How many Channels do you need on a Personal Monitor Mixing System?

Focus on the musicians

Musicians know their own instrument/voice and some of their band mates’ – and they can express when the sound is bad – which means it is so bad that their performance is at stake, but they can never say “why”. The engineer’s main focus is to mix “a good sound”; the main focus for each musician is to perform, not mix. So less channels that needs attention means less distraction, which always leads to a better performance.

Everybody wants to hear (almost) everything?

For the most part, that is the case. Certain musicians might not care for the one or the other signal as a necessity, but it’s a known secret that a “full-mix” in studio quality excites every musician and makes him/her perform better – no matter how god the individual is.

What does that mean for the Personal Monitor Mixer system? Creating a 1:1 copy of the channels from the FOH console? That’s the case when you have a monitor engineer operating a dedicated monitor console, but with a PMM system that task is now performed by a non-engineer, a performing musician that has other priorities then mixing. Throwing 30, 40 or more channels at each musician will result in a very poor mix and a frustrated musician! We have seen this over and over again.

So here is what we have observed to be best practice:

• offer all signals that are important for individual musicians as individual channels and
• additionally offer a selection of useful (= simplifying) submixes or stems.

What signals should be individual, what should come as submix?

The most commonly used submixes are: vocals – for everybody not singing, and drums, for almost everybody but the drummer. The key behind this selection is from a musicians or singers point of view. If you don’t sing, you want to hear some vocals, but one channel to control is enough.

If you have a backing vocal group with multiple singers, they understandably want to have each vocal mic, (including their own mic!) as single channel – however knowing which of the three guitars or four keyboards plays when and what is overwhelming- so you might consider one or two submixes for them, like “band” which contains all instruments or at least “ band rhythm” ( drums, bass, guitars) and “keyboards” (because of the importance of harmonics). Large submixes that contain many different instruments should always be made like a stem- in stereo and with certain effects to allow clear and distinct hearing within that mix.

In some cases, with large bands that include strings, brass and woodwinds, that could lead to a channel count that is about or even more than on the FOH console – the big difference is that no musicians should deal with that amount. Everybody selects just what is important as single channel and a few submixes/stems. A good recommendation is to aim for 10 to 12 channels to control.

Submixes and Stems – who should do them?

While the second approach, having an individual submix available at each mixer might sound better to an engineer in the first run, think about it twice: who will do submixes from 40 channels? Usually not the musicians, so now it is back to the engineer. A big disadvantage versus creating one submix on the console is the fact that it has to be done remotely (hopefully with a configuration tool) and for each and every mix station! That adds time.

Creating submixes on the console is not only time saving but also allows much better quality . Most consoles these days allow creating full blown stems utilizing dynamics, EQs and effects, while providing much more consistency through a performance (sudden changes get adjusted in the global submix and the “problem” is solved fast and quick for everybody… ).

The major argument we hear against a global submix is something like: “but the drummer wants a different drum submix then the vocalists”. Of course! And it’s not a problem: give the drummer “kick, snare, hi-hat individually and create a submix (mono, if you have the channel count stereo) for the tom and overhead mics… For “non drummers” make a submix/stem with all drum channels . So creating submixes/stems needs a close look as to who needs what. You might find that 16, 24, even 32 channels can easily be gone…. So it’s clearly an advantage if your PMM system has a high channel count and allows for easy expansions.

Summary