sounds like a physics assignment that I would never get to work (although if I could, I could set up a template with it already up and ready with PT8).

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Paul

[albee1952]

There are a few ways to solve your problem. You could use a mic with heavy compression on it and feed it to a powered speaker in the control room or use it on an AUX input(or an audio input for the Phil Collins sound from the '80's). You could put up a mic and feed it to an AUX input(for monitoring) and insert a compressor that is keyed from an AUX send(send all the drums to that AUX and when the drummer plays, the mic gets turned down-aka "ducking"). Think about this a bit and you may come up with even better solutions than these.

[Third Eye Studios]

I'll set-up a 58 in the room for talkback. If you can, try to use a switched 58 and get people to turn it on when they need to talk (takes some training).

I do make frequent use of the “I” button, as I'm mostly in HD these days. I'll usually record the talkback mic too, to maybe use as a trashy drum room mic in the mix.

I also have a pzm mic set-up in the live room that I'll send only through the Presonus central station in the control room. With this I can hear what's going on in the live room when a Pro Tools session is not open.

[paulrgmusic]

Hi

An update: I persisted with the gate solution and, amazingly, got it to work perfectly. This way, whenever the transport is playing, the mic is off (although, technically, it is on twice but each with opposite polarity and therefore cancelling each other out). As soon as the transport is inactive I can hear what's going on again.

Cheers for your suggestions.
Paul