X32 advice please...

[sclg]

We've only had the X32 at our (volunteer-run) for a few months so I'm still learning!

 

Last show was running 8 radio mics and usually only 2 or 3 were up at a time so I just controlled and mixed on the channel faders.

This time, there are 14 and sometimes they're soloists and sometimes ensemble (Aspects of Love). I want to avoid trying to move 10 faders at the same time so looking to have certain groups of channels controlled by one fader.

 

I don't think I can do it with a DCA as that requires the channel faders as well and (I think) I need them for controlling when people are soloing.

I presume I could route the relevant channels (pre fade) to another bus, route that to the main out and use the bus fader.

I'm sure lots of you do this all the time so is there a better way I've missed - Groups, Matrix, etc??

 

Thanks

[Jevans]

DCAs (or VCAs or CGs or whatever) are the typical way of doing this: routing to a bus pre fade such that you can bring them up either on a single channel or the whole lot at once would certainly work and is quite clever, but what happens when the director/MD asks for a chorus number with only 12 of them, with 2 offstage? Suddenly your bus has people on it who are offstage talking, or getting changed, or worse! :) Then you'd need to revert to the individual channels anyway. There's also another problem - unless you strap your reverbs etc. right across the LR bus as an insert it'll muck up any post fader aux send effects you have applied to the channels, as they won't get sent to when using the pre fade bus.

 

The pro way of mixing a musical that gets round these problems is to only use the DCA faders during the show, and to keep the channel faders up at unity. Then you have a set of scenes programmed into the desk that change what the DCAs are for each scene, and mute any channels that aren't in the scene. Frequently these DCAs will only have a single person assigned to them, but then equally you can assign whole groups of people at once to them - and then you can change what they are mid scene if you need to. For instance - a couple of weeks ago I mixed a production of "Passion" on an X32. The first scene is a duet, with characters Giorgio and Clara. The first scene recall therefore mutes all the mic channels except the ones with G and C on, and then assigns those channels to DCA 1 and 2 (and also sets the names of the DCA to G and C so you can see what you're doing). Then you can mix those two faders individually.

 

A couple of scenes later there's another bit with the two of them, but this time there's a chorus of Soldiers as well. The scene recall here therefore mutes all mic channels except G, C, and the 4 soldiers individual mics. G and C get assigned to DCA 1 and 2 as before, but all of the soldiers get assigned to DCA 3. This way you get the best of both worlds: you can individually mix the leads as required, but also can bring in a group of chorus on a single fader.

 

That's how it's done properly. If you're thinking this sounds like a lot of programming work that would be easy to make a mistake in: you're right. It's a lot of programming work to do beforehand (definitely something you want to try well before the show to get used to it) and if you make a mistake (usually getting the channel mutes wrong) it's catastrophic, so you've got to check it very carefully. One thing you must also do is prevent the scene recall system from recalling anything you don't want it to affect - you need to use the "scope" features to ensure that the scenes only affect the DCA assigns and the channel mutes. I have to confess that we skipped the built in automation of the X32 when doing this to make it easier and we had a computer based system doing the scene recalls - similar to the CH Sound Design "Palladium" system.

 

There's only a couple of videos online of people doing this method of mixing during the show (copyright means they shouldn't really be there!), one being here:

. Ignore the audio quality - turn YouTube annotations on so you can see what fader does what and watch for when the mixer hits a scene recall, and it all changes!

[Wilflet]

I'd avoid any use of prefade- if you have one enthusiastic voice in the chorus you'll have lost the ability to balance them with the others in the chorus.

 

I would go for the chorus on a VCA/DCA with their faders already up and raise the DCA fader as needed. That way you have the channel faders to balance the voices within the chorus and can ride them as a group whilst using the soloists on their channel faders (optional extra use a second DCA for soloists to ride them over the chorus together)

 

Where this becomes more complicated is if the soloists are different in each song- in that case I'd set a scene for each song and use recall scope to make sure that (after the initial scene which has all the settings for the mics) only VCA assignment is recalled- so that at all times the chorus are on your chorus dca and the soloists on their own. I'll leave an explanation of how to do that to someone else as im only an occasional x32 user, mainly pro2/pro6, and I think theres just enough words not quite the same and buttons moved that my explanation without one in front of me would only confuse.

 

 

 

 

[sclg]

Great advice guys - thanks.

[justinethomson]

I'd agree with the DCA suggestions above. Storing scenes and snippets is a really useful thing to implement for theatre and eases up the mixing process during the show so you aren't looking at faders you don't need!

[d_korman]

I'd agree with the DCA suggestions above. Storing scenes and snippets is a really useful thing to implement for theatre and eases up the mixing process during the show so you aren't looking at faders you don't need!

 

Just make sure that the cue that changes the DCA assignments also pulls the channel fader of those channels that you are removing from the DCA group down to zero, or mutes those channels, otherwise they will immediately be added to the mix!

[sclg]

Just make sure that the cue that changes the DCA assignments also pulls the channel fader of those channels that you are removing from the DCA group down to zero, or mutes those channels, otherwise they will immediately be added to the mix!

Yep - discovered that one in the first rehearsal ;)

 

Steve

[d_korman]

Just make sure that the cue that changes the DCA assignments also pulls the channel fader of those channels that you are removing from the DCA group down to zero, or mutes those channels, otherwise they will immediately be added to the mix!

Yep - discovered that one in the first rehearsal ;)

 

Steve

 

Hopefully no-one was saying or doing anything embarrassing at the time :unsure: