[Muso] Mixing desk advice

[lazyhour]

Scene-setting image:



Hello team! 

I am looking to buy a multi-channel mixing desk for a live project I'm cooking up.  Different devices (tape decks, synths, vocals) will all be hooked up to the mixer, which I will control onstage to alter the EQ, volume and pan of each of these devices.

I was going to get one of those above-pictured budget Behringer mixers that everyone has these days, but was crushed to discover that none of them have PFL (Pre-Fade Listen) for each track!  Because I'll be introducing new and different sound sources into my overall soundscape, I want to be able to check how they sound before I bring them into the actual mix, which I thought would be a typical thing to want to do.  Turns out, it's not.

Can anyone familiar with this kind of gear offer advice?  Are there any budget (ie, under £200) mixing desks that offer PFL/monitor-only listening for each channel?

[lazyhour]

Am I crazy or does this one have PFL/monitor control for each individual channel?

http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/1002B.aspx

_{Yeah yeah, providing answers to my own threads, what a legend.}

[Lfbarfe]

Doesn't look like it. It has a monitor send, but that's presumably for stage monitors. PFL tends to be on radio and DJ mixers. I think they assume that for live sound, you'll either have time to soundcheck or be riding the levels as you go along.

[NoSleep]

If you got a headphone amp I suppose you could use the pre-fade monitor send on that.

[lazyhour]

(response to Lfbarfe)

That is indeed what 'they' assume!  It's frustrating, because the element of uncertainty and sponteneity in my setup requires me to be able to PFL, at least some of the time.

But in the case of the above linked unit, couldn't I send the Monitor output of this desk to my headphones, and the regular output to the venue PA?  Thus making the monitor serve the exact same function as PFL?

Edit:NoSleep, I'm not sure what you mean by headphone amp... I'm not very up on this techy stuff, really.

[NoSleep]

There must be a small desk with PFL on it out there, although it might be a small desk on the more expensive end of the market.

[lazyhour]

To (hopefully) make it clearer, couldn't I set the Mix output of a channel to silent, and just turn up the Monitor output on the channel? 

Then, listening to the Monitor on my headphones, I can hear what will come out of the Mix when I turn the overall channel volume up, but the audience can't hear that channel yet.

Apart from the fact that a PFL button and a Monitor button/dial might technically be sending the sound to different outputs, I don't see what the difference would be!  Surely I just plug my headphones into whatever output the Monitor is going to?

Edit: NoSleep, what do you mean by "headphone amp"?

[NoSleep]

The monitor send output would need to be sent to a a headphone amp and then headphones connected for monitoring by yourself (I assume you'll be using headphones).

[lazyhour]

Aha!  So it's a little preamp.  I suppose I could have googled it.  Sorry about that.

[NoSleep]

Surely I just plug my headphones into whatever output the Monitor is going to?

This would not be loud enough... a headphone amp will give you the right impedance and control of a good amount of level.

[lazyhour]

Cool, I gotcha.  I really appreciate this advice.

I think it would still be cheaper to get a budget headphone amp and this unit than it would be to get a proper PFL desk.  I've been searching pretty hard, and they just don't seem to be out there at a budget price.

There's also this, which is discontinued but is still around.



http://www.soundcraft.com/products/product.aspx?pid=121

This also has Monitor selection for each channel (it's the little black button at the bottom-right of each channel, which toggles into Monitor mode), and it looks like there is an actual headphone-out for the Monitor as well as a send.  It's a lot bigger than the Behringer and is a bit more expensive, but it's another contender, innit?

Techy question for NoSleep - Do you know why the 'send' Monitor output is not amplified?  What is it designed to plug into?

PS I fucking love CaB.

[NoSleep]

In the studio you would normally listen via your monitor outs (sent to a speaker amp), which are usually controllable by a volume control on the desk, whilst mixing out to your recording device.

In your case the the mix out is what is going to the PA and is what the audience will hear, whilst the monitor out will go to a headphone amp (possibly one without a volume control as it should be covered on the desk).

There are other ways to route to a set of headphones, via aux sends etc, too, so long as pre-fade is an option on that aux send. If it's a live desk then there may be a send named "foldback" which will do this.

[Lfbarfe]

(response to Lfbarfe)

That is indeed what 'they' assume!  It's frustrating, because the element of uncertainty and sponteneity in my setup requires me to be able to PFL, at least some of the time.

I use my Behringer for CaB radio and would love a PFL function for cueing vinyl. I have a couple of convoluted workarounds, but as I learned my desk technique on a proper Eela radio panel, I curse Behringer inwardly every time.

But in the case of the above linked unit, couldn't I send the Monitor output of this desk to my headphones, and the regular output to the venue PA?  Thus making the monitor serve the exact same function as PFL?

I don't know. Sorry.

[lazyhour]

From what NoSleep says, all that's required is a preamp for your headphones plugged into the 'mon send' output, and you could be using the 1002B for CaB radio, PFL-ing to your heart's content!

[lazyhour]

Well blow me tight, you know what - if I can hook headphones up to a 'send' channel...

I see that a fair few of the cheap Behringers have FX send volume control for every channel (eg this one).  All I need to do is put amplified headphones into the FX send output, and again I can surely use that as a PFL!  I don't even need a model that has controllable Monitor volume for each channel, just as long as each channel has FX send!

..unless there is some difference between FX send and Monitor send, but life would be pretty cruel if that were the case.

[NoSleep]

The Aux send will still have to be assignable to pre-fade, though, otherwise the fader will need to be up whilst you're monitoring.

[Ginyard]

It's a lot bigger than the Behringer and is a bit more expensive, but it's another contender, innit?

Have a look at the little Mackie 12020vlz.

[lazyhour]

The Aux send will still have to be assignable to pre-fade, though, otherwise the fader will need to be up whilst your monitoring.

I should think it would have to be - otherwise you'd hear the clean signal in additional to the FX-sent signal!

[NoSleep]

Have a look at the little Mackie 12020vlz.

I've found Mackie's a little too sensitive, distorting at extremely low levels: when ADATs were all the (16-bit, 8 track recording on VHS tape) they had the audacity to suggest that you should record everything at half the input level you would normally do (essential in the days of 16-bit was to try and get as close to 0dB as possible). Some signals (like trumpet, I remember) would have a buzzy sound added to them (like a kazoo in the distance) even at low levels. On top of that, you could hear a difference in sound by sending something to a group bus compared to going to the main buss direct. And they were not transparent: they made everything sound brittle compared to other desks, even before you had touched the eq. And the eq!!! Horrible on the top end.

Compared to the Soundcraft Ghost (you can't find a better desk for £2,500 until you go up to £10,000 or more: the headroom! the eq!) the Mackie equivalent, going back to the late 90s (which was endemic in small studios, much to my dismay), was a brittle sounding, oversensitive pile of doodoo.

So... have their more recent products addressed all this? 

[Ginyard]

You mean those 16/24 8-bus systems that made a last stand for analogue in project studios when the Yamaha 02rs were starting to make their mark, or those excellent looking but highly flawed D8B desks?. I hated the latter and never had anything to do with the former so I'm not best qualified to make an informed comment about them . But these little VLZ mixers are very good, although I wouldn't touch the eq with a bargepole. Boosting the mids is like thin wire through the brain. But I've only used them for field recording purposes (I don't even use a hardware mixer in the studio anymore, everything goes through an RME MADI & Fireface 800 system) for sample libraries and I've never had any negative remarks back about bad sound quality. It was originally recommended to me by an engineer I worked with called Trygg Tryggvason and if it was cool for him it was cool for me as he's been the chosen engineer for a number of classical labels and said he was happy to use the preamps on these things they were clean enough. I think they're on to their 3rd generation now so the older models can be picked up for under a hundred and they're definitely superior to the soundcraft compact 10 and behringer models cited above.

[NoSleep]

Looks like the only problem will be the eq, then. lazyhour will be using eq on whatever desk he chooses.

Eq's alway a problem on budget desks; even when you buy the bigger models. This problem only goes away when you start to look at desks above the £10,000 range. The only exception to this was the Soundcraft Ghost which has hi & lo shelf and two parametrics with adjustable Q and bandwidths that reach from the very low frequencies to the very high: normally budget desks have parametrics that just don't go far enough to be really useful. I can only surmise that this is done on purpose to sell more costly products, as the Ghost proves that it can be done.

[NoSleep]

For under £300 you can get an Allen & Heath ZED14 with PFL. Allen & Heath have been making professional desks for 40 years; only entering the budget market later on.



As an example of the problems with eq on these budget desks, take a look at this close-up:

...and you will see that the parametric only spans from 120Hz - 4kHz and there's no control over 'Q'. Another couple of octaves either way on the bandwidth would have made it much more useful, as would, at least, a toggle switch between a wide and narrow 'Q'.

That said, I've had good experience with Allen & Heath stuff, and it's probably worth the little extra dosh. Damn, I want one of those for myself now.

[lazyhour]

Very interesting stuff - I had no idea the EQ would be so crippled on budget desks.  Still, I'm a cheap man, and at the moment even the £300 mark is a bit too much for what is at this stage a little bit of a pipe dream.  I'll definitely investigate Allen & Heath for future reference, though.

This thread has been amazing and it proves once again that you can ask verbwhores for advice on anything, and there'll be at least a handful of people who can help you. 

It certainly beats trawling through the web's many niche messageboards, full as they are of difficult, picky weirdos.

[Lfbarfe]

Damn, I want one of those for myself now.

So do I. That looks like a cracking mixer.

[NoSleep]

I've read the user's manual for the ZED14 and they wrongly suggest that you plug your main studio amp & speakers into the XLR main outputs, which are directly routed from the main faders(!!!???), in their recommendation for a studio set-up. The correct solution is to connect the speakers to the alt outputs.

[NoSleep]

I should think it would have to be - otherwise you'd hear the clean signal in additional to the FX-sent signal!

Just spotted this. Actually the default setting for Aux sends is post fade, because you do want to hear the clear signal plus the processed signal (returning on another input on the desk) together. Aux sends are usually used to blend some reverb or echo type effects with the original signal; the effect they are sent to will be set to 100% "wet", of course.

[lazyhour]

Oof, so it's not possible to just hear the processed signal?

It looks like on the Behringer 1204FX, you can choose between the aux send being pre- or post- send.  There's a little toggle button on each channel.

[lazyhour]

Sorry for all my questions, and I really appreciate your answers, NoSleep...

Can I just confirm that pre-send would mean it sends the signal that's coming into the mixing desk on that channel, regardless of that channel's volume setting?

Because I think that's exactly what I require.

[Jaffit]

Oof, so it's not possible to just hear the processed signal?

It looks like on the Behringer 1204FX, you can choose between the aux send being pre- or post- send.  There's a little toggle button on each channel.

Yeah I suppose its what you want to use the effect for. Like No Sleep said, in most cases you would want a blend of the original signal and the effected signal, although you can adjust this to taste with the channel faders and send levels to find the balance you want.

[NoSleep]

What kind of effects are you thinking about, lazyhour? Stuff like compression, where you require 100% processed signal? That stuff is generally dealt with via the insert send/return bus on each channel.