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Monitor feed from FOH board

deekay911

deekay911

Nov 4, 2007
1,387
96
London, UK
#1
We are playing again at a club where we had some monitor issues recently. It's not a large place, and has a decent FOH and PA. However they provide no monitoring - last time there we tried to use the XLR snake return from FOH to a small PA we have, to power the vocal Monitors. With a short setup time, we were't able to get any output from the monitors. For the rest of us stage volume and positioning was enough to suffice, but of course vocals really needed their monitors.
So - should this setup work? I am thinking it should, or should we use a dedicated power amp just for the monitors?
 
#2
You would need a power amp to connect that XLR return to in order to push the speakers from the monitors. The XLR return on the snake is going to be a line level signal and will need amplification on the stage side.
 
#3
crijan said:
You would need a power amp to connect that XLR return to in order to push the speakers from the monitors. The XLR return on the snake is going to be a line level signal and will need amplification on the stage side.
Click to expand...

Right - but we put the XLR return into our small powered PA mixer, and hooked the monitors to the 'Mains out' on the mixer...shouldn't that work too? There may have been issues with the board or the snake, but we didn't have time to troubleshoot, so just wanted to validate that what we did 'should' work..
 
#5
SteveC said:
It should have worked. Did they have the right signal - or any signal - going to the XOR send they gave you?
Click to expand...

Can't be sure - as I said we had so little time for setup we had to fly with what we had. Since we are going back in a couple fo weeks, I wanted to just check what we tried was a valid configuration, then we will make sure we have enough time to setup and troubleshoot if necessary.
 
#6
The fan end of the snake (board end) would have to have the Mon return plugged into the mon out (or at least an AUX out on the board, signal would have to be routed to that output, and the master for that output would have to be turned up - and the channel used on the snake would have to not be dead.

If they are not set up to be using this for monitors already, it's very possible that the line wasn't connected, or if it was, the signal from each channel wasn't being sent to that output.
 
#8

deekay911 said:
Right - but we put the XLR return into our small powered PA mixer, and hooked the monitors to the 'Mains out' on the mixer...shouldn't that work too?
Click to expand...
Yes it should, assuming your speaker cables were good. As Ric noted, it could be that the return wasn’t plugged into anything at the house console end, or if it was, that they weren’t sending any signal to wherever it was plugged in.

Project’s recommendation is good too. You could use a splitter for the vocal mic, send one side to the house and the other to your powered PA/monitor .

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt




Pedulla Club #45

 

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