Personal Monitor System from HD

[Siegfried Meier]

Ok, so I'd like to implement something in our tracking room where I set up 4 Mackie 1202VLZ mixers, like Sunset Sound has done, in order to have each performer dial in their own personal mix. I've been trying to figure out the most effective way to wire and split off signals to each mixer from a Digi 192. Has anyone done this before? I'd love to hear some thoughts and tips.

Thanks,
Sig

[emluper]

You'd need some kind of a splitter system to get the inputs into all of the Mackie mixers. In the end it would probably be cheaper and more flexible to add either an Aviom system or a Hear Technologies system. A 12 input 4 way splitter is not going to be cheap. Even individual Whirlwind 1x2 splitters are $100. Just using 12 of those would put you about $200 shy of the Hear system and would only get you a two way split. Check with your local guy, or Brad Lyons here on the DUC. He works for Sweetwater, I'm sure he would be more than happy to hook you up.

Erik

[odeu87]

with 1 192 your probably using analog out 1-2 as your control room mix .that leaves you analog outputs 3-8 to feed to your mixers 2 192's would give you 14 outputs to your mixers . you could use pairs of outputs as 3 stereo mixes sent to your mixers.i use the hearback system and record at 44.1 or 48 k so i go adat light pipe to hearback then analog outputs to a furman which has 6 analog inputs. i then feed furman into hearback line input .that gives me 4 stereo mixes plus 4 mono mixes plus a stereo fx input. just be sure to set all your sends to pre-fader that are assigned to your mixers .so that if you mute solo are adjust your levels .what you send to mixer doesn't change for musicians

[odeu87]

if his mixers have a pre fader direct out on each channel he could just daisy chain from one to the next

[O.G. Killa]

it's actually pretty easy. First decide how many "sends" you want total and if you want them to be stereo or mono. So for example if you usually only do rock music... you might want drums, bass, guitarist 1, guitarist 2 and vocalist. So that would be 5 stems/cue sends/etc... If you want them in stereo, that would be 10.

In each tracking room/iso... run snakes to the patch panels for your headphone sends. 5 mono lines, or you could do 5 balanced line and split it into 2 mono at the mixer, or you could run 10 mono lines, etc...

AS all the tie lines make it into the control room, tie and solder them together. All the "send 1" get soldered together, and so on. then connect a single cable onto that and connect it to your patchbay. You could make a junction box for each "send" if you want. If so, you'd have all five send 1's plug into a box, inside the box you solder all the contacts together and then connect that to one output jack and send that into your patchbay...

In your patchbay you could/would normal certain outputs of protools to the main connection for each send. So for example output if you were using all mono sends... output 3 might be drums (cue 1), output 4 would be bass (cue 2), 5 and 6 would be for the guitarists (cue 3 and 4) and 7 would be for the vocalist (cue 5). Inside protools, you would insert a send across all the drums to output 3, a send on the bass to output 4, guitar one to output 5, gtr 2 to output 6 and vocal to output 7. Set each send to "PRE" fader so that your muting, solo'ing and level changes doesn't effect what they hear in their headphones. And you are done.

Splitting the signal like this will make the output to each mixer for each cue send lower...but since the mackie has it's own mic and line preamps plus a fader plus a headphone amp... the lose in level is easily adjusted for. The headphones might be a hair noiser too, but when playing nobody will even notice.

[BradLyons]

There are various ways to do this---but I don't recommend the mixer route for a few reasons. One, it's too easy for the non-engineer type to mess things up! Really all they need is the ability to turn something up or down. The problem with having traditional mixers is that you need to wire the system to have multiple output feeds. There are matrix mixers that allow one to control the EQ and Aux's but really, why? Give them the ability to adjust the volume up or down to their liking and that's all that they need. There is a VERY affordable way to do this that's also really, really simple!

Look at the HEAR TECHNOLOGIES bundle called the HEARBACK 4 PACK. This is a HUB with (8) inputs and connects to personal level mixers via CAT5 cable, of which (4) mixers are included with this. Street price is $1499 and simple to configure. Here's how it works.....

Connect the ADAT OPTICAL OUTPUT of the 192I/O into the input of this Hearback Hub, which opens up another 8-channels of audio output keeping you from having to spend money on 8-channels of D/A just to interface a routing/matrix/patching system. Then to each user or room, run a CAT5 cable where one of these mixers will be ready and waiting to receive power and audio signal via that CAT5 cable. Create a Stereo Bus of your main mix, route that to ADAT 7 & 8. OR dedicate that mix to your drums. This is your overall stereo mix that each person can cue up, listen to, and have a general mix to use. Then create Aux outputs in Pro Tools assigned to ADAT 1-6, make these PRE-FADER on each channel and set them to unity gain (the Aux on each channel). Dedicate say....the following:

AUX 1 = BASS GUITAR
AUX 2 = LEAD VOCAL
AUX 3 = GUITARS
AUX 4 = KEYS
AUX 5 = KICK
AUX 6 = SNARE

or if you have the main mix actually a drum mix....then use those for whatever else you want it to be.

Basically, let's say AUX1 is the bass guitar---you only adjust that Aux feed on the BASS TRACK, nothing else...AUX2 the Lead Vocal, only turn that up on the lead vocal, and so on.

It's a lot more simple than I'm making it sound to be, but it's also really REALLY affordable to do this as well. And should you want to have (8) points of contact (users), add another (4) mixer units and CAT5 cable....easy as pie.

[emluper]

If O.G. is right about the load issue (and he probably is) then this would be your best bet. A bunch of work for you but definitely your most inexpensive option.

[spiritG]

Splitters can frequently be done without when multing a high impedence line level out like the 192 provides, when feeding into most modern line level inputs. Splitters are more needed with microphones where the low source impedence will be more affected by the chaning load of connecting to multiple desinations simultaneously. There are always potential ground problems, but in a studio situation these may not occur, and in a worse case scenario preumably you can take 5 minutes to substitute a normal mix to a player or two if their personal mixer is causing problems. If there are ground problems it is possible they might be remedied by having all the Mackies on the same electrical circuit with the same power cable length to power source. Otherwise iso transformers of some sort could be enlisted if the system has chronic problems. Whilwind splitters are durable and medium high quality but cheaper splitters like Alesis are considerably less expensive and might possibly be used in THIS application without anybody noticing a difference in their Mackie cue mixes. (Different story for microphone splitting or critical recording path usage).

One of the advantages of a digital Aviom or a Hearback type system is the cabling is less bulky- easier to move around, less to get in the way.

To have analogue distribution from the 192 you either need a seperate snake to each mixer(sort of a star configuration), or to daisy chain from one to another. Reliable "y cords" could be used, though a good soldered and strain relieved mult might be less prone to occasional bad adaptor cables.

One of the main advantages of using inexpensive small analogue mixers for personal cue mixes is to allow individual musicians to use the efx send to dial in how much monitor reverb they want to hear on their own track- especially vocalists. But the 1202 does not appear to have built in efx like some other mackies, alesis, behingers. The alesis mixers are cheaper, but for this application the Mackie mic pres aren't needed so the cheaper alesis might work fairly well. Not a bad idea to have a spare mix to swap out in case of failure.

On one hand providing personal mixers should make less work for the engineer. But on the other hand the engineer has to figure out what arrangement of submixes is going to make the most performers happy which might be more work than just dialing up another mix because you will be guessing what balances each musician has when somebody asks for more hihat in your submix for example- you might then wind up with too much for somebody else etc. etc. etc.

Another approach would be to provide a basic stereo mix to each personal mixer, plus a mono feed of each performer so that the performer basically can adjust their own "more me" mix- also more someone else- like if the bass player wants to hear more kick drum (if there are enough outputs on your 192 you might want Kick, Snare and drums outputs, the later stereo if possible).Expanding the 192 with the D/A option, or adding an ebay 888/24 or other legacy interface for additional outputs might be worth considering. Also feeding 192's digital outs to a D/A convertor- even an old ADAT or?- could provide more feeds for this non-critical audio path- though the more of a hodge podge it is the more you have to think about it when assigning outputs.

Also, you relinquish some or all of the control an engineer can have over performance i.e. a performer playing without bite might dig into their part more if their level is lowered to their headphones or a singer might sing more in pitch if the keys are louder in their phones than drums, or might sing more in rhythm with more drums etc. Seasoned studio musicians will likely mix for their own best performance, but others may not have had as much experience with the relation of headphone mix to performance.

[GlennR01]

Might I suggest the Furman headphone monitoring system. Very reasonably priced, easy to hook up, sounds really good, hassle free. Uses cat 5 wire.

http://www.furmansound.com/product.php?div=01&id=HDS-6

[Siegfried Meier]

Thanks for all the great replies guys!

So, Brad, this Hearback thing intrigues me now even though I was totally not interested in it before. Question, how long can the ADAT connection run? They have those extenders, but I need 100' max, will ADAT do that for me?

And you can't run this wirelessly in any way...can you? Just a thought...

Thanks!
Sig

EDIT - ughhhh, never mind about the ADAT thing, I don't know what I was thinking - I'd need like a 1 foot cable from my 192 to the hub, so who cares!