Mackie 32.8Bus Owner's Manual - Page 44
House And Monitor Mix Together, Headphones, Making A Simultaneous Recording
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PA & SR HOUSE AND MONITOR MIX TOGETHER It's a big board, but it's the only one you own. So you find yourself mixing house and monitors all from the same panel. First, let's take a moment and set everything up sensibly. Just like in a recording session, it's good to group your inputs and sub-mix buses by instruments, stage position or whatever else suits you. Try to keep the drum mics next to each other, the vocals together and so on. Label your cables, color-code your windscreens, lay tape across the arm rest, make a cheat sheet, iron your shorts, give yourself a break. It can be confusing enough mixing a big show without wondering which channel is which. Using AUX Send-Return loops and inserting outboard gear is the same as when recording, unless you want to use the AUX Sends as independent cue mixes, by engaging the PRE switch for those AUX Sends. Subgroups can be very helpful in Sound Reinforcement (SR) work. Remember, when you assign a channel to a subgroup, de-assign that channel from the L/R Mix. Headphones If you like to check things out in your phones, and especially if you want to use the 8•Bus solo or (modified) PFL functions as a cue circuit, set your phones up like this: • Be sure the MONITOR SOURCE switch is set to what you want to listen to (usually L/R Mix, your House feed). You can keep the two Monitor LEVEL controls turned down, though, because you are not feeding amplifiers from the Control Room or Studio outputs. • Plug your phones into one of the two Phones output jacks; let's say Phones 1. Now select MONITOR on the PHONES 1 SOURCE switch. That should give you L/R Mix bus plus solo. See, the solo bus only feeds the Control Room and Studio Speakers circuits, so we had to poke a few buttons to make it work. MAKING A SIMULTANEOUS RECORDING You're all set up, ready to go, when the band's manager comes up to you with a DAT machine and goes "The producer wants us to send him a recording of tonight's gig," and you go, "I'll patch it in to the house mix," and he goes, "No, I'd rather get a special mix just for the tape," and you roll your eyes and go, "You should really get a remote truck," and he rolls his eyes and goes, "Here's the tape. Make it good and we might hire you next time." Piece of cake. Refer to the drawings on pages 40 and 41. MIX-B to the rescue! L/R Mix is your house mix, you will use the AUX buses for stage monitor mix, and MIX-B will provide a stereo recording feed. Simply depress each of the MIX-B SOURCE switches to CHANNEL, patch the MIX-B outputs into the recorder inputs and set up your recording mix with the MIX-B level controls. To monitor, select MIX-B on the Phones output you're using and route the output of the recorder back into EXTERNAL to check playback. It's true, there are no meters on the MIX-B buses. Try using the recorder meters. If you can't see them from where you sit, there are a couple of patches you can try to get metering: • Since you're not using the CONTROL RM or STUDIO outputs, you can use the MONITOR section for metering only. Simply engage only the Mix-B Switch in that section. • If you have two free submaster buses, patch the MIX-B buses into the submaster insert point. (Push the 1/4" plug only halfway in to the Insert Jack, to the first 'click.' See Appendix A: "Connections" for details.) Set the submaster faders to -6dB to adjust for the insert point gain difference. Now you will have MIX-B levels showing on those two submaster meters, and you can use the SUBMASTER OUTPUTS as feeds to your recorder. • If you have the optional meter bridge fitted and you have two extra inputs, patch the output of MIX-B into the open channels (either Line In or Tape In, depending on how you have set the global source switch on the meter bridge), set the levels at unity and watch those two channel meters for recording levels. You can now use the two channel's DIRECT OUTS as feeds to your recorder. Make sure all the channel bus and AUX assign switches and controls are off, so you don't accidentally assign your signal back into the mix. Also, this way you could add a little EQ or compression via the channel inserts. • In either of the above cases, you may want to keep the extra circuitry out of your recording signal path. If so, just mult the MIX-B outputs to both your recorder and to the patch point for metering. HOUSE MIX ONLY or MONITOR MIX ONLY Much easier than both at once, but requires two mixers. Simply split the mics, set one mixer up for house (on the L/R Mix buses, as above) 42