The MIDAS DN4816-O is affected by the gain controls on the XR18. You turn a channel gain up or down, and it's gonna affect the DN4816-O outputs going to the FOH mixer. As a sound guy, I don't want a feed from your MIDAS DN4816-O. I want full control of the gain going to my mixer. Get a regular splitter snake, give the sound guy a clean signal, with full uncolored isolated gain control. There are many affordable options out there, that cost significantly less than the MIDAS DN4816-O (and do the job properly). :)
While you are correct, that the MIDAS DN4816-O can only give out the signal after the input gain taper, I personally have a few remarks on that: - Adding a regular splitter will add at least another HU to the rack for the XLR cables to run from the splitter, if you want to utilize all 16 channels, perhaps even 2HU, because in case you don't go with a very expensive splitter, you will also need a regular patchbay - With proper gain staging (and then LEAVING it that way, doing the rest of gain staging and mixing by other means), there is no issue for the FoH using the MIDAS outputs in my view - We had no issues so far with the sound guys we worked with, in fact, everybody was really happy using our setup/signals - While everybody is different, I personally do not understand the remark to partout not wanting to take our signals. If I'd meet a soundguy rightout refusing to take our signals, okay, then we can roll the traditional way with mic'ing up everything - however, this type of attitude of "my way or the highway" showcases an issue which we very often face: soundguys often think that the band is at their mercy, when the reality is, that there should be collaboration to get the best results. Also, even though I am taking your comment as an example, I want to stress that I am not implying you are that way, just using your comment to make a case point here 🙂 My personal reality and experience is, that we much rather face people not knowing how to properly do the job of the FoH, and we are partially taking that job over as well, and thus we needed something which we, in case needed, can output not only the incoming signal, but actually being able of putting out the processed signal as well. But, in any case, we are always prepared to just run the traditional mic'd up setup, if that's what the engineer prefers - after all, our setup is mainly to curate our IEM-mixes towards us, and having the MIDAS is just the icing on the cake. But the few occasions, where we could set up a silent stage and have the engineer take our signals directly, the feedback was very positive, stating things like "I never worked with an easier setup" etc. - seems like we must be doing something right.
@davebrownentertainment7191 the potential gain thing issue is mitigated here by the fact that since they use their own mics and their own IEM console with their own scene, it's very unlikely that they will touch their gains. Pretty sure they dialed them once and they'll keep them the same for all shows.
Thanks! The angled XLRs I found at session, a German music-shop, I soldered the cables by myself. Took me forever to find cool angeled XLR plugs, and I think session does actually not stock them anymore. ;-)
Thank you for the video. We use the same setup for our band, it also allowes us to have 4 additional aux outs by maping FX buses to 4 midas outs. There's one problem though... The XR18 gets overheated easily when you put it into a tight case, especially when you load it with such outputs extetion. You can check for yourself how hot it is after playing a couple of songs. It's a known problem. I'd recommend eather installing a fan inside the XR18 as we did or using some other colling system. The thing is that the power supply of XR18 wount't last long being overheated.
Really? Our gigs mostly last for an hour to 1,5 hrs, and we never had any issues. We also have rehearsals for 3-5 hrs and never had any issues, and it does not run really hot. But thanks for the remarks, I will check if that happens to run hot.
First: Very cool video. Thank you for coming up with this topic! I thought about this for quite a while with my last band, but hesitated too long with a full concept, so it never came to this ... (sigh). I have a MOTU 24ai, that I wanted to use just as you used the XR18+the DN4816. It has 24 great line outputs on the backside, that just have to be connected to XLRs, plus the option to connect e.g. 2 ADA8000/8200 via ADAT. Just one height unit in the rack for itself. So, with the ADAT option, incredible 16 ins plus 40 outs, all controllable over the network/ethernet AVB or AVB over USB, with USB audio interface option, so you could either just set up and forget the mixer, running it standalone, or even record the 16 ins (or even additional sums or submixes) with some basic EQ and comp settings, which actually sound really good. I just was not aware of which options to use for the IEM units without breaking the bank. and how the antenna thing could be handled safely. So this video was great for giving me some options and ideas, how this could be done. Also, the router setup in your rack is really nifty. I like that! I have a few questions: How happy are you with the IEM modules in your rack, do they actually fully satisfy everyone? Which Inear headphones do you use? Do you use instrument cables to your floorboards, or wireless options, and if wireless, what do you use? Does the drummer get the monitoring from the FoH, analog outs with headphone amp or does he get it from the headphone out? (So he potentially could get the exact same mix every time with his click fed into one analog in, so you could even run a "silent rehearsal room" with just drums aloud, for the option to record the whole band like in a studio, with silent guitars/bass/keys?) Btw, I see no problem in not using a splitter in the front, but just using the digital mixer + the midas as the splitter. Actually, I think splitters have their own problems, that I personally would want to avoid. I think, the FoH engineer could happily live with everything you give him, what comes out of your analog outs should be more than clean enough if the mixer is set up right. Everything else can be communicated between the band's operator and the FoH engineer, IMHO. Great video, very appreciated!
Thanks a ton for the positive feedback! Let me try to cover your questions, in case I miss anything, just hit me up again: 1) We are very happy with the LD Systems MEI 1000 G2 - for our setup and venues we play (like "medium sized venues for metal bands, fitting a maximum of 600-1000 people), we had no dropouts really. The XVive U4 does have a way smaller range due to the frequency spectrum, but I am quite stationary as the lead singer and guitar player, and the rack is always on stage at the front of the drum riser, or directly underneath it, so it's at max 5 meters away from me - personally never had a drop out on stage, way more often have dropouts in rehearsal, since we rehearse in an leftover bombing shelter bunker (in Germany, that's quite common). So I personally, am truly happy with the XVive U4. 2) We all use SHURE SE-Series headphones, Drummer and guitar player use the SE215, Bass player uses the SE425, and since I am deaf on one-side, I have on my hearing ear a single SE535, on my deaf ear the stock SE215. I have to stress how much I love the SE535! There are maybe the best investment I have done in my entire musicians career. SE215 are a muffled, blanket-topped mess in comparison. Not bad by any means, but bad in comparison with the SE535 certainly! 3) The guitars are connected wireless to the floorboards, we use for that purpose the Line 6 G10 and Line 6 G10S (got a video on my channel on the pedalboard, in case you are interested! 🙂 ) both guitarist' floorboards have DI-Boxes, which take the cabinet-emulated signal via an 4-cable-XLR snake from our boards to IEM-mixer. Also, my main vocals are carried over this XLR snake to the mixer as well. If the venue has it's own cable, I just place a small 1-channel-splitter between the venues XLR cable and my microphone, so splitter input goes to mic, splitter out1 to venue PA, splitter out 2 goes to the snake, which in turn goes to the IEM mixer. 4) The drummer, interesting point which I forgot to mention: We stay completely independent from FoH for our mixes. What we do, is we always have a spare drum-mic kit, which we just slap "on top" during changeover. So we provide Snare and the 3 Toms with our own microphones, which feed into the IEM-system. On smaller gigs, we can use the MIDAS DN4816-O to provide the FoH with our mic'd up drums, that way we save some time during changeover. On bigger festivals etc., we just smack them on right beside the FoH's drums and are happy. 🙂our drummer can live without overheads on his monitors, so that's cool. For Kickdrum, he has a Roland TM-2 Trigger Module and Triggers on his pedals from "On Trigger", which work very well. His mix comes out of the regular AUX2 output, since no stereo is needed, and feeds into his Behringer P2 headphone amp. This entire setup allows us to go FULL SILENT on stage, except for Drums of course. I was super sceptical at first, because I come from a situation where we used to have a fullstack on every side of the stage, no matter what size the venue, and I loved that as well, as it oozed rock an roll - however, the sound, our performance and the way I personally can differentiate between the soundsources have massively improved in using a complete silent stage setup. I will never look back on the olden days with loud amplifiers, except with a nostalgia for my youthful years. 🙂
@@PippPriss Ha, I come from the old times in the 80s with mushy Marshall fullstacks and everything, so I exactly get what you mean. Rock'n'roll and emotion, but what a lack of definition and transparency... Quite an investment on the personal IEM equipment that you use, these headphones for your bass player and you are pretty expensive! But I get it, like in the studio, the final stage from electric to acoustic is the most critical one for good results... and if you only have one ear, definition and clarity is everything... Thanks a lot for your detailed answers! Very appreciated!
@@imcrazedandconfused Actually their setup is is very cost-efficient compared to the average of this kind of setups. They use very effective and cheap (as in not expensive) stuff.
Nice ! We have similar 4u , and also doing the FOH from xr18. Just 2 units in-ear stereo so for. Router and the xr rack. In five years never got overheated by the way. Please feel free to wathc our channel, all recorded live from the xr18
Until recently we also had a 4U, but the digital splitter is a must for us to feed into the PA the single signals. Watched some videos, great sound quality and cool stuff! Keep on rockin'!
Glad you like the video! If you need any further help regarding feature set or so, you know where to find me! Hit me up direct and we can have a chit-chat on the topic! :-)
Since we only play like super small venues, usually not a problem. Also, for the greater part, it's set and forget, minimal adjustments needed. What can be problematic is being connected, walking away, being disconnected (it does happen quite fast due to the router being small and in the case) and then coming back. The smartphone trying to reconnect sometimes fails. But then I could, in theory, just ask one of my buddies to quickly use their phone to set up things. But, as long as I get signal, usually the mantra in case anything goes wrong is: SHOW MUST GO ON! ;-)
Basically since I can think. I had an untreated infection within my ear, and that went full rampage mode in my ear-canal. I can barely hear, like 20 %, but since our listening perception is rather logarithmic than linear, 20% hearing is barely nothing. I can barely make out where sound is coming from, I only hear it's there. Yes, my left speaker is like massively dampened compared to my right speaker (from my perception, that is), so I can KINDA tell what's left and right. But if somebody on an open field or maybe somewhere crowded calls my name, then I am spinning like a ballet-dancer to get a visual cue of where the sound is coming from. Sucks at times, but I never knew different, so that's cool.
Great video. Small question, how would you run the hybrid setup that you mention? If the drums are already mic'd in a festival situation for example with many bands, do you need to run those into a splitter and take one into the XR18 while the other goes to FoH?
We just smack our drum-mic set onto the shells. So for our gig, we have two drum-mics per shell - one coming from the venue and feeding their stuff, one which only feeds our mixer. In smaller venues, when we arrive early enough to set up the entire chain together with the engineer and we are staying anyways for the night, we can in theory also just use our mixer, and then have the FoH engineer use our digital MIDAS DN-4816 splitter and it's output signals to fetch the mic'd drum sounds.
@@PippPriss The "two drum-mics per shell (...)" (1 for MON, 1 for FOH) thing is interesting ! Never seen that before... Only the single set of mics going into splitter and then to FOH and MON.
The MIDAS DN4816-O is affected by the gain controls on the XR18. You turn a channel gain up or down, and it's gonna affect the DN4816-O outputs going to the FOH mixer. As a sound guy, I don't want a feed from your MIDAS DN4816-O. I want full control of the gain going to my mixer. Get a regular splitter snake, give the sound guy a clean signal, with full uncolored isolated gain control. There are many affordable options out there, that cost significantly less than the MIDAS DN4816-O (and do the job properly). :)
While you are correct, that the MIDAS DN4816-O can only give out the signal after the input gain taper, I personally have a few remarks on that:
- Adding a regular splitter will add at least another HU to the rack for the XLR cables to run from the splitter, if you want to utilize all 16 channels, perhaps even 2HU, because in case you don't go with a very expensive splitter, you will also need a regular patchbay
- With proper gain staging (and then LEAVING it that way, doing the rest of gain staging and mixing by other means), there is no issue for the FoH using the MIDAS outputs in my view
- We had no issues so far with the sound guys we worked with, in fact, everybody was really happy using our setup/signals
- While everybody is different, I personally do not understand the remark to partout not wanting to take our signals. If I'd meet a soundguy rightout refusing to take our signals, okay, then we can roll the traditional way with mic'ing up everything - however, this type of attitude of "my way or the highway" showcases an issue which we very often face: soundguys often think that the band is at their mercy, when the reality is, that there should be collaboration to get the best results. Also, even though I am taking your comment as an example, I want to stress that I am not implying you are that way, just using your comment to make a case point here 🙂
My personal reality and experience is, that we much rather face people not knowing how to properly do the job of the FoH, and we are partially taking that job over as well, and thus we needed something which we, in case needed, can output not only the incoming signal, but actually being able of putting out the processed signal as well.
But, in any case, we are always prepared to just run the traditional mic'd up setup, if that's what the engineer prefers - after all, our setup is mainly to curate our IEM-mixes towards us, and having the MIDAS is just the icing on the cake. But the few occasions, where we could set up a silent stage and have the engineer take our signals directly, the feedback was very positive, stating things like "I never worked with an easier setup" etc. - seems like we must be doing something right.
@davebrownentertainment7191 the potential gain thing issue is mitigated here by the fact that since they use their own mics and their own IEM console with their own scene, it's very unlikely that they will touch their gains. Pretty sure they dialed them once and they'll keep them the same for all shows.
05:56 nice angled XLRs for your AUX outs here :)
Very neat setup Phil !
Thanks! The angled XLRs I found at session, a German music-shop, I soldered the cables by myself. Took me forever to find cool angeled XLR plugs, and I think session does actually not stock them anymore. ;-)
@@PippPriss I also did something similar for a tiny pedalboard of mine :)
Cost effective and clever and neat af.
Quite a departure from the classic analog splitter -> XR/X32rack setup we often see, but makes sense as well !
Thank you for the video. We use the same setup for our band, it also allowes us to have 4 additional aux outs by maping FX buses to 4 midas outs. There's one problem though... The XR18 gets overheated easily when you put it into a tight case, especially when you load it with such outputs extetion. You can check for yourself how hot it is after playing a couple of songs. It's a known problem. I'd recommend eather installing a fan inside the XR18 as we did or using some other colling system. The thing is that the power supply of XR18 wount't last long being overheated.
Really? Our gigs mostly last for an hour to 1,5 hrs, and we never had any issues. We also have rehearsals for 3-5 hrs and never had any issues, and it does not run really hot.
But thanks for the remarks, I will check if that happens to run hot.
First: Very cool video.
Thank you for coming up with this topic!
I thought about this for quite a while with my last band, but hesitated too long with a full concept, so it never came to this ... (sigh).
I have a MOTU 24ai, that I wanted to use just as you used the XR18+the DN4816. It has 24 great line outputs on the backside, that just have to be connected to XLRs, plus the option to connect e.g. 2 ADA8000/8200 via ADAT. Just one height unit in the rack for itself. So, with the ADAT option, incredible 16 ins plus 40 outs, all controllable over the network/ethernet AVB or AVB over USB, with USB audio interface option, so you could either just set up and forget the mixer, running it standalone, or even record the 16 ins (or even additional sums or submixes) with some basic EQ and comp settings, which actually sound really good.
I just was not aware of which options to use for the IEM units without breaking the bank. and how the antenna thing could be handled safely. So this video was great for giving me some options and ideas, how this could be done. Also, the router setup in your rack is really nifty. I like that!
I have a few questions:
How happy are you with the IEM modules in your rack, do they actually fully satisfy everyone?
Which Inear headphones do you use?
Do you use instrument cables to your floorboards, or wireless options, and if wireless, what do you use?
Does the drummer get the monitoring from the FoH, analog outs with headphone amp or does he get it from the headphone out? (So he potentially could get the exact same mix every time with his click fed into one analog in, so you could even run a "silent rehearsal room" with just drums aloud, for the option to record the whole band like in a studio, with silent guitars/bass/keys?)
Btw, I see no problem in not using a splitter in the front, but just using the digital mixer + the midas as the splitter. Actually, I think splitters have their own problems, that I personally would want to avoid. I think, the FoH engineer could happily live with everything you give him, what comes out of your analog outs should be more than clean enough if the mixer is set up right. Everything else can be communicated between the band's operator and the FoH engineer, IMHO.
Great video, very appreciated!
Thanks a ton for the positive feedback!
Let me try to cover your questions, in case I miss anything, just hit me up again:
1) We are very happy with the LD Systems MEI 1000 G2 - for our setup and venues we play (like "medium sized venues for metal bands, fitting a maximum of 600-1000 people), we had no dropouts really. The XVive U4 does have a way smaller range due to the frequency spectrum, but I am quite stationary as the lead singer and guitar player, and the rack is always on stage at the front of the drum riser, or directly underneath it, so it's at max 5 meters away from me - personally never had a drop out on stage, way more often have dropouts in rehearsal, since we rehearse in an leftover bombing shelter bunker (in Germany, that's quite common). So I personally, am truly happy with the XVive U4.
2) We all use SHURE SE-Series headphones, Drummer and guitar player use the SE215, Bass player uses the SE425, and since I am deaf on one-side, I have on my hearing ear a single SE535, on my deaf ear the stock SE215. I have to stress how much I love the SE535! There are maybe the best investment I have done in my entire musicians career. SE215 are a muffled, blanket-topped mess in comparison. Not bad by any means, but bad in comparison with the SE535 certainly!
3) The guitars are connected wireless to the floorboards, we use for that purpose the Line 6 G10 and Line 6 G10S (got a video on my channel on the pedalboard, in case you are interested! 🙂 ) both guitarist' floorboards have DI-Boxes, which take the cabinet-emulated signal via an 4-cable-XLR snake from our boards to IEM-mixer. Also, my main vocals are carried over this XLR snake to the mixer as well. If the venue has it's own cable, I just place a small 1-channel-splitter between the venues XLR cable and my microphone, so splitter input goes to mic, splitter out1 to venue PA, splitter out 2 goes to the snake, which in turn goes to the IEM mixer.
4) The drummer, interesting point which I forgot to mention: We stay completely independent from FoH for our mixes. What we do, is we always have a spare drum-mic kit, which we just slap "on top" during changeover. So we provide Snare and the 3 Toms with our own microphones, which feed into the IEM-system. On smaller gigs, we can use the MIDAS DN4816-O to provide the FoH with our mic'd up drums, that way we save some time during changeover. On bigger festivals etc., we just smack them on right beside the FoH's drums and are happy. 🙂our drummer can live without overheads on his monitors, so that's cool. For Kickdrum, he has a Roland TM-2 Trigger Module and Triggers on his pedals from "On Trigger", which work very well. His mix comes out of the regular AUX2 output, since no stereo is needed, and feeds into his Behringer P2 headphone amp.
This entire setup allows us to go FULL SILENT on stage, except for Drums of course. I was super sceptical at first, because I come from a situation where we used to have a fullstack on every side of the stage, no matter what size the venue, and I loved that as well, as it oozed rock an roll - however, the sound, our performance and the way I personally can differentiate between the soundsources have massively improved in using a complete silent stage setup. I will never look back on the olden days with loud amplifiers, except with a nostalgia for my youthful years. 🙂
@@PippPriss Ha, I come from the old times in the 80s with mushy Marshall fullstacks and everything, so I exactly get what you mean. Rock'n'roll and emotion, but what a lack of definition and transparency...
Quite an investment on the personal IEM equipment that you use, these headphones for your bass player and you are pretty expensive! But I get it, like in the studio, the final stage from electric to acoustic is the most critical one for good results... and if you only have one ear, definition and clarity is everything...
Thanks a lot for your detailed answers! Very appreciated!
@@imcrazedandconfused Actually their setup is is very cost-efficient compared to the average of this kind of setups. They use very effective and cheap (as in not expensive) stuff.
Nice ! We have similar 4u , and also doing the FOH from xr18. Just 2 units in-ear stereo so for. Router and the xr rack. In five years never got overheated by the way. Please feel free to wathc our channel, all recorded live from the xr18
Until recently we also had a 4U, but the digital splitter is a must for us to feed into the PA the single signals. Watched some videos, great sound quality and cool stuff! Keep on rockin'!
Nice vid man. Am doing research right now to get some sort of in-ear monitoring for the band I play with.
Glad you like the video! If you need any further help regarding feature set or so, you know where to find me! Hit me up direct and we can have a chit-chat on the topic! :-)
16:23 never had any connection problems with the router being placed inside the case like this ?
Since we only play like super small venues, usually not a problem. Also, for the greater part, it's set and forget, minimal adjustments needed. What can be problematic is being connected, walking away, being disconnected (it does happen quite fast due to the router being small and in the case) and then coming back. The smartphone trying to reconnect sometimes fails. But then I could, in theory, just ask one of my buddies to quickly use their phone to set up things.
But, as long as I get signal, usually the mantra in case anything goes wrong is: SHOW MUST GO ON! ;-)
@@PippPriss Danke schön !
01:39 if you don't mind me asking : how come you're deaf on one ear ? Has it always been the case or something happened during your life ?
Basically since I can think. I had an untreated infection within my ear, and that went full rampage mode in my ear-canal. I can barely hear, like 20 %, but since our listening perception is rather logarithmic than linear, 20% hearing is barely nothing. I can barely make out where sound is coming from, I only hear it's there. Yes, my left speaker is like massively dampened compared to my right speaker (from my perception, that is), so I can KINDA tell what's left and right. But if somebody on an open field or maybe somewhere crowded calls my name, then I am spinning like a ballet-dancer to get a visual cue of where the sound is coming from.
Sucks at times, but I never knew different, so that's cool.
@@PippPrissThat's nuts ! Thanks for sharing the details.
Great video. Small question, how would you run the hybrid setup that you mention? If the drums are already mic'd in a festival situation for example with many bands, do you need to run those into a splitter and take one into the XR18 while the other goes to FoH?
We just smack our drum-mic set onto the shells. So for our gig, we have two drum-mics per shell - one coming from the venue and feeding their stuff, one which only feeds our mixer. In smaller venues, when we arrive early enough to set up the entire chain together with the engineer and we are staying anyways for the night, we can in theory also just use our mixer, and then have the FoH engineer use our digital MIDAS DN-4816 splitter and it's output signals to fetch the mic'd drum sounds.
@@PippPriss The "two drum-mics per shell (...)" (1 for MON, 1 for FOH) thing is interesting ! Never seen that before... Only the single set of mics going into splitter and then to FOH and MON.