Can someone help? Review my band In Ear setup

  • Thread starter Thread starter sick pickle
  • Start date Start date
sick pickle

sick pickle

New member
We are a Deftones tribute band - basically a 4 piece rock act.
  • Guitar - Fractal FM9
  • Bass - Darkglass 900 head
  • Vocals - SM58
  • Drums - Mapex 5 piece/cymbals

We are using a MacBook Pro and a Behringer XR18 with 16 channel splitter (in Rack case) as the whole brains of the live show with Ableton Live 11.

IMG_6856.jpeg


I create all of the click and cues myself in individual song projects using Logic Pro X.

1701656872588.png


I prefer this DAW for editing and mixing. I export all of the needed tracks out to Audio track stems which I then import into Ableton (for live performance) in Session View (below).

The Ableton Live tracks are:
  • Click track
  • Voice Cue track
  • Backing Tracks 1 (tracks we need to hear both in ears, and go out to FOH)
  • Backing Tracks 2 (another layer of tracks we need in ears and out to FOH)
Right now the setup involves connecting the MacBook Pro via USB to the Behringer XR18. In Ableton, the XR18 is set as the input/output device. Our session in Ableton is as follows:

1701656425361.png


1 - Click goes to channel 15 on the XR18
2 - Cues goes to channel 16 on the XR18 (this allows independent volume mixing of click/cues for each member using mobile phones)
3 - Tracks (Ears) goes to channel 12 on XR18
4 - Synth Tracks (Ears) 2 goes channel 12 on XR18

Each band member is using one of the XR18 Aux Outs for their own personal monitoring device. The guitarist is using 1&2 as a stereo link, and bass and vocals are using mono outputs 3 and 5 with their Xvive U4 wireless receivers. As the drummer, I am using the main LR outs of the XR18 for my own stereo mix, connected to the main headphone out.

1701656425399.png


In addition to having that information in our ears, I need to get the backing tracks (3 and 4) out to FOH to accompany our live performance.

Ultimately, what other things am I missing here? Is there an easier way to do all of this? I often wonder if this is over engineered, where you see more simplified setups like an mp3 player splitting click and tracks via an RCA cable left and right (to accomplish a similar outcome). However, these types of setup of independent in ear racks seem to be the norm these days for many bands (lots of set up tutorials on YouTube, etc.)

Outstanding questions/concerns:
  1. Is the best option just to use one of XR18 Aux Outs to send to the sound man backing tracks via an XLR/DI?
  2. I am having trouble understanding how I would level the backing tracks for FOH so that its pretty much hands off for the sound man (not too loud, not too low - just mixed right)
    1. The tracks in Ableton are the source of truth, but modifications of volume there would impact levels downstream in both Ears and FOH.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my in ears TED talk. I hope there some other backing track/in ear folks out there (nerds maybe?) who are really good with this stuff who can chime in with any recommendations.
 
Last edited:
I have no fucking clue but free bump for ya.

Maybe put a tl;dr version at the intro top so peeps have an idea of what you are trying to get.

And welcome to Rig-Talk :cheers:
 
We did something similar in my last band (RIP). The workaround we used is with the Ultranet feature. We used the Ultranet to feed P16Ms for each member and mixed and fed our ears from there. That freed up the outputs for sending to FOH. Even if it's just giving the drums a P16M, you have a hardware to reach over and mix, a stereo signal, and it frees up two outputs. Look into the Ultranet stuff.
 
Back
Top