Soundman's nightmare

[nathancportlock]

Hello all,

My first post here. This place looks like a great resource. I am having real problems getting my head around how to take my set up live and wanted to get some opinions. Ideally, I want the soundman to have control and not the laptop.

We are a three piece and run an FCB1010 alongside Ableton Live 7 for looping single bass lines, layered electric, layered stereo vocals, 3 soft synths, mandolin, and violin. I also use the FCB and an SR-16 for triggering samples. For live un-looped drums I am currently running an Alesis DM5 out as a stereo drum track which would go straight to the desk but use live hi-hats and cymbals. My soundcard is an M-audio fast track ultra with 6 ins and outs with the vocals, violin and mandolin sub mixed with a Behringer 1204 to take up 4 inputs on the card, the electric and the bass going straight in.

Do I need to simply send the engineer a stereo out from the laptop pre-mixed and untested in each venue (apart from a soundcheck) or do I need to get a 16 output card so that I can feed him a sub mix of every looped instrument to control from the desk.

Does anybody here have an experience of a similar setup?

Opinions greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Nathan

[andybutler]

Hi Nathan,
There's no fixed answer...
...here's soem opinions you might find useful.

Do you have your own soundman ?
Are you going to be the main(preferably only) act at the gig ?
Generally a soundman is going to totally unhappy if you want to send him all those instruments, it's a lot of extra work.
It's can also often be unrealistic to expect a soundman to know what you want in terms of a mix, and sadly it's often the case that a soundman won't be making a great deal of effort on your behalf.
So, in many ways it's better if you can control the mix yourself. With a laptop it's better to do the "soundcheck" before you get to the venue.
A good soundguy will be able to use EQ on your stereo send so that your sound works with the venue's system.
If the vocals aren't being looped they can go seperately to the desk.

[nathancportlock]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, it would be alot simpler from our end if we could just feed a stereo mix.Unlikely that we would be the only act and yes we have an engineer that could work with us. Have you seen any set ups like mine live? How do you get round the issue of a good mix on stage? You use mostly guitars and effects right?

[andybutler]

Mar 19, 2011 17:37:42 GMT nathancportlock said:

You use mostly guitars and effects right?

That's right, I always get the mix by simply playing each layer at the required volume.
Lately I've been using an 8 track looper, and it's quite handy to have a small midi controller to do the mixing. (that would be handy for Ableton tracks in a similar way).
If your engineer is going to take over the FOH desk then if I'd send him as many feeds as practically possible ( remembering that the venue may not have enough feeds available in their multicore for you *and* the other bands).
Alternatively your engineer could be positioned on or next the stage and create a sub mix of your looped audio to feed to FOH ( in which case, some very good isolatinfg headphones would be useful).

If you rehearse with your engineer doing the mix that's a big help.

Overall, my personal strategy would be to keep it as simple as possible.

I haven't had much experience of people operating the way that you intend, but I've worked on FOH as well as playing at all sorts of venue(except huge). Setting up acts for a gig is usually rather stressfull and often chaotic, so keeping the soundman's work to a minimum is no bad thing.

2 things to remember
1) your soundcard *shouldn't* need an additional DI, if necessary you can tell the soundman at the venue that you have your own DI. As DI boxes can be in short supply at a venue that's a stress reducer.
iirc the M-Audio stuff has a balanced output on stereo jacks, so get yourself a set of adapters to convert to XLR.
2) Make sure you don't get phantom power fed to your soundcard. fzzzt.

hope that helps, and if it's stuff you know already............

[nathancportlock]

Good idea with the Midi Controller. If I could get WIDI working I could give the FOH/ our engineer control of the set via another laptop maybe or one of those Behringer hardware controllers...hmmmm

You're right simple is best for all involved.

And thanks again. Nobody I know is doing this in Birmingham so it's good to have found this place. I enjoyed the stuff on your website.

May the muses smile upon thee.

Nathan