Behringer XR18 - any tips for new user?

[51m0n]

Yeah you are going to end up frustrated by the xr12 

Really good monitoring is a reason to mic everything. It doesn't mean everything has to go to FOH.

Your guitarist is making a huge huge huge mistake by having a loud amp and not going through the FOH. He will be ruining the mix for some of the punters at every gig with them having either way too much guitar or not nearly enough depending upon where they are in the room. And he's making it harder for himself to hear his parts because he can't make use of monitors to help.

[Nicko]

19 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I don't think the issue will be the 12 inputs. Unless the drummer is plugging the whole kit in we dont' get near the 16 in the X18, the issue is the aux outputs. I couldn't use the XR12 as it only has two aux's. I was ok with the xr16 as it had 4, which gave us one monitor for each person, and the X/XR 18 has 6, which is handy in my second band where there are 5 of us

I'm intending to use a jack splitter on the aux out if we need more wired monitors, or more likely a wireless IEM wit three headsets (the guitarist and singer are a bit too enthusiastic for wired).  Although the mix will have to be the same for each set of phones on that aux out it's no worse than what we have now.

[51m0n]

1 minute ago, Nicko said:

I'm intending to use a jack splitter on the aux out if we need more wired monitors, or more likely a wireless IEM wit three headsets (the guitarist and singer are a bit too enthusiastic for wired).  Although the mix will have to be the same for each set of phones on that aux out it's no worse than what we have now.

Nope. This won't work out.

Everyone will want refinements to their mix.

I guarantee that you won't want the same mix as the guitarist in your monitor.

Getting an XR18 means everyone doesn't need the Behringer monitor mix box to do this, saving you a lot of money in the long run I promise...

[Nicko]

17 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

Yeah you are going to end up frustrated by the xr12 

I'm sure you're right, but probably because the possibilities are almost endless with the XR18, not because the XR12 is insufficient.  If we went conventional mixer say a Mackie 1202 we'd only get two aux outs.  I really cant see why manufacturers think you need ony two aux sends when you have 12 inputs, but it seems to be standard on 12 channels.  A 16 or 18 channel mixer for a 4 piece one guitar pub band is a little ott, even if you mic the bass drum, the bass and guitarist are DI'd, and and everyone has BVs it would only require 7 inputs. 

[Nicko]

16 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

Everyone will want refinements to their mix.

I have explained the limitations to the band, they seem comfortable with it.

[51m0n]

1 minute ago, Nicko said:

I'm sure you're right, but probably because the possibilities are almost endless with the XR18, not because the XR12 is insufficient.  If we went conventional mixer say a Mackie 1202 we'd only get two aux outs.  I really cant see why manufacturers think you need ony two aux sends when you have 12 inputs, but it seems to be standard on 12 channels.  A 16 or 18 channel mixer for a 4 piece one guitar pub band is a little ott, even if you mic the bass drum, the bass and guitarist are DI'd, and and everyone has BVs it would only require 7 inputs. 

Well it's all about monitoring.

If you go IEM, which is almost inevitable once you can because it's so much easier to play well, you will be looking at:

Kick

Snare

OH(s)

Bass

Guitar

Vox X3

9 Mics minimum. 

And if you all go IEM then quite possibly a crowd facing ambience mic to give you some positive feedback in the monitors.

Everyone will need their own separate mix especially with BVs. It is not possible to do this well without that capability. The BVs will be far more pitch accurate with good monitoring.

The cost to do so is not so big. The results are well worth it IME.

We play pubs, and we mic everything. Not all of it goes FOH to s great degree but our sound is always commented on for its quality.

Yes it's a huge ballache to set up, but it's far nicer to play with great sound in your head and great sound out front IME. We play far better for it....

 

[Nicko]

I just want to clarify that your advice isn't falling on deaf ears, but as its a joint purchase and we're already over budget we will have to live with the restrictions - of which I hope we are all aware!

[51m0n]

2 minutes ago, Nicko said:

I have explained the limitations to the band, they seem comfortable with it.

For now...

😁

[51m0n]

Just now, Nicko said:

I just want to clarify that your advice isn't falling on deaf ears, but as its a joint purchase and we're already over budget we will have to live with the restrictions - of which I hope we are all aware!

I would advocate saving for longer, it is cheaper in the long run!

Plus with the XR18 you can do a phenomenal show real recording by micin everything properly...

[geoham]

36 minutes ago, 51m0n said:

Yeah you are going to end up frustrated by the xr12 

Really good monitoring is a reason to mic everything. It doesn't mean everything has to go to FOH.

Your guitarist is making a huge huge huge mistake by having a loud amp and not going through the FOH. He will be ruining the mix for some of the punters at every gig with them having either way too much guitar or not nearly enough depending upon where they are in the room. And he's making it harder for himself to hear his parts because he can't make use of monitors to help.

I've had this exact problem with my current and also previous guitarists. Usual reasoning is they must fully crank their amp to get a good tone, so no need to put it through the PA. I think I'm making progress though... at a recent gig we were playing a in a pretty tight corner with his 4x12 flush against one wall. I managed to convince him to have a mic on the amp so I could put it through the PA and let everyone hear the guitar, not just those in front of his amp. He was impressed by the sound (I think a PA speaker being in front of him at ear-level helped!), and has since declared his intention to work towards using an amp-less solution. He has bought a Boss synth-based modelling solution, though he's not gigged with it yet.

[Nicko]

1 minute ago, 51m0n said:

I would advocate saving for longer, it is cheaper in the long run!

We have a gig coming up in less than 4 weeks and currently have no PA.   We need some time to figure out the mixer when we get it so now is the time to strike. We've relied on friends goodwill so far and used borrowed gear but I think we'd be taking the mick to go another few months before sorting ourselves out, and risking the possibility that we are gigging the same night as our mates and end up with no PA at all.

[Nicko]

2 minutes ago, geoham said:

I've had this exact problem with my current and also previous guitarists. Usual reasoning is they must fully crank their amp to get a good tone, so no need to put it through the PA. I think I'm making progress though... at a recent gig we were playing a in a pretty tight corner with his 4x12 flush against one wall. I managed to convince him to have a mic on the amp so I could put it through the PA and let everyone hear the guitar, not just those in front of his amp. He was impressed by the sound (I think a PA speaker being in front of him at ear-level helped!), and has since declared his intention to work towards using an amp-less solution. He has bought a Boss synth-based modelling solution, though he's not gigged with it yet.

When we get the mixer the singer and guitarist are coming over for a trial set up, and I have convinced the guitarist to try my (rather lovely) low power guitar amp via the PA.  My amp is only 18 watts but has power defeats set at 0, 1 and 5 to give the full nuts tone at low volume.  I'm fairly sure it will be easy to convince her to go to the desk for monitoring even if she's not convinced on using it for FOH.

[51m0n]

13 minutes ago, Nicko said:

We have a gig coming up in less than 4 weeks and currently have no PA.   We need some time to figure out the mixer when we get it so now is the time to strike. We've relied on friends goodwill so far and used borrowed gear but I think we'd be taking the mick to go another few months before sorting ourselves out, and risking the possibility that we are gigging the same night as our mates and end up with no PA at all.

Hire something cheap in the meantime or spend more later. Its always the issue I know! I understand the dichotomy, really I do, I have absolutely been there.

I'll put it another way, if I lost all the kit we have in a fire tomorrow (jeez hope that never happens but) the only difference I'd make to the mixer solution is to go for an XR32 and the extra 16 channel stage box. Seriously, my band could consume channels like you would not believe for recording (5 mics on percussion, 11 on drums, 3 mics for horns, 1 mic for guitar, 1 mic for vox, 1 DI for bass, 1 mic for bass, 4 DIs for keys, 1 talkback and 1 or 2 for room ambiance - no kidding!). I know, loads more expensive, but the options for recording live would be amazing whenever we got the chance to do the big set up, and the rest of the time we can do the gig with just 16 inputs at a pinch. But the 6 aux outs are the absolute minimum I can work with (I'd really prefer 14 aux outs to give everyone their own stereo monitor mix, but we cant always get what we want and I cant justify 6 Behringer P16-M monitor mixers, our keys player has bought himself one though). I honestly cannot run a PA for the band that doesn't offer everyone a separate monitor (except the horns, they can live with a single monitor mix, but they currently dont use IEMs).

We are a big big band, with a lot off noise creating stuff, but every time we think we have enough channels someone comes up with a bright idea and I sometimes can't achieve that goal without more inputs on the desk (samples being one such problem). Our keyboard player has to use his own mini mixer at the moment and I get a 2 channel feed off that. its far from ideal though!

What I'm getting at is that no matter the solution you get for today, it will not be ideal, and in the long run you are fairly likely to have to buy again to get the functionality that it becomes obvious you need. Its such a pain!

[51m0n]

27 minutes ago, Nicko said:

When we get the mixer the singer and guitarist are coming over for a trial set up, and I have convinced the guitarist to try my (rather lovely) low power guitar amp via the PA.  My amp is only 18 watts but has power defeats set at 0, 1 and 5 to give the full nuts tone at low volume.  I'm fairly sure it will be easy to convince her to go to the desk for monitoring even if she's not convinced on using it for FOH.

With that little amp she will need to go through FOH. Which is a very good thing!

What possible argument can she have for not being put into the FOH??? Does she really think we are living in the early 70's and she needs a wall of fatally flawed marshal amps to get her point across to the Isle of White audience

[51m0n]

My guitarist is currently being seduced to the darkside by the Quilter 101 Reverb and Bareface 112

Sweet, it'll mean his ridiculously unreliable tube amps will stop screwing up mid gig: both his marshal 2x12 and Fender deville 410 are utterly untrustworthy despite him sinking many times their initial cost into them to try and make them less prone to releasing the magic smoke.

I cant wait, the Quilter 101 tone is gorgeous, and the Barefaced guitar cabs are insanely good (and a 112 so dispersion is amazing)...

Still going to mic him and give him loads in his monitor and put him through FOH to get a better mix for the punters though!

[Woodinblack]

3 hours ago, 51m0n said:

What possible argument can she have for not being put into the FOH??? Does she really think we are living in the early 70's and she needs a wall of fatally flawed marshal amps to get her point across to the Isle of White audience

Ours does. It is only now he has bought an IEM that he is starting to realise that it is actually less flexible than going to the mixer.

For me in this situation I would go for a second hand Xr16, just to get the auxes. There is no way I would be happy sharing a monitor mix with anyone else!

[Dankology]

Our XR18 cost £250 secondhand on Ebay - no significantly more than a new XR12...

[51m0n]

1 hour ago, Dankology said:

Our XR18 cost £250 secondhand on Ebay - no significantly more than a new XR12...

That's insane.

 

[keeponehandloose]

On 25/09/2019 at 09:28, Nicko said:

I'm sure you're right, but probably because the possibilities are almost endless with the XR18, not because the XR12 is insufficient.  If we went conventional mixer say a Mackie 1202 we'd only get two aux outs.  I really cant see why manufacturers think you need ony two aux sends when you have 12 inputs, but it seems to be standard on 12 channels.  A 16 or 18 channel mixer for a 4 piece one guitar pub band is a little ott, even if you mic the bass drum, the bass and guitarist are DI'd, and and everyone has BVs it would only require 7 inputs. 

Yamaha mg16xu has 4 aux sends..

[EBS_freak]

On 25/09/2019 at 10:24, 51m0n said:

 

I cant wait, the Quilter 101 tone is gorgeous, and the Barefaced guitar cabs are insanely good (and a 112 so dispersion is amazing)...

Still going to mic him and give him loads in his monitor and put him through FOH to get a better mix for the punters though!

Just a note - a cab with wide dispersion is exactly what you don’t want when letting the PA do the work. The less you can keep sound spilling into other mics the better. The PA speakers have the wide dispersion.

If not using the PA to amplifier you guitar amp and are just relying on the guitar amp to fill the room, cabs with wide dispersion... brilliant.

[51m0n]

6 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Just a note - a cab with wide dispersion is exactly what you don’t want when letting the PA do the work. The less you can keep sound spilling into other mics the better. The PA speakers have the wide dispersion.

If not using the PA to amplifier you guitar amp and are just relying on the guitar amp to fill the room, cabs with wide dispersion... brilliant.

This is an interesting point. There is another argument regarding on stage dispersion from the guitar cab.

Guitarists (in a smaller venue) tend to want their cab to be their main monitor.

If a cab has a better dispersion then the angle that the cab faces compared to the angle to the guitarist's ears is less important, which helps the guitarist because he can hear his amp better with less amp output. It also means that as the guitarist moves around they hear their cab amplitude and tone change less. In other words they are happier.

This in turn means that the amp output, although more general/dispersed, is actually lower on stage. Good mic technique and placement can really minimise the problem of spillage IME, the lower the spillage level the less the problem, and on stage nearly everything is very very close miced (less than a couple of inches is typical) which means the spillage volume compared to the source volume is pretty tiny. An amp that disperses poorly tends to get cranked up to compensate the poor dispersion. In turn that means that more energy is bouncing around the room (again smaller venues exacerbate this immensely), even though much less is useful (ie getting directly to the guitarists ears). To combat this you tend to have guitarists need a monitor chucking out their amp sound as well. It all just gets worse and worse. If you can get your guitarist to set a very low level on their poor dispersion cab, they will need a comparatively higher level in their high dispersion monitor to compensate.

Final point. Guitarists will turn their amp or monitor up until they can hear themselves comfortably. With a poor dispersion amp as the main monitor in a smaller venue the result of this is very directional guitar sound hitting the room, and mixing with whatever you put through the PA. Resulting in nulls and peaks across the stage. If you have a high dispersion amp then less energy tends to hit the room. If you rely on a monitor for a lot of guitar feedback then you have the same wide dispersion as a good dispersion monitor on stage.

So yeah whilst excellent dispersion can seem like the last thing you want, in practice it can be a lot more complex than just poor dispersion good for micing, great dispersion bad for micing in my experience.

 

[EBS_freak]

7 hours ago, 51m0n said:

This is an interesting point. There is another argument regarding on stage dispersion from the guitar cab.

Guitarists (in a smaller venue) tend to want their cab to be their main monitor.

If a cab has a better dispersion then the angle that the cab faces compared to the angle to the guitarist's ears is less important, which helps the guitarist because he can hear his amp better with less amp output. It also means that as the guitarist moves around they hear their cab amplitude and tone change less. In other words they are happier.

This in turn means that the amp output, although more general/dispersed, is actually lower on stage. Good mic technique and placement can really minimise the problem of spillage IME, the lower the spillage level the less the problem, and on stage nearly everything is very very close miced (less than a couple of inches is typical) which means the spillage volume compared to the source volume is pretty tiny. An amp that disperses poorly tends to get cranked up to compensate the poor dispersion. In turn that means that more energy is bouncing around the room (again smaller venues exacerbate this immensely), even though much less is useful (ie getting directly to the guitarists ears). To combat this you tend to have guitarists need a monitor chucking out their amp sound as well. It all just gets worse and worse. If you can get your guitarist to set a very low level on their poor dispersion cab, they will need a comparatively higher level in their high dispersion monitor to compensate.

Final point. Guitarists will turn their amp or monitor up until they can hear themselves comfortably. With a poor dispersion amp as the main monitor in a smaller venue the result of this is very directional guitar sound hitting the room, and mixing with whatever you put through the PA. Resulting in nulls and peaks across the stage. If you have a high dispersion amp then less energy tends to hit the room. If you rely on a monitor for a lot of guitar feedback then you have the same wide dispersion as a good dispersion monitor on stage.

So yeah whilst excellent dispersion can seem like the last thing you want, in practice it can be a lot more complex than just poor dispersion good for micing, great dispersion bad for micing in my experience.

 

Guitarists tend to want their cab to be their main monitor - and that is why they are a complete pain in the backside. Wedges are far superior (as it kind of helps that they are pointed at player's ears for starters) as there is less bleed into the vocal mics (obviously the correct placement of wedges according to the pickup pattern of the mics is obviously a consideration). Again, depending whether you go for directional wedges, or wide dispersion wedges means that you should get a better mix across the stage, with less bleed into open mics.

Even better is IEMs, even better still is a silent stage. Springsteen has got his "big amp, big speakers set up" right. They point skywards and are miced from above. Mind you, he probably only plays stages where mic bleed is less of a problem... and is more about cranking the amps without killing the ear drums... with the wedges doing what they need to do.

If guitarists actually played for the band rather than for themselves, things would be a lot better - and that is making more use of wedges. Trouble is, in a lot of venues where house PA budget is always on a shoestring, it's always the monitors that are the first to be cheapened out - to the extent where they can't cope with what needs to be thrown at them. Dispersion of guitar cabs shouldn't really come into the equation at all...because if they can be heard over the PA and create problematic nodes in the room, the PA monitoring isn't being utilised properly.

Trouble is, you can't tell anybody this and everybody always knows best, despite not being able to beat the laws of physics. Guitarists in particular, are always stuck in the way of thinking - well, this is how it was done in the 60s...