C1500 on FOH and Directors on Mons Multi Surface Mode`

[Matt S]

Hey!

I’m working on my rig for next year. Been wanting to go dLive for a while and we’re going to make it happen this year.

Previously, we’ve been using a “Band In a Box” rig for monitors. This is an x32 that the band mixes on their phones. They are happy with it, I’m happy with it. No problems.

After working out dLive for FOH, my production company brought up that we could use multi surface mode, and cut the secondary MON console. That would be the C1500 on FOH, and a router + Director on mons that the band would mix on an iPad (since there isn’t a phone app). Less money, no copper split, smaller rack, in theory much simpler.

After looking into this, I’m not finding any examples of people doing this out in the wild. I know I would be the first at my large Nashville production company. I worry that this could get too complicated for one TM/FOH to handle.

Do we think the monitor side would need to be tended to every day? There is no monitor engineer to run it aside from the band members, who aren’t exactly monitor engineers. The x32 version of this rig was extremely plug and play. Turn it on, band connected their phones, easy 123.

Has anyone done this? Any thoughts?

[Nicola A&H]

Hi Matt,

You can use a combination of iPads running dLive OneMix, ME-1/ME-500 personal mixers, and IP6/IP8 controllers configured for personal monitoring. Strictly speaking, none of these require a multi-surface setup. You can split the inputs so that you have a set of channels dedicated to monitoring, with their own processing and FX sends (for example, ch 1-64 for FOH, 65-128 for Mon). If you don’t have a second engineer mixing monitors, there is no need to set up multi-surface Roles. You can still connect Director, with its own strip layout, for easier management of your monitor channels.

[ParkerA1996]

Correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t you also set up mix groups that you want to give control to band and get them sounding good, then set up a custom control app for them that allows SOF of said groups to their auxes?

[Brian]

Yes. The Custom control app requires that someone spend the time to create a set of templates/layers, but it’s nice that it works on any device – including phones. I also like the fact that you can split the desk capacity as suggested (1-64 for FOH and 65-128 for monitors) and then build your CustonControl app to only access the 64-128 monitor channels. This way it would be impossible for a band member to get confused with double channels, etc.

Ultimately I would do what Nicola is suggesting with channels 1-64 dedicated for FOH and duplicated for channels 65-128 to run monitors from. This way FOH and monitors can be completely separate (like having two systems) and any EQ, FX, etc at FOH won’t affect monitors or vice versa. Then I would create a CustomControl app to allow each band member to mix/control their own monitor mix (using one of the 64 mix outputs). It sure sounds like the DLive system has the I/O and processing capacity to do this (after all you were limited to just 32 monitor channels previously).

Here is a set of CustomControl screens that I created for my church’s band members to control their monitors from. Again, the strength of CustomControl is too fold – you can limit the user to only monitor channels in a system that has FOH channels and monitor channels and you can use it on any mobile device.

Final Monitor Mix App with Allen & Heath CustomControl software

[Author]

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