house mix in the monitors

[wcriley]

+1 to what Wayne said. Getting the same "mix" from the monitor feed to match the "FOH" is not as easy as it sounds. While it is totally possible with solid modern gear, it is not "normal" and does require a great deal of extra work for the FOH crew to achieve.....unless they are already set up to run that way. If you are one of three or four acts on the bill that night, you can forget about it.

My earlier post was only meant to show that it can can be accomplished with even simple systems.

Even with a system that has multiple monitor sends, I don't see how it would be any more difficult or time consuming to make each monitor approximate the FOH mix than it would be to give a unique mix to each individual performer.

 

[EastCoastThump]

Yeah, it's possible, but from post#2 on the thread explains arguments against running a split of the FOH mix to a player's stage wedge:

1. You'll *still* hear not the FOH mix, but the FOH mix as-voiced through the monitor wedge and mixed with whatever stage sound that hits the player's ears (so you lose the motivation for the whole exercise—"wanting to hear what the audience hears.")

2. As others have repeated here (maybe more clearly than I did), once a board has been wired for the gig (or installation), most engineers aren't going to want to reroute cables to humor a request that's already working from a questionable premise (see point #1 above).

3. Having unnecessary voices in the player's wedge adds to the stage volume—compromising both FOH sound and stage monitoring.

So, from the beginning of the thread: yeah, it's possible to send a wedge the mix that goes to FOH; but a FOH jockey worth his or her salt isn't likely to give you that mix through your stage wedge, for a number of reasons. Plenty of FOH engineers will give you a busy mix, if that's what you want—but that's a different request than "this should be simple; I want to hear what the crowd hears, so just give me the main mix minus bass and drums."

 

[wcriley]

1. I agree completely. The stage mix will never perfectly mirror the FOH, if only because of proximity to the amps and other instruments.

2. I've never operated a concert level system, but I can't image any cable rerouting being involved. Am I wrong in thinking that it would only require adjusting the Aux on each channel to approximate the main mix?

3. Many of the bands I've worked in over the years (including the current one) have multi-part vocals. From my perspective, it's important that the vocals in the vocalists' monitor mix closely mirror the FOH mix...especially if the system operator isn't familiar with the band.

I admit that my needs/wants/attitudes are a bit out of the ordinary. But I should be able to get the mix I want in the monitors and so should the OP without any more hassle than would be required to give individual mixes to each person on stage. (Unless it's a multi-band gig...in which case I'm lucky to have any say about the monitors.)

 

[EastCoastThump]

2. ...Am I wrong in thinking that it would only require adjusting the Aux on each channel to approximate the main mix?

Yes, the way most systems are set up, that's all that's involved. That's also what the OP's engineer seemed to offer: Tell me what you want in your wedge, and let me know how much of it you need.

What the OP seemed to want, though, was to bypass that process of building a monitor mix, and instead to have the engineer just route the FOH mix to his wedge, w/ bass and drums removed.

 

[wcriley]

Ah-ha! There's our disconnect.

I understood the first post differently. I took it to mean he wanted the monitor mix to mimic the FOH without certain instruments.
The idea of needing to rerout things came up in later posts by others and those were where my posts were aimed.