The fast and easy board feed that sounds balanced and is controllable.

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Eric Cagle

Senior
Jan 20, 2011
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Atlanta, GA
I have mentioned this before in someone else's post sometime back but it has been a while and I thought I would post it again for any new forum members. If you are running a show as a single engineer and you want a stellar board mix this is an easy way to get one and be able to devote your undivided attention to your front of house duties. It requires a decent set of isolation headphones. I use the Vic Firth's because they work well and are relatively inexpensive.

1) Set up a post fader aux mix and put all the levels at unity.
2) Set up your front of house mix.
3) Solo the aux mix in the headphones and make any adjustments such as bringing up guitars that are low in the mix because of stage volume.

Mix your show for front of house. You aux mix will follow your fader moves and be balanced for the feed.

If you have the extra aux sends or a post fade stereo aux you can even get creative with placement. I always bring my effects returns in through channel strips so I have them available in the mix as well.
 
Re: The fast and easy board feed that sounds balanced and is controllable.

Eric Cagle said:
1) Set up a post fader aux mix and put all the levels at unity.
2) Set up your front of house mix.
3) Solo the aux mix in the headphones and make any adjustments such as bringing up guitars that are low in the mix because of stage volume.

Mix your show for front of house. You aux mix will follow your fader moves and be balanced for the feed.
Click to expand...

This works well as long as you aren't doing too much with subgroups, as their affect obviously won't be in the mix. If you have a matrix you could get around this by putting anything routed to direct to LR into the aux, and putting the aux and your groups into a matrix.
Chris
 
Re: The fast and easy board feed that sounds balanced and is controllable.

Eric,

One of the things I've come to notice from doing shotgun Aux-fed recordings is that the console's fader settings almost exactly correspond to the inverse levels you'd want to record at.

For example: the vocal faders are around unity because they need to be boosted in the FOH mix, but the guitar fader(s) is/are at -20dB because the stage volume is loud enough to not need much reinforcement in the FOH mix. So, you would adjust the guitar Auxes up in level compared to the vocals to make up for the difference that is NOT apparent in the recording.

Using the Aux sends (post-fader) as you mention will let you compensate for this, and get a much more well-balanced mix. Add in 2-3 audience mics, and it can create a great sonic image and listening experience. Using 2 post-fader Auxes is nice because you can "pan" the various inputs to sit better in a complex (or, simply, congested) mix.
 
Re: The fast and easy board feed that sounds balanced and is controllable.

Chris, That is a very good point and solution if you are using sub groups.

Jordan, I did not mention audience mics just to keep it simple but that is a very good point as well. I always use at least a left and right audience mic on all my multitrack recordings. Not only can it add more of the clapping and screaming energy to the recording but sometimes some great room ambience if used very sparingly. I usually don't put them in the board feed for a one off because it is such a fine line between a nice effect and an airplane hanger but I always include them in a multitrack. You always get some ambience and crowd noise through all the open mics anyway.

The main thing about this method is it is really fast to set up and you are basically doing one mix and a quick tweak on the feed. On my British analog boards unity has always worked very well but you could pick any other point as well as long as you start the same all the way across. Even if you are doing a stereo mix with 2 aux sends it is quicker to start off at unity for all and then adjust for positioning after you get your front of house mix.

Many years ago I set up an independent pre fade mix for a board feed and quickly discovered I had created a monster and had to constantly be jumping between the 2 mixes as things changed during the show. I did this only one time and then figured out that post fade would allow me to mix FOH as I normally did and get a great balanced board feed with basically no extra effort after a tweak or two. The other thing with pre fade is many boards will also be pre EQ. If your system is reasonably well set up your channel EQ for the mains will work very well for the feed. The only thing you really miss is the sound of all those 18" subs pounding the bottom (which is one of the reasons I enjoy live sound more than I enjoy working in the studio :))
 
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Re: The fast and easy board feed that sounds balanced and is controllable.

Eric Cagle said:
...Even if you are doing a stereo mix with 2 aux sends it is quicker to start off at unity for all and then adjust for positioning after you get your front of house mix.
Click to expand...
Agreed, it is a good starting point - and easy to tweak on-the-fly.
 
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