Monitoring through your rig?

[Jacobfred]

Hey y'all. Got a hypothetical for you.

Since COVID hit and gigs are down I've been rethinking how I wanna run a stage setup and I'm remembering the fights to get monitors in some less than well-equipped venues. I'm realizing with my Subway D800, I can run an external line level signal into the AUX IN and use it as an all-in-one bass rig/stage monitor.

I'm well aware of the differences in cab design for FOH monitors and bass cabs, but I'm curious to know who on the forum may have some live experience with a set up like this.

How did this affect stage volume and feel? Did it cause feedback issues with microphones and poor monitor placement? Did it just sound plain bad? Is this a mental exercise in futility?

TL;DR: Thoughts on running a FOH monitor feed through your bass rig for on stage monitoring?

 

[Wasnex]

Yes I have done this before. I have done it with JBL 4628B, Eden D210XLT and an ACME Low B2, but only in circumstances where I was just looking for a little bit of presence from the vocals and there was only one open mic.

The biggest issues I would be concerned with; especially if your looking for significant volume:
1. You need to adjust the tweeter for flattest possible response.
2. If you intend to run vocals through the rig, the speaker needs to be aimed away from pickup side of the open mics in order to minimize the potential for feedback. The speaker should also be aimed away from reflective surfaces that may direct the sound towards the open mics. Ideally you would probably put the cab on the floor in front of you, or at about 45 degree left or right of you, and tilt it back like a regular monitor.
3. Aiming the cab at you years is even more important when you are running full range sounds through the cab. The frequency response is not constant for all frequencies. Lows are omni-directional. In the low mids the cab will begin to develop pattern control. As the frequency rises, the cab will have develop more pattern control and push more and more of the sound out front. So if you want to hear the highs and high mids, you need to point it at your ears.

 

[chris_b]

On monitoring. . . . these days I rarely get FOH or monitors. A few years back, I played with a drummer who had a mic in the bass drum which went into the PA. So just vocals and bass drum in the PA. Then one day he brought along a small mixer amp and a JBL PA cab. He put the drum mic into his amp and ran a line to the PA. The JBL was between him and me and I was shocked how much better I could play with the bass drum coming through loud and clear. I never have a problem hearing the bass. I don't play with that drummer any more, but I've often thought about setting up a bass drum monitor like that one.

 

[Redbrangus]

I'm an amateur bass player but a life-time, career sound guy...as embarrassing as that is to acknowledge in these environs. I can imagine some situations where the concept could maybe work, but the potential pitfalls far outweigh any potential benefit, IMO. To a certain extent, it depends on what you're trying to hear -- what's in this theoretical monitor mix? Kick and snare? That's an invitation to serious intermodulation distortion in your speaker cab. Vocals? Don't even try -- I can think of a couple of reasons why not, but the most obvious is what @Wasnex was referring to: you don't want a muddy vocal monitor upstage blowing into the vocal mics. Even if the cab is off-axis to the mics, it would just be adding additional "roar" or mud to the usual stage melee. Also, you cab is likely to be a horrible full-range speaker system -- it's probably designed to emphasize it's performance as a bass amp speaker. And you're going to be EQ'ing it to optimize your bass sound; I presume your Aux In does not have it's own EQ, right? Plus, you'll need to address the issue of interfacing your high impedance, unbalanced input to the incoming monitor signal -- likely to be a low-impedance balanced line. I could probably come up with a couple of additional potential problems, but maybe you get the drift.

But as I said, there are probably some circumstances where this could maybe work, if only a little...it depends on your situation. What is it you're trying to hear? A single vocal monitor mix in an acoustic trio is a different situation from a big, loud band with multiple monitor mixes and bi-amped speaker systems. At any rate, in almost every case, there's bound to be a better way to address whatever the perceived deficiency is than running a monitor mix into your bass rig.

As always, just IMHO. But one based on quite a bit of experience -- far too much of it behind a monitor desk.

 

[Wasnex]

I'm an amateur bass player but a life-time, career sound guy...as embarrassing as that is to acknowledge in these environs. I can imagine some situations where the concept could maybe work, but the potential pitfalls far outweigh any potential benefit, IMO. To a certain extent, it depends on what you're trying to hear -- what's in this theoretical monitor mix? Kick and snare? That's an invitation to serious intermodulation distortion in your speaker cab. Vocals? Don't even try -- I can think of a couple of reasons why not, but the most obvious is what @Wasnex was referring to: you don't want a muddy vocal monitor upstage blowing into the vocal mics. Even if the cab is off-axis to the mics, it would just be adding additional "roar" or mud to the usual stage melee. Also, you cab is likely to be a horrible full-range speaker system -- it's probably designed to emphasize it's performance as a bass amp speaker. And you're going to be EQ'ing it to optimize your bass sound; I presume your Aux In does not have it's own EQ, right? Plus, you'll need to address the issue of interfacing your high impedance, unbalanced input to the incoming monitor signal -- likely to be a low-impedance balanced line. I could probably come up with a couple of additional potential problems, but maybe you get the drift.

But as I said, there are probably some circumstances where this could maybe work, if only a little...it depends on your situation. What is it you're trying to hear? A single vocal monitor mix in an acoustic trio is a different situation from a big, loud band with multiple monitor mixes and bi-amped speaker systems. At any rate, in almost every case, there's bound to be a better way to address whatever the perceived deficiency is than running a monitor mix into your bass rig.

As always, just IMHO. But one based on quite a bit of experience -- far too much of it behind a monitor desk.

I would only do it with a cab that sounds decent full range. The Acme Low B2 the JBL 4628B I mentioned are both 3-way, full-range cabs. The 4628B is very HiFi. The Eden D210XLT is a standard bass cab with two 10s and a tweeter. If you dial the tweeter in just right, you can get marginal full range sound.

I particular, it's a really bad idea to use a cab with uneven and limited frequency response as it will greatly increase the chances of feedback for several reasons that I won't go into here.

In the situations where I ran vocals through my cabs, there was no vocal monitor, or there were not enough vocal monitors. So it matter of making the best of very limited resources. Also for context I was running sound and playing bass simultaneously and running everything through a mixing console, so I was not using a separate bass head. So the situation was very controlled (by me, and expert audio tech).

I have a pretty long history of using a mixer for a bass amp, in fact my last touring rig was an Ashley MX508 rack mixer and a QSC power amp in a 16-SP rolling rack. Rather than pushing the vocals through my Eden D210XLT, I had up to four Galaxy HotSpots that I could run off one side of the QSC. If needed, I could add mics, a pair of powered PA speakers and have a small self-contained PA, with four monitors, and a bass cab. Normally I used this setup just for on-stage monitoring. I sent my bass through the D210XLT and routed a monitor mix from FOH through the Ashley mixer that was sent to a pair of the HotSpots.

@Jacobfred I guess I would say your proposal can work in certain situations if you have reasonable expectations and the audio tech has the experience and chops to pull it off (in other words the necessary knowledge to advise you against doing stupid stuff that will cause problems rather than help) The caveats and concerns @Redbrangus mentions are certainly accurate.

 

[Passinwind]

Hey y'all. Got a hypothetical for you.

Since COVID hit and gigs are down I've been rethinking how I wanna run a stage setup and I'm remembering the fights to get monitors in some less than well-equipped venues. I'm realizing with my Subway D800, I can run an external line level signal into the AUX IN and use it as an all-in-one bass rig/stage monitor.

I'm well aware of the differences in cab design for FOH monitors and bass cabs, but I'm curious to know who on the forum may have some live experience with a set up like this.

How did this affect stage volume and feel? Did it cause feedback issues with microphones and poor monitor placement? Did it just sound plain bad? Is this a mental exercise in futility?

TL;DR: Thoughts on running a FOH monitor feed through your bass rig for on stage monitoring?

I've used a couple of different bass cabs and one or another of my DIY amps both for monitor and/or FOH duty while I was also playing bass through them. You've aready gotten excellent feedback from a few people, but no one has really mentioned the effect it can have on your bass sound, which is where the compromises probably bother me the most: unusual cab placement, compromises with what goes into the monitor feed, an unfamiliar near field mix feel, potential intermodulation distortion, and so on.

With that said, I've run whole open mikes with just a mini-mixer and a Thunderchild 112AF and I still got paid and invited back. That cab has a secondary backfiring tweeter and I think that helped more than I might have expected, but we weren't too far off the one mic bluegrass vibe at that venue to begin with. We were also able to tap into the house zone mix rig if it got really busy so teh stage mix didn't need to be super hot. For me the line in the sand is probably miked drums, at that point I'd definitely do something else.

 

[Omega Monkey]

As a sound guy, I would never ever ever ever do something like that unless it was absolutely 100% necessary for some reason, which it never would be. It's going to sound terrible all around.

From the title, I thought you would be asking about like running a wedge from the other output of your amp or something, to get a bit more bass but without blasting the audience as much. I still wouldn't do that.

If you play places with sucky monitors, buy yourself a decent powered speaker, and then request a send from the mixer (which should USUALLY be possible, not always). If they're really primitive, you might have to share a mix with your bandmates, but at least the sound quality of the speaker will be good if you bother spending the money to get something good (the whole point is to beat the house, right? You aren't getting there with some low rent B**** nonsense).

A somewhat more involved approach is for the band to invest in a 16 channel (or however many you need) mic splitter, a small digital mixer with enough inputs and aux sends, and then run your own monitors (either wedges or in ears).

It really comes down to how much is it worth to you to have consistent monitor quality. If it's worth it, you'll spend the money. If it's not, you have to put up with whatever you get. There's no free lunch (unless your band is good enough to always gig in places with excellent equipment and a skilled sound tech). Ironically, if your band spends 3 or 4 grand on a nice monitor setup, you may over time get better enough to get those sweet gigs at places with nice gear and competent staff (if you aren't there yet). If you look through my various posts, you won't have to go to far back to find one of my many rants on how bands should be doing their stage mix, monitors, etc... I would (humbly) say that 90% of bands could benefit from following every word of any of those rants (or let's say "strongly worded lessons"). Almost all bands make almost all the same mistakes which are all easily fixable (as long as it's easy to subvert your ego, work for the common good, and practice enough to get where you need to be).

 

[Jacobfred]

Thanks for all your input folks!

The responses are right about what I expected and keep along with what I had worked out in my head. Maybe I should clarify a bit; I run corporate A/V primarily focusing on the "A" part of the job, so things like mic vs monitor placement, frequency response, coupling response, and such aren't new concepts to me. This is more of a mental exercise in the boredom that COVID has thrust upon me, especially since work slowed down greatly this past year.

I generally run a little Rolls personal monitor and IEMs on my board pulling a feed from another powered monitor if I don't have one myself, but sometimes it's fun to pretend and some of my country bandmates dislike the ideas of IEMs.

Sounds like physics wins again on this one and I'll keep using the solutions I've got. Thanks for the stories and the follow up advice.

 

[chadds]

Act before me was bass direct no amp. I showed up with Glock preamp and Berg IP. I asked sound person if she wanted me to go direct. She said, “you spent time and money putting that rig together. I’m micing it.” (She ran a DI too)

I heard my bass through thousands of watts bouncing off the buildings a block away. Kept getting compliments how it sounded like an upright. Ashbory.

You’re the bassist show up like the featured lead singer and you get respect. Be friendly and polite. Your gear is nearly always better if only that it’s purpose built for bass. You can turn it up or down for your band’s needs. Wow can you imagine we’ve had this all along?

 

[Redbrangus]

¿Qué?