in-ear monitors, multiple keyboards and other sonic headaches

[billjv]

Hi all,

 

It's been quite a while since my last confession..err.. post. I just joined a new band after the past years of mainly writing/recording at home, and have been dusting off old equipment and also buying new additions. I'm using three diff. keyboards, and running in stereo to our in-ear monitor system mix.

 

I have spent hours of time and effort to create great patch setups for live performance, and balance them as well as I can according to how I know/feel it should blend with the other parts. But, when I go to rehearsal and start playing with the band things start to go wacky. Either I'm not cutting through sometimes or my horn patches are making everyone else's ears bleed. Strange things happen. Strange and horrible, terrible things!! They drove me into a fit of obscenities last rehearsal during a song. My bass player thought I'd lost my mind.

 

One issue I discovered that we are fixing on monday is that my signal is getting summed to mono (either L+R or LminusR at the monitor mix board). Not only that, but I think the monitor mix also may be doing some kind of phase trickery as a result, because at rather random times my keyboards will all of the sudden sound awash in reverb with very little main signal, although this is not how they are programmed, nor do they sound this way coming out of my keyboard mixer. (And with no reverb at the mix board).

 

I'm about to go improve on my end of the situation some by picking up a stereo compressor to add to my keyboard mix output to smooth things out a bit and help cut through the din. As mentioned as well, we're having a "tech" rehearsal on Monday to deal with some of this.

 

Having said all of this, can others provide some answers to how they best approach things? How can I get the most out of everyone's valuable time on Monday to really tweak out the sound?

 

Any and all comments are greatly appreciated!

 

Bill V.

[ITGITC]

billjv,

 

3 keyboards? Is there a keyboard mixer involved? If so, how do your synths sound from that mixer's headphones output? Good, I hope.

 

From there, how are you sending your stereo signal to the main mixer - through direct boxes perhaps?

 

Describe the signal flow from the main mixer to your in-ear monitors. How many separate mixes are available to the bandmembers? Do you have your own monitor mix?

 

How is your mix getting summed to mono?

 

Good luck.

 

Is There Gas In The Car?

[Botch.]

If there's a possibility that your signal is being summed to L-R, that's probably your problem right there. I realize it would be so nice to get stereo returns in your in-ears, but try sending just a mono feed from each keyboard to your mixer and see if that doesn't clear things right up for you.

 

When I got my Nord Electro a couple months back I hooked it up in stereo to my home studio mixers, and the sound was just glorious when I hit the Leslie switch. I bought extra patch cables, did all the rewiring, and told our new soundman that I would be running stereo to his FOH. He said "No can do", he runs mono although his PA has the ability to run stereo, said stereo just isn't worth it in small clubs (he went to college for sound reinforcement, so I go by what he says). I then realized that, with our somewhat limited in-ear system, I had it set up so one channel was the guitarist's mix, and one channel was mine; I was only getting a mono mix anyway so the extra setup wouldn't have benefitted me at all anyway.

 

Good luck, and let us know what happens during your "tech" rehearsal (those are good to have every so often!).

[Hammodel AV]

The issue of not hearing yourself against what the band plays (and not in stereo) is something that can be quite bothersome.

 

How I deal with this in my church band setting with in ears is as follows. All my keyboards go into my local stereo mixer as mono. I have an effects unit on everything I send out (stereo effects, aux 2 post fader). On the left channel main out I send a feed to a Behringer HA4600 headphone unit. The right main out goes to a compressor, and then to my input channel on the FOH mixer.

 

The Behringer headphone unit allows you to balance between a local mono (or stereo) send and a stereo or mono feed from your board. The local mono send appears in the left channel. But, as with most band monitors, the send from the board is also mono.

 

Because we found that a dry vocal and band send for in ears was bothersome, I have the mono send from the console feeding an effects unit and the stereo sends from the effects unit feeding the stereo inputs on the HA4600. This setup really livens up the sound, PLUS I can locally control how much of my keyboards (with effects, as on the mains) I hear. I think other headphone units can be used just like the Behringer for this purpose.

[JeffLearman]

Running mono in a small club is correct for everything except one thing: us keyboard players.

 

The reason they run mono is that too much of the crowd is way closer to one speaker than the other, so most attempts at stereo (panning mikes, etc) don't do much.

 

But many of our favorite keyboard stereo sounds, like Leslie and Rhodes stereo vibrato, sound kick-ass in a situation like that. I sure wish that more small clubs would get the clue.

 

But in most cases, it's a simple matter of economics. It's cheaper to get one big amp for each band than two smaller ones.

 

In that club where he runs mono but could run stereo, don't just take his word for it. Trust that he's right IN GENERAL, but not in specific. Challenge him to try stereo with your keyboards alone -- mono for everything else. Then watch his eyes pop out when you kick in that Leslie sim! Really, this tends to sound great even when the speaker setup is horrible for normal stereo -- in fact, I think it's almost ideal under those circumstances.

 

What I try to do is set up my monitor so that it sounds reasonably good to me and the band, yet one of the speakers serves the front of the audience too, and I send the opposite side to the mains. I don't sum stereo to mono for the FOH feed, because that usually causes more problems than it solves. Also, check out your patches (especially stereo pianos) to see which ones work well when the FOH only gets one side, and which side is best. For stereo pianos, right side is usually best, assuming you don't need to compete with the bass player.

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by Hammodel AV:

 

Because we found that a dry vocal and band send for in ears was bothersome, I have the mono send from the console feeding an effects unit and the stereo sends from the effects unit feeding the stereo inputs on the HA4600. This setup really livens up the sound, PLUS I can locally control how much of my keyboards (with effects, as on the mains) I hear. I think other headphone units can be used just like the Behringer for this purpose.

I use a mixer with inbuilt effects. I take a patch cord from the FX out to a spare channel and mix that into the monitor sends. You want to be sending this pre-fader so you don't have to mix in more effects to the main ouits or, if you are running your monitors post-fader you need to make sure this channel is the only source of effects in the output. Of course you absolutely want the effects send for this channel all the way off.

[billjv]

Hi all,

 

I want to thank everyone for their input and advice. We did our tech rehearsal last nite, and found all kinds of things which could have been part of the problem. First and foremost, they had me feeding the board with one active direct box for one channel, and a passive DI for the other, which right off the bat created a huge imbalance in the levels from each channel. On top of that, my signal was summed to mono, and given the improper levels coming in I'm sure that had horrible results.

 

We fixed everything, and I also bought a compressor to further even out my levels going to the board, which (although I'm careful not to use it as a substitute/crutch for good relative level setting on my boards) really, really helped. Not a lot of compression, just enough to tighten things up a bit.

 

I'm still not getting stereo in the in-ear monitors, but things sounded much better overall after tweaking things out last nite. And, I'm going to use a small pair of keyboard monitor speakers on-stage and keep very little keys in my in-ear mix. That really helps... I feel much more in-control of my sound that way, and can use the in-ears for vocals.

 

Thanks again for the help....

 

Bill