Live Sound / Studio Question

[Bassman Spiff]

Hi all. I have a situation that I simply do not know how to solve.

I have a small practice studio in my basement with vocals, keyboard, and electronic drums running through a Yorkville MP8d powered mixer and a pair of Mackie 15" PA speakers. My bass and guitars are amped separately.

There are many times when we would like to practice without the Mackie PAs, using headphones. To do this, I run the bass and guitars into the mixer using DI or preamp, unplug the PA drivers, and run the line out from the mixer into a headphone amplifier (or Garage band, for that matter). I have to unplug the PA drivers, because the line out and record out from the mixer are controlled by the mixer's main master volume. This headphone studio works quite well.

Here is my question... Does anyone know of an in-line on/off switch or defeat for PA speakers? Sure, I can continue to simply plug/unplug the speaker cables to the drivers in order to switch between the live and headphone studio, but I am looking for something a little more professional and elegant.

Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[gareth dunster]

Can you not run the mackies off an aux channelled control room channel as if they were monitors and the headphones off the main mix ?

 

[Bassman Spiff]

Thanks Gareth. Per your suggestion I went back and revisited the monitor out. It is an unequalized signal and doesn't have any effects (eg reverb for vocals), but it is perfect for sending a discrete signal to the headphone space apart from the main drivers.