Mixer or separate D I boxes?

[raffkey]

I have used a Eurorack Pro mixer in the past to route my 3 keyboards to our board via a stagebox. I had no issues with it, but our soundman wanted me to run six DI boxes instead, in which I've done. Of course this setup gives him more control over each individual keyboard, but I had no complaints about my mixing of my own keys in regards to balance, sound, etc..

 

My stage area now is a mess with all the cables and DI boxes all over the place.

 

I am also interested in purchasing the Radial Key Largo that would clean up my setup as well.

 

My question is: Is it better to use six DI's or one keyboard mixer setup? And if so, for whom is it better? And I guess, the begs the question: define 'better'....

 

thanks.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

I think you've identified the difference, and who it's better for: it's less for you to manage during the set (though it hasn't really been a big deal for you); it's making the sound guy's job easier, and your setup/teardown messier. Which isn't to say it's worse, it just depends how much you trust your sound guy!

 

I'll almost always submix my keyboards when we're doing our own sound, or just rolling up to a club -- I was in a band once that encouraged the use of vintage gear but played small clubs, and the drummer/leader was always going up to some underpaid teenage sound engineer and explaining to them how to mic a Leslie, and that we needed a fourth mic for the electric piano amp, and the synth needed a DI, etc. I didn't want to deal with that on my own, plus I trusted myself to balance my keys more than a rando who had never heard the band.

 

But when we play a show with our Sound Guy of Choice, I do whatever he wants, because I know he knows the music well enough, and I can trust him to mix properly, so balancing the synth leads with the bass pedals with the organ with the electric piano in the middle of a song is one less thing for me to be distracted by during the set. But that also means I'm bringing more gear. It's because I love him.

 

Also I love my gear. :wink:

[SteveUK]

Unless the sound guy knows your music inside out and can identify what sound is coming from what keyboard, I would sub-mix your keys and give him a stereo feed (if your PA is stereo) or a summed mono if not. If you have your patches well balanced volume wise (which your post suggests you do) he should only need a sub-mix

[CEB]

Who does sound production work for? Serious question. Does he work for you or do you both report to the same boss etc. personally I prefer a clean line mixer and I monitor my keyboard submix in my IEMs. I don"t always have the same production. I have trust issues. A DI can objectively be less noisy, whether it is enough to matter is another question. If you agree to 6 DIs push for production to provide a Radial JD6 or Pro D8 because 6 boxes is spaghetti bullshit.

 

Also depends on how you monitor your rig. On what bus. You can be making volume fader changes on your master controller and it does not matter because the front desk is doing who knows what.

 

I"ve done separate DI boxes and it has went well because we had a guy on the desk that knew us inside out and it was only a Kronos and a Fantom.

[wineandkeyz]

I run all my keyboards into a Mackie mixer and send the stereo outputs to a splitter snake that feeds the FOH and the digital board that feeds our IEMs. My band doesn't have a soundman, so we rely on the club's soundman wherever we play. Just about every one of them has been happy -- and even relieved -- that they can control the overall keyboard level with two sliders. And I prefer it because I control the relative levels of my keyboards and the splits and layers on each.

[Stokely]

Unless the sound guy knows your music inside out and can identify what sound is coming from what keyboard, I would sub-mix your keys and give him a stereo feed (if your PA is stereo) or a summed mono if not. If you have your patches well balanced volume wise (which your post suggests you do) he should only need a sub-mix

 

That's what I was going to post. Just seems like a major hassle for everyone involved to deal with 6 separate channels...drummer says "need a bit more keys" and now you have to turn up 6 sends (?!) Kind of nuts to me.

 

Edit: occurs to me that they'd probably subgroup within the main board, so some of the hassle would be mitigated...still

 

I get those guys don't like small submixers, for good reason sometimes.

 

Granted I'm a small-timer so maybe in bigger acts things are different.

 

In any event, I kind of do both now and use the Key Largo

 

[MathOfInsects]

I submix via Key Largo. I spend the most time before a gig choosing identical-sounding patches on each board and playing the same note alternating on each board, until they are indistinguishable volume-wise. Of course the two boards are used differently and I give the soundman a chance to hear each one, but I make that adjustment on my end. For the one gig I use a lot of samples on, those currently go through the same Key Largo, but I have them routed to a different output on the board for the day when I trust an engineer to do them independent justice.

[Mr. Nightime]

It seems to me that running 6 DI boxes just gives an unnecessary added complexity to the setup. Why does he want to run 6 channels for the keys for live environment?

 

I prefer to do my own mix, and send it to the FOH where there is only one slider for my setup. The sound person usually does not know where my sound originates from, even it he is watching me closely, because I use 2 different output sources from my SK2. The Hammond from the Leslie out, and the added sounds from the main out. So I could be playing the lower manual, and have the Hammond one moment, then the EP another, and the sound guy would not have a clue what I've done.

 

I can see only one reason to have isolated channels for each source - Multi-track recording. Live sound - not so much.

[Outkaster]

Multidirector in a rack.

[MathOfInsects]

The other issue is this: who really uses two or three keyboards AS two or three boards? Meaning, each keyboard we use these days is already lots of boards submixed into one--organ, EP, AP, Synth, horns, strings, pads, samples, loops. It's kind of a quaint concept that it would make a difference to have FOH control over the different slabs, as if they each did one single thing. FOH already gets a submix by virtue of the line out.

[RudyS]

I faced the same thing. We have a really professional sound guy, who wanted full control over my boards. But to be honest, even after we did quite some shows with him (say more than 30, and separate productions days), I still think he made mistakes in the balance. I went back to a mixer and have control over my own balance. Less to screw up by the sound guy..

 

So, even if your sound guy is really good, he has to know every little detail and should have enough time for everything to mix it well. Often these are not the case, and so I believe it's better to have control over your own balance.

[CowboyNQ]

Unless the sound guy knows your music inside out and can identify what sound is coming from what keyboard, I would sub-mix your keys and give him a stereo feed (if your PA is stereo) or a summed mono if not. If you have your patches well balanced volume wise (which your post suggests you do) he should only need a sub-mix

 

That's what I was going to post. Just seems like a major hassle for everyone involved to deal with 6 separate channels...

My thoughts precisely.

 

[J. Dan]

If I submix, I have the ability to balance and control my sounds appropriately based on my submix and make sure FOH is getting what they should.

 

Most of the time I'm just running my Kronos with a lower tier MIDI controller and all sounds come from the Kronos through a DI. I can't tell you how many times a sound guy has said something like "your top keyboard is louder than your bottom keyboard". Usually it ends up being that maybe one patch that I happened to be playing on the top was louder than it should be and so they assume the "top" keyboard is mixed too loud. They don't understand that regardless of when keyboard my hands happen to be touching, everything is often a complex combination of splits and layers, all within the same keyboard. So then I have to see if they can remember which song they noticed it on and make a mental note to check the balance of my patches on that one.

 

But the same applies whether it's one sound source or 3 sound sources, I want my rig to be balanced in terms of patch volumes ahead of time and make any necessary tweaks myself on the fly rather than leave it to a sound guy to try to figure out. In the example above, even if each board was a sound source, what would probably happen is that because of ONE louder patch on one song, he'd turn the top board down and leave it that way so that everything was off balance for the rest of the shows. Sound guys rarely turn keyboards up when they're too quiet, they more often just turn them down if they're too loud. There, of course, are always exceptions.

[BEMcCut]

Is the Soundman supplying the 6 direct boxes? Is he connecting them or does he expect you to do that? Personally I wouldn't go out and buy direct boxes or do the extra setup and teardown. You already have a good working setup. I would respectfully tell him that I would prefer do it that way.

[raffkey]

Thanks everyone for your replies..

 

A little more background info, although I think I've made up my mind already, thanks to everyone's comments.

 

The setting I'm now in is a church, so there is no set up and tear down, which is nice, but I still don't enjoy looking at stacks of DI boxes all around my feet

 

I'm coming from a bar band background where I used my own mixers or amps for years, (50+ years, but who's counting), with no complaints.

 

The sound man we currently have is a college student (volunteer of course), who says he has background experience in sound mixing, so I let it go at that. Our previous sound man, who runs his own production rental company, was actually the one who said he needed control over all keyboards separately, and persuaded me to go the route I'm on.

 

Another issue I have with this current set up is my monitor mix (including some vocals, some drums, etc.) is constantly changing and mid-song. My keys are there, then they're gone. I have control over that through my I pad, but needless to say, when I playing 4 or 5 songs one after another, it's a little difficult to change up the mix.

 

So ya, I think I'll go the mixer or Key Largo route and have a little more control over things. Thank you again, everyone.

 

[Outkaster]

I run three boards all the time and carry an engineer as part of the band. Never had a problem with it and it's the way to go.

[mate stubb]

I run three boards all the time and carry an engineer as part of the band. Never had a problem with it and it's the way to go.

 

How do you stop him from complaining when you dolly him or throw him in the gear truck?

[ChrisDespo]

 

 

Duct tape

[Losendoskeys]

I use the Samson SM10 10 channel mixer to mix my own vocals and six synths (two mono three stereo) and a Radial ProD8.

8 channels to the FOH desk.

The sound man knows the music so it all works, but the SM10 gives me the option to go 2 channels if need be.

Excellent mixer.

[Delaware Dave]

Insane, I essentially have 4 mono outs; 1 for the Gemini module organ, 1 for the Gemini module non-organ, 1 from my PC3 and one from my GEM Equinox. All go to the mixer. At the mixer level I ensure each line in is volume balanced and EQ'd. When i switch between sounds or between keyboards the sound levels are relatively the same. One line from the mixer (XLR) goes to my monitor and one line from my mixer goes to FOH (XLR). The soundman only needs to make one level adjustment during soundcheck to balance out all of the instruments. At that point, from a keys perspective, nothing really needs to be touched other than leads where he may pull me up in the mix. that requires one slider on his part; when the lead is done, he puts me back to where it was originally set. I can't imagine him getting 4 sliders to adjust and to determine which one the sound is actually coming from.

[Mr. Nightime]

There have been too many times where the sound guy has messed up my sound, so I will make the least amount of work for him as possible.

 

I modified my set up as far as monitoring so that I can have control over what I hear. Relying on a sound man for my sound just does not work for me, even when they are very experienced.

 

I run 2 boards, with 3 outputs. The MM8 I run Mono. The SK2 I use a Hammond cable to come out of the Leslie out to my Neo Vent Mono, and out of the main out, Mono, for the extra sounds.

 

I have volume pedals connected to both boards so that I can make any on-the-fly level adjustments at any time, even when both hands are busy.

 

I'm currently using a Soundcraft Notepad for my mixer. After 20 years, I retired my Mackie 1202 VLZ until I can afford to replace it.

 

I run out of the left output of the Soundcraft to one channel of my QSC K10, and send the right channel to FOH.

 

Then I get a monitor feed going to the other channel of the QSC. Because I have a huge issue with being able to hear my voice, I have changed that set up as well. I have a strong voice, and use A Sennheiser e835 mike that is 10 dB hotter that an SM58. But I can have a hard time hearing myself, if it's set where I need it, the others indicate it's blasting. So I've incorporated my Mackie SRM150 by going from my mike directly to the monitor, then to the FOH from the monitor out.

 

The QSC and the SRM150 sit to my left like a small side fill. That way I can hear myself as needed without overriding the FOH level.

 

raffkey indicated that he is dealing with a church setting. I play in church when I can. If I have my kit, I will again run a mix to FOH. Since we have gone to an amp-less setup, We have a way to mix our own monitors (my case, Shure headphones. Hearing aids prevent IEM). I HAVE to have control over what I hear, as there have been too many times where the keys have disappeared from my mix, with the sound guy saying they did nothing to cause it.

 

So far, every sound guy I've worked with appreciates just having one slider to deal with for the keys.

 

 

[Stokely]

The other issue is this: who really uses two or three keyboards AS two or three boards? Meaning, each keyboard we use these days is already lots of boards submixed into one--organ, EP, AP, Synth, horns, strings, pads, samples, loops. It's kind of a quaint concept that it would make a difference to have FOH control over the different slabs, as if they each did one single thing. FOH already gets a submix by virtue of the line out.

 

That's a really good point. In "olden times", an instrument pretty much did one thing (piano, organ, rhodes) though of course synths from the start can change very drastically from song to song. I'm sure some people still gig like that, but most of us "little guys" play keyboards with tons of different sounds. Heck I use two and play strings from one, piano from the other on one song...this can switch around for another song (not often, but it's known to happen!).

 

Years ago our bass player (who runs sound) got all uptite about everyone's sounds and patches and wanted to tune the PA. Great idea, but taken too far. He says "play your organ sound"...I'm like "which one"? Then comes the stupid part...he listens to my basic 8880000 or so sound and says "bring up 800 Hz in your EQ for that patch" or some stupid shit. Good thing I never adjust drawbars or any other thing that changes the sound from song to song....glad that guy is gone

[Mr. Nightime]

The other issue is this: who really uses two or three keyboards AS two or three boards? Meaning, each keyboard we use these days is already lots of boards submixed into one--organ, EP, AP, Synth, horns, strings, pads, samples, loops. It's kind of a quaint concept that it would make a difference to have FOH control over the different slabs, as if they each did one single thing. FOH already gets a submix by virtue of the line out.

 

That's a really good point. In "olden times", an instrument pretty much did one thing (piano, organ, rhodes) though of course synths from the start can change very drastically from song to song. I'm sure some people still gig like that, but most of us "little guys" play keyboards with tons of different sounds. Heck I use two and play strings from one, piano from the other on one song...this can switch around for another song (not often, but it's known to happen!).

 

Years ago our bass player (who runs sound) got all uptite about everyone's sounds and patches and wanted to tune the PA. Great idea, but taken too far. He says "play your organ sound"...I'm like "which one"? Then comes the stupid part...he listens to my basic 8880000 or so sound and says "bring up 800 Hz in your EQ for that patch" or some stupid shit. Good thing I never adjust drawbars or any other thing that changes the sound from song to song....glad that guy is gone

 

And unless the sound man knows what board is producing what sound, when, he has no way to easily determine what fader to ride.