Changing In-Ear Mix

[Bradders]

Hi BR faithful.

 

This is recently for a band where I use a Yamaha LS9-16 sidestage and multitask FOH and Monitor duties.

 

It's a 10-12 piece function/showband. With 3-4 singers.

 

Everyone is on wedges except the bass player who has his own expensive moulds and thus receives an in-ear mix.

 

He insists every time I am at the desk his mix changes, implying that every time I adjust FOH it affects his mix. It sounded like I may have somehow mis-patched him onto a post-fade mix. However, after checking the console file, and consulting Wayne @ Yamaha UK, conclude that this was not the case.

 

Which leads me to this point, what could be causing this.

 

His in-ear mix is a fairly generic mix of the whole band, it also includes an amount of the vocalists in it. It definitely is pre-fader, however being on a small board the inputs will all be post eq/dynamics.

 

Any suggestions would be really appreciated.

 

Brad

[jamessmith2k]

Ask him how it changes - may lead to some clues as to where it may be coming from or if he thinks its changing in a way you cant or have not changed you can tell him/show him this.

[cedd]

Or what he's hearing is bleed from the main PA into other mics on stage (that he's getting pre-fade in his ears). Changes you make to the house mix will be heard in these mics. I can't imagine the differences being noticeable though - the relative level of bleed Vs the close mic sound will be tiny.

 

Route his aux to the stereo recorder and record it to memory stick sometime, maybe with the main mix going to the other channel. Take note of what you adjust at various points in the set (and maybe what time he complains) and then go back and take a listen.

Remembering of course that any tweaks made to gain will have an effect, as will EQ changes depending on where on the LS9 the pre fade auxes leave the channel.

 

I guess a lot depends on how much you trust him. There are some performers who, if they say "this doesn't sound right" or "can you just..." I'll jump to help and will trust what they're saying. Others however, seem to just want chance to sound knowledgeable and the only way they can go about this is to criticise. Depending on which of these two he is, would have a big effect on how much time I'd spend losing sleep over it!

[Bobbsy]

Are you using the Recall Safe function on his mix and is it set up properly?

 

Recall Safe is probably the safest way (pun intended) to handle monitor mixes.

[Bradders]

Hi James

Ask him how it changes - may lead to some clues as to where it may be coming from or if he thinks its changing in a way you cant or have not changed you can tell him/show him this.

 

 

I have tried, however it usually ends with a "go and read the manual" or "Something's wrong, just fix it" response. Thus I am stabbing in the dark a little on this one, especially after being asked whether I "just don't care". I do care, so I am gathering every piece of info possible to make sure I am not in the wrong here.

 

Thanks for your contribution

 

B

 

 

 

 

Hi Cedd,

Or what he's hearing is bleed from the main PA into other mics on stage (that he's getting pre-fade in his ears). Changes you make to the house mix will be heard in these mics. I can't imagine the differences being noticeable though - the relative level of bleed Vs the close mic sound will be tiny.

 

Route his aux to the stereo recorder and record it to memory stick sometime, maybe with the main mix going to the other channel. Take note of what you adjust at various points in the set (and maybe what time he complains) and then go back and take a listen.

Remembering of course that any tweaks made to gain will have an effect, as will EQ changes depending on where on the LS9 the pre fade auxes leave the channel.

 

I guess a lot depends on how much you trust him. There are some performers who, if they say "this doesn't sound right" or "can you just..." I'll jump to help and will trust what they're saying. Others however, seem to just want chance to sound knowledgeable and the only way they can go about this is to criticise. Depending on which of these two he is, would have a big effect on how much time I'd spend losing sleep over it!

 

Thats a great idea about recording both mixes. I also believe the bleed in through the vocal channels have a lot to be responsible. The singers are on wireless microphones and roam a lot, with the main singer jumping down onto the dancefloor quite often.

 

I rarely need to adjust gain levels, so I don't think thats an issue, however I do adjust my compression levels frequently. So possibly there in lies some of the problem.

 

Thanks

 

B

 

 

[Solstace]

Assuming no routing issues, when this happens to muso's I'm mixing (usually from FOH) on wedges or IEM's, it tends to be due to my having changed one of the following culprits, in rough order of potential disruption:

• Channel gain (rare mid-gig - and if I do need to do it, I tend to adjust the channels' aux feeds down to compensate as I change the incoming gain).
  
• EQ (amazing how much this can affect perceived volume of a channel that was previously "right" in a monitor mix. Are your aux feeds coming out pre or post EQ?)
  
• Compression (playing with dynamics of a singer can really play havoc with monitoring if they're not used to it. Some of my singers ask for compression to be included in their mixes so they know what's going out front, but most prefer their channels without, so they can feel their own dynamics).
  
• Reverb
  
• Delay/other FX
  
• Spill into mics or musicians' ears from FOH
  

 

Hope that helps!

[GR1]

As well as following the technical advice offered here make sure you keep the bass player involved. It shows that you really are caring - make sure he understands that you need his input because the solution may be quite subjective. Chat to him with other members of the band around and he might be more reasonable in how he talks to you because the examples you have given earlier don't show you any respect at all and you are not a slave, you are entitiled to be spoken to with respect. A lot of sound engineering is personal skills and not technical - let him know what you are doing to fix the situation and if he is really interested in a solution he will want to help you.

[kerry davies]

I have a suspicion from your posts this is not a technical problem, he just doesn't like you on the board. Nothing wrong with that but if the band has no problem it is an individual problem and working together with him on an individual solution is the only way out of it.

 

Whether that solution is technical or psychological is the first thing to discover and save a lot of hassle and possibly wasted work. It will definitely renew your confidence and eliminate one area of conflict. Half the battle is confidence, your own and his in you. Be pro-active rather than reactive and you may find a simple solution.

Good luck, either way.

[Bradders]

Thanks for all the good advice.

[S&L]

only tangentially related to the above posts but I find that it takes a while for a band to get used to and trust an engineer and to trust him/her - often in the meantime the engineer gets blamed for issues not of their making or in their control and often caused by the finger pointing musician. I find that as trust builds and communication gets better then the problems either get solved or more frequently evaporate. if there is no engineer the point at each other, once there is an engineer they point at him/her. add into that the changes in stage, changes in PA gear, changes in musician's gear and it makes for difficulties. sometimes I think 35% of this job is communication, 35% is problem solving and 35% is mixing. I always step forward at the end of sound check once people are supposedly happy with monitor mixes etc and as them how it sounds on stage and if they are happy. that gets much more difficult with an 8 or 10 piece band but as you continue to gig with them you get to read the body language and faces and work out who isn't happy and who to talk to and sort first.

it's also worth bearing in mind that in any given room with any given band it is generally easier to get a decent sound out front than to keep those on stage happy.

[Matt Riley]

On an LS9-16, an in-desk 'virtual Y-split' - (patching the headamps to both channels 1-16 for normal mixing use and 17-32 for the bass player's special mix) could possibly be used to great effect in this situation to do a completely isolated mix for the bass player from layer 2 which doesn't share anything bar the head amp with everyone else's stuff.

 

Having said that it just sounds like your bass player is behaving a bit like a muppet - keep on smiling, saying nice things and being polite and eventually he'll stop trying to make you look small.

[Tivoli Phil]

Personally when people start saying things like that to me I tell them things like "I'll put your mix in DFA mode for you", or "No worries, I must have been running it through the multiband suppressor". 9 times out of 10 they leave happy and I get to grin in the knowledge they have no idea what these things mean.

 

*I should add this is a rare event, I just take a lot of offence to people who wish simply to antagonize, which this sounds like it may be

[Bradders]

OK so as a followup to my OP. I explained to the miso in question how I'd brought the desk into my front room, and using the patch from the show he complained about tested everything for an hour, and couldn't make it "change".

 

I also emailed Yamaha and they gave the patch the once over, again fine.

 

But thanks to your advice I approached him in a pro-active way, explained I would be putting him on a pre EQ mix from now. Long story short, the end of the show he's wanting to be my best buddy again.

 

And they all lived happilly ever after........

 

Thanks BR faithful, and merry xmas one and all, especially Tiny Tim.

[paulears]

Some people need their feelings massaged - and that cures everything. I had to play in the pit a couple of shows ago to cover an emergency, and in one song the click vanished and was replaced with BVs. The others said it does that every night at that point. None had complained. Turned out to be a fault on the track - and the op wasn't aware, the musos didn't moan, so it wasn't even mentioned - but some people would have been very picky.

[TimmyP1955]

It may be that having IEMs has made him painfully aware of how inconsistent singers are, and how much players mess with their instrument levels over the course of a show. Or he may be hearing your changes, in which case try switching the mixes to pre-EQ instead of pre-fader.