Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

K

kristianjohnsen

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Mar 13, 2011
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Lillehammer, Norway
www.partyfabrikken.no
Hi all.

When letting the band hear the wireless mics in their foldback, just using the typical method of tapping all the wireless channels into whatever wedges/ears via AUXes often leaves the solos at a good Level, but makes the choruses where everybody chimes in too powerful.

I sometimes route the AUXes that feed the monitors via matrices so that I can add inn audio groups in order to benefit from the group compression that the audience is hearing.

It generally seems to makes the musicians happy, but it takes some time to set up, and it burns a lot of matrices. Also, it makes it impossible to remove one or a few singing performers from the band foldback.

How do other people out there solve this?
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

What desk are you using?

You could route the signals you're worried about to a group, compress the group and route that into a channel and send via aux that way.
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

As Lee says, it depends what desk you're using, but for musicals I always have a main vocal group and a chorus group for use FOH, which I then take back into a channel and out to the various monitor sends.

It does take a bit of time to set-up, but at least then you only have the wireless channels that should be active in that particular scene going to the monitors, plus they're EQed and generally a bit more sorted! It also means you can quickly reduce/increase the gain of that whole group going to the monitors, without having to mess with the aux sends of every individual wireless channel.
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

It would also be a good idea to double up on your groups: ((if stereo) Groups 1 and 2 for FOH, Groups 3 and 4 for the monitor feed returned to a pair of channels to be sent via aux).

This way, you can raise and lower groups 1 and 2 for FOH without affecting the monitor feed, and raise groups 3 and 4 for the monitors without affecting FOH.

Also be aware that if you have the channels (pre-groups) assigned to a VCA, this will also affect the monitor send. This can be useful in a lot of cases, but it might also cause some headaches. Just a FYI.
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

Like Daniel, I also always give the musicians (and others) a copy of the complete vocal mix going to the audience. That seems to work best and for good reasons. I usually have an "Ensemble/Choir" stereo channel and a "Lead Vocal" mono channel that I fold down, post fader, to one stereo channel to be fed to the band's monitor system (I use MyMix) together with vocal reverb and delay in stereo, also post fader.

That gives them a complete stereo mix of all vocals, lead vocals centered, ensemble panned out and everything in the right levels at all times, because it's post fader. I pan the ensemble hard on the ensemble bus and then bring them in a little going to FOH with respect to the whole mono/stereo FOH-discussion. That way the band can get a wide stereo image, and the audience a little less so.
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

Hi again guys.

Last week I was using a DM 2000 which had plenty of spare digital I/O, so I did as suggested regarding routing a Group into a channel and into the foldbak that way. Worked like a charm! Thank you all for the suggestions!

PS: I have used this little "trick" similarly in the past to create matrix outputs on 01v96's :)
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

I have a dialog subgroup and a singing subgroup they get routed to the conductors monitor thru a matrix. It’s a small monitor on a mic stand with a volume control on it. The singing subgroup feed to this matrix is lower then the dialog feed. The rest of the band doesn’t need monitors to follow anyone they are following the conductor ONLY. So that is why only the conductor gets the monitor. Old school method. 99 percent of the time this is how the conductor wants it.
 
Re: Looking for new ideas for routing foldback signals, theatre/musical, etc.

Thanks, Kevin. I've been trying to figure out why the pit musicians need dialog or vocals if they already have a conductor.

Watch the baton, don't wait to hear...
 
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