Digital Mixer and Gigs

[Boodang]

We've been using a Behringer XR18 for the last few gigs and it's been quite the revelation. Impressions so far; metering is great, so setting gain levels is easy, as is keeping an eye on send/returns and bus outputs, plus an RTA which helps with overall eq'ing. Fully parametric 5 band eq, comp & gate on each channel is brill. The effects modeling is amazing, shame there's only 4 stereo fx slots but that's only a minor gripe. Still a lot of stuff to get a grip on like the dca groups and ultra net monitoring, so still on the learning curve with it. Oh, and it's got a small stage footprint and doubles as an interface for the home studio. 

Our foh and monitoring sound have definitely benefited from using this desk, I can't see me or the band going back to an analogue desk again. Anybody else using / getting into the digital desk thing and your impressions on using them?

[Dankology]

We use the XR18 too - for rehearsals, recording and occasionally for gigs if we have to bring our own mixer.

 

We probably aren't using even a fraction of its functionality but it's a great piece of gear and it broke my longstanding fear of digital mixers.

[Boodang]

14 minutes ago, Dankology said:

We use the XR18 too - for rehearsals, recording and occasionally for gigs if we have to bring our own mixer.

 

We probably aren't using even a fraction of its functionality but it's a great piece of gear and it broke my longstanding fear of digital mixers.

We're going to use the xr18 even if there's a sound guy at a gig just so we're in control of our own in ear monitor mixes and not at the mercy of the engineer. 

[Franticsmurf]

In the Hulla band we use an X32. We have a sound guy who has put the time in at rehearsals and on his own to learn the desk. The band has 13 members and everything goes through FOH so with vocals that's 18 channels, and when the drums are mic'd an extra 4 or 5 channels. I'm not familiar with the XR18 but the X32 has snapshots of the settings (I think they're called scenes) and we have several set up for various regular venues. Without a dedicated sound engineer I think it would be overkill, or at least too complicated to run properly but for our set up it's brilliant. I have my own IEM monitor mix which means I have done away with back line for this band. The desk also records audio directly to a USB stick so we have a rough demo for practising to. 

 

 

 

 

[Boodang]

4 minutes ago, Franticsmurf said:

In the Hulla band we use an X32. We have a sound guy who has put the time in at rehearsals and on his own to learn the desk. The band has 13 members and everything goes through FOH so with vocals that's 18 channels, and when the drums are mic'd an extra 4 or 5 channels. I'm not familiar with the XR18 but the X32 has snapshots of the settings (I think they're called scenes) and we have several set up for various regular venues. Without a dedicated sound engineer I think it would be overkill, or at least too complicated to run properly but for our set up it's brilliant. I have my own IEM monitor mix which means I have done away with back line for this band. The desk also records audio directly to a USB stick so we have a rough demo for practising to. 

 

 

 

 

The xr18 is just a small stage box with no controls. I connect a laptop and have that next to me. The fx and input gain settings are all done in advance of a gig, I then just have to worry about the overall mix and master level and with scene recall that's easy than using an analogue desk.

[Franticsmurf]

3 minutes ago, Boodang said:

The xr18 is just a small stage box with no controls. I connect a laptop and have that next to me. The fx and input gain settings are all done in advance of a gig, I then just have to worry about the overall mix and master level and with scene recall that's easy than using an analogue desk.

Our sound guy has just set up a router so he can use his iPad. At the last couple of outdoor gigs he was out front wandering about and sorting the sound from the audience perspective.

[Boodang]

1 minute ago, Franticsmurf said:

Our sound guy has just set up a router so he can use his iPad. At the last couple of outdoor gigs he was out front wandering about and sorting the sound from the audience perspective.

Yeah, the wifi remote tablet thing is great. No more snakes! When we get a new sound guy sorted that'll be the way forward.

[JPJ]

I was an early adopter of the XR18 and I’m still in love with mine despite all the recent issues with the Behringer app and iOS16 (the second time Behringer have failed to keep up with iOS updates during my ownership). If you use the desk with multiple bands or tend to play the same circuit then scenes and snapshots are great ways to save starting points for each gig. 

[BigRedX]

I intend to get one of these later in the year for one of my bands. 

 

The plan will be to run everything through this but split it out 3-4 ways for FoH mixer at the venue (Vocals on their own feed and other instruments either in stereo or split for drums and synths/bass) so they can fine-tune the mix for the room, although ideally they can just push all the faders up to the same level and they should be 95% there. We'll use a scene for each song so the effects and relative levels for the instruments are set automatically. Since the backing is run from a laptop, we can use MIDI commands to select the correct scene for each song, and also to mute the vocal effects between songs so that the audience can understand what our singer saying. There ought to be enough buses left over for each of us to have our own IEM mix too.

[Happy Jack]

@Silvia Bluejay and I bought an XR18 about five years ago and have since used it at about 250 gigs with Silvie as sound engineer sitting out front with a tablet. (It would have been more, but there was some sort of virus thingy going about for a while.)

 

Once you have it set up and fully operational it's great, but by God! do you have to go through some hoops to get there.

 

The built-in router is (was? five years ago?) notoriously unreliable so the first thing we needed to do was to buy a bog-standard home-use router and plumb that in to use instead.

 

Then we needed to configure it to do what we wanted to do, and neither of us is a trained PA person, so I found some very helpful How-To videos on YouTube and did an absolute monkey see monkey do operation to get our XR18 configured EXACTLY the way the guy on the video did it. Hey ... worked for me. 😉 Bear in mind that at no stage during this operation did I have a clue what I was doing, which means that I've never since dared to fiddle with any parameters or settings at all. 

 

Then we needed to have an appropriate app to control it on the tablet. It came with an app, natch, but that is (was? five years ago?) notoriously unreliable so we immediately upgraded to X-Air Pro. The app is a perfect match for the XR18 because once you have it set up and fully operational it's great, but by God! do you have to go through some hoops to get there. 🤣

 

The user interface is a farce and utterly counter-intuitive ... nothing works the way you'd expect. But eventually you get there.

 

And then come the benefits. Lots of them, including having the band on stage with backline but turned down to sensible levels, always having a perfect mix for the audience, having the right volume for the venue song by song and set by set (as the crowd grows or shrinks, changing the ambience in the room), and of course being visibly very professional and impressing the hell out of pub landlords and venue managers.

 

Silvie now runs the XR18 with a 3-piece rock'n'roll band (two vocalists), a 3-piece covers band (three vocalists), and a 5-piece soul band (four vocalists + sax). Selecting the right Scene to use at each gig takes seconds. Heaviest use is obviously the soul band, which needs 12 channels. Only the drummers routinely have monitoring, though we sometimes do that for the lead vocalist in the soul band too. 

 

Although the XR18 is controlled by a tablet (with a smartphone as the emergency fallback) the laptop next to me on stage is always hard-wired to the XR18 too ... there is no wireless/router/hacker/EMP catastrophe that can kill our PA entirely.

[JPJ]

Of course the digital thing is like drugs, just because you can doesn’t mean you should and like all live sound mixing, less is more, subtraction before addition etc. As I mix on the fly from stage side whilst playing I added a X-Touch to my setup as physical faders are far easier to tweak mid-song than touch screens imho. 

The photo shows my setup for a recent five-piece country/americana gig, with everything mic’d up or Di’d and running three IEM’s and two floor monitors for the luddites. I used to do the subs on Aux trick, but added a DriveRack which free’d up the aux and, for anyone mixing from stage side, gives a much better FOH sound imho. Now if only the X-Air Edit app could sync with the X-touch for fader bank selection……

Edited July 29, 2023 by JPJ

[jimmyb625]

3 hours ago, JPJ said:

Of course the digital thing is like drugs, just because you can doesn’t mean you should and like all live sound mixing, less is more, subtraction before addition etc. As I mix on the fly from stage side whilst playing I added a X-Touch to my setup as physical faders are far easier to tweak mid-song than touch screens imho. 

The photo shows my setup for a recent five-piece country/americana gig, with everything mic’d up or Di’d and running three IEM’s and two floor monitors for the luddites. I used to do the subs on Aux trick, but added a DriveRack which free’d up the aux and, for anyone mixing from stage side, gives a much better FOH sound imho. Now if only the X-Air Edit app could sync with the X-touch for fader bank selection……

That's a nice setup! 

We sometimes use the X-touch at the theatre for our XR18, but usually it's via the mixing station app. 

[SamIAm]

I bought an XR-18 here on BC a while back, used it in anger for the first time at an open mic about 3 weeks ago.

Performed to perfection!  The mixer was at the side of the stage so no super long XLR cables were needed.

All controlled over WiFi (via an external WiFi hub connected, the built in WiFi is near useless) from an iPad and my iPhone.

 

Control was really not bad, tho I've sprung the huge £5 or so to get the mixing station app https://mixingstation.app/

I've yet to fully set it up, but it is much more customisable than the x-air app.

 

S'manth x 

[Angelus]

Been using the XR18 for a couple of years and can’t see me going with anything else for a while. Only thing I’ve added in the rack, is a feedback destroyer. Software is actually quite workable, once you’ve got used to it, but I had to watch hours of tutorials to understand the more complicated parts. Unlike the Line6 StageScape, which was pretty much plug and play. 

[Boodang]

20 minutes ago, Smanth said:

I bought an XR-18 here on BC a while back, used it in anger for the first time at an open mic about 3 weeks ago.

Performed to perfection!  The mixer was at the side of the stage so no super long XLR cables were needed.

All controlled over WiFi (via an external WiFi hub connected, the built in WiFi is near useless) from an iPad and my iPhone.

 

Control was really not bad, tho I've sprung the huge £5 or so to get the mixing station app https://mixingstation.app/

I've yet to fully set it up, but it is much more customisable than the x-air app.

 

S'manth x 

Ooh, might have a look at the mixing station as having issues with the x-air app.

[Woodinblack]

Just now, Boodang said:

Ooh, might have a look at the mixing station as having issues with the x-air app.

 

Note the X-Air app was updated recently as it wasn't working after the last ios update.

 

More info probably in the mixing thread:

 

[AxelF]

6 hours ago, Boodang said:

We're going to use the xr18 even if there's a sound guy at a gig just so we're in control of our own in ear monitor mixes and not at the mercy of the engineer. 

Yeah I have mine in a rack with some channel strip splitters so that even if the venue want to use their own system we can run into our rack as usual, with one of the pair of outs permanently wired into our XR18 for IEM monitoring and the other one of the pair can be run straight into the in house system. Exactly the same IEM mix at every gig is a godsend!

[Happy Jack]

No one else is asking, so I will.

 

What about the alternatives to the Behringer XR18?

 

As near as I can make out, the Midas MR18 is identical and one is a clone of the other. The Mackie DL16S seems curiously limited for such an expensive piece of kit (paying for the badge?).

 

The one that catches my eye is the Soundcraft Ui24R. It ain't cheap, but it seems to tick all our boxes.

 

Does anyone have any experience with any of these? Or any that I've missed?

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by Happy Jack

[Woodinblack]

16 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

The one that catches my eye is the Soundcraft Ui24R. It ain't cheap, but it seems to tick all our boxes.

 

Does anyone have any experience with any of these? Or any that I've missed?

 

 

The compact mixing desk thread has a whole load of those things - some of them seem pretty good, with their own bonuses and pitfalls, but still pretty happy with the X18 and its other ecosystem stuff. I think the only thing that would push me from a X18 would be an X32 if I was doing more.

[jimmyb625]

I swap between an A&H QU24 or QU-SB  depending on the gig.

I have the SB racked up, with splitters, as it's also used with the electronic band. They use it for their monitoring and usually left and right to FOH, but sometimes the house guys want to have full mix control.

Overall, I slightly prefer the QU24, as I find the physical faders easier to get along with and it has more useful outputs. That said, I probably use the SB twice as often nowadays.

[Happy Jack]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

The compact mixing desk thread has a whole load of those things - some of them seem pretty good, with their own bonuses and pitfalls, but still pretty happy with the X18 and its other ecosystem stuff. I think the only thing that would push me from a X18 would be an X32 if I was doing more.

 

Yes, but that thread runs to 13 pages, very few of which deal with serious rivals to the XR18. 🙂

[dave_bass5]

We switched to a XR18 in June and i couldn't be happier. Its made a lot of things much easier, and the ability to set the levels while standing at the bar is a game changer 🤣.

I can now take IEMs a lot more seriously, and ive had two members of the band practically convert to IEM’s since getting it. 

[Boodang]

10 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

No one else is asking, so I will.

 

What about the alternatives to the Behringer XR18?

 

As near as I can make out, the Midas MR18 is identical and one os a clone of the other. The Mackie DL16S seems curiously limited for such an expensive piece of kit (paying for the badge?).

 

The one that catches my eye is the Soundcraft Ui24R. It ain't cheap, but it seems to tick all our boxes.

 

Does anyone have any experience with any of these? Or any that I've missed?

 

Well, I think with the xr18 it's a bang for buck thing. Not a lot out there, if anything, doing the same thing for the money.

[Happy Jack]

Understood, but once you get past £500 (the XR18 seems to be £579 at the moment) you're not in cheap territory and the £845 for the Soundcraft actually looks like VFM to me, given the functionality and ease of use.

 

Our XR18 is still working fine and we're in no hurry to dash out and buy another wireless mixer, but I'm getting our Plan B ready for the day after the XR18 dies.

 

There's an old-school Yamaha MG12 in the back of the car to deal with the gig where it actually happens, you understand  ...

[JapanAxe]

A band that I dep with has recently acquired the Mackie DL16. The ability to set up my own monitor mix makes IEMs a positive thing rather than just tolerable. They don’t currently have an XLR splitter so I think they just give the house sound engineer access to the FOH mix.