Yeah screw that, I am never going back to analog. I went from this to a loaf of bread, 200 pounds to 12 pounds...
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Behringer XR18 X-Air
- Thread starter jimfist
- Start date
Just to be clear, it is possible to use wired and wireless at the same time, but only with an external wifi router. Hard wire from the XR18 to a LAN port on the router, hard wire to the laptop, wifi to the tablet from the external router. You cannot do this without an external router, unfortunately. For what it's worth, I've giged my XR a handful of times now including a 4 band bike run and have not yet needed to use a wired connection, nor an external 5Ghz router. The day will probably come, and I'll have my laptop and ethernet cable ready to go.
possibilities this mixer offers at that price are just freaking insane!!
my band uses it as centerpoint for our setup; guitarist and i both use line6 pedals with amp sims, drummer uses electronic kit, we all have IEMs. sound for rehearsals is just insane, every detail, every nuance is there. with real time analyzer for EQ we set up clear and spacious sound image, and with the touch of FX like expanders, and stereo exciters we have sound that's close to studio recording. Since we've just begun playing as a band 2 weeks ago, i'm really excited to hear how this sounds live, and i suspect sound engineers are going to be pissed off when we bring our setup on the stage and send them just two signals, left and right, their role degraded to just volume controller will probably stir some pissed off comments.
since there are 6 external buses, there is possibility of 3 stereo monitor signals, or as in our case that will probably be 2 stereos for singer and guitarist and drummer and i are ok with mono. 6 monitor mixes, come on!
Every day that we play i find out more and more things this baby can do, and it's worth 5 times it's price - hands down - best piece of gear any band can have.
The fact that our band can now have whole sound system (except PA speakers) in a rack that's 12u space is simply out of this world, 12u rack that houses our pedals, mixer, headphones preamp, additional gear... that's just a modern marvel. and that whole setup is dirt cheap.
Usually when I get a piece of gear it's like , oh i tought i can do that...hmmmm... while with this thing its' like "oh IT CAN DO THIS? AND THIS? WHAT ELSE?" , ability to record individual track via usb on a low-mid spec pc is just fantastic. while i tried 9 track on hp first gen i7 without hickup, i found that my overclocked desktop (i5-3570k 16gb) handles all 16 inputs without even getting close to 100% cpu usage. on reaper. come on!
my band uses it as centerpoint for our setup; guitarist and i both use line6 pedals with amp sims, drummer uses electronic kit, we all have IEMs. sound for rehearsals is just insane, every detail, every nuance is there. with real time analyzer for EQ we set up clear and spacious sound image, and with the touch of FX like expanders, and stereo exciters we have sound that's close to studio recording. Since we've just begun playing as a band 2 weeks ago, i'm really excited to hear how this sounds live, and i suspect sound engineers are going to be pissed off when we bring our setup on the stage and send them just two signals, left and right, their role degraded to just volume controller will probably stir some pissed off comments.
since there are 6 external buses, there is possibility of 3 stereo monitor signals, or as in our case that will probably be 2 stereos for singer and guitarist and drummer and i are ok with mono. 6 monitor mixes, come on!
Every day that we play i find out more and more things this baby can do, and it's worth 5 times it's price - hands down - best piece of gear any band can have.
The fact that our band can now have whole sound system (except PA speakers) in a rack that's 12u space is simply out of this world, 12u rack that houses our pedals, mixer, headphones preamp, additional gear... that's just a modern marvel. and that whole setup is dirt cheap.
Usually when I get a piece of gear it's like , oh i tought i can do that...hmmmm... while with this thing its' like "oh IT CAN DO THIS? AND THIS? WHAT ELSE?" , ability to record individual track via usb on a low-mid spec pc is just fantastic. while i tried 9 track on hp first gen i7 without hickup, i found that my overclocked desktop (i5-3570k 16gb) handles all 16 inputs without even getting close to 100% cpu usage. on reaper. come on!
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Yeah screw that, I am never going back to analog. I went from this to a loaf of bread, 200 pounds to 12 pounds...
It won't be long before you don't have the choice. Analog mixers are slowly (but faster than I thought they would) going the way of the dodo. There are several Mount Everest-size mountains of analog gear out there for sale that can't even be given away (and we've tried. I never thought one couldn't give away a Yamaha PM4000, but there are two in my former employer's warehouse that no one wants, even for free.
my band recorded rehearsal this friday with xr18;
i think only bass was set to post FX sound, everything else was raw signal before any FX/EQ
levels are all messed up, and there was no editing. what you hear is what you get
it was a breeze to record this, just plugged it into laptop, ran reaper, selected asio XR18 audio device, added 3 tracks (guitar, bass, drums) and then selected their corresponding input number and pressed record. since this is raw recording i think it sounds great. it gives us a good idea what to fix in our sound image. drummer plays on electronic drums and guitarist and i play on line6 fx100 and x3 live with amp sims. that's it. all fits in 12U rack with plenty of space left for future expansions (wireless, etc)
i think only bass was set to post FX sound, everything else was raw signal before any FX/EQ
levels are all messed up, and there was no editing. what you hear is what you get
it was a breeze to record this, just plugged it into laptop, ran reaper, selected asio XR18 audio device, added 3 tracks (guitar, bass, drums) and then selected their corresponding input number and pressed record. since this is raw recording i think it sounds great. it gives us a good idea what to fix in our sound image. drummer plays on electronic drums and guitarist and i play on line6 fx100 and x3 live with amp sims. that's it. all fits in 12U rack with plenty of space left for future expansions (wireless, etc)
I've noticed that tracks are recorded pre fx on daw. I have everything set to post fader on outs and reaper records each track witout fx. What is going on? For example we added reverb and compressor to vocals, recorded it all in daw and on playback vocals are without reverb. Dry as powder. But everything IS set post fader. Help!!!
The reverb isn't part of that channel. It is a separate bus. See if you can record the effect returns. Fwiw, it is normal to record tracks dry...
we would like to record each track as it is heard in main out. how do we get that?
You need to figure out how to either record the effects as a separate thing, or insert the reverb on each vocal channel. If you do that, you can only have effects on four channels.
Make sense?
Make sense?
It just isn't done that way - add reverb, EQ and compression in the DAW at mixdown. The "problem" is that if you record the tracks with FX, EQ and compression you'd not be able to change it later. The standard method is to record everything straight and dry.
we would like to record everything as is heard on live performance, as is, no post thinkering. i was now thinking, is it possible to record each track and main out mix at the same time? so we get each track dry + main out mix (FOH mix)
OK, i've been thinking even more now (sound the alarm and prepare for nonsense overdose) ;
can we record every track as is, "dry" , at the same time record also the whole main mix in one track, and then latter run each of the "dry" tracks trough mixer again trough FX and record them with FX as was in the main mix? so we get each individual track as it was in main mix, without too much thinkering and complication in live setting.
can it haz work?
I just received an xr18 last week and I've been very slowly getting up to speed. First thing I did was plug my guitar into chanell 1 and make some noise through headphones. I now have an issue with channel 1; there is now a signal present (steady visible green bar) and hiss coming through with nothing plugged into it (even with it muted). I did a firmware update prior to the appearance of this issue. Any Ideas?
Edit: nevermind. user error. imagine that.
Edit: nevermind. user error. imagine that.
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I think that I had left the channel gain set high and somehow it was making noise...not really sure but I turned it down. seems to be ok.
Edit: To be more specific I left the gain up with nothing plugged into ch.1 and noticed the bar while using a mic on ch.3 the next day. I assumed that by shutting down without saving any scenes that everything would magically revert to zero gain, etc. Now that I think of it, my analog board stays wherever the gain and faders were when I last used it.
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s0c9
Supporting Member
Digital boards do the same thing.. they auto-save the current settings - so when you power up next time those same settings remain.
I just had mine delivered and so far, it's pretty darn cool. One thing I did learn was to save a scene with all "0" settings that I named "Blank" for those times I want to reset. Right now I'm waiting for a client to pay so I can rack mount it with a couple of wireless and power conditioner. Rack porn to follow.
